When Funders Ask for Impact but Won’t Fund Infrastructure
Dear funders and fund seekers,
Let’s name the disconnect plainly:
Philanthropy loves outcomes.
Philanthropy loves innovation.
Philanthropy loves transformation.
But too often, philanthropy refuses to fund the very infrastructure required to make any of those things possible.
Especially when it comes to Queer organizations, Trans-led work, BIMPOC-led nonprofits, and community-based initiatives operating closest to harm and need, funders continue to demand impact without investment.
And the math simply does not work.
Impact Is Built on Infrastructure, Not Good Intentions
You cannot scale programs without staff. You cannot steward donors without systems. You cannot innovate when your executive director is covering payroll, writing grants, running programs, and answering the hotline.
Yet funders routinely ask organizations to:
Show exponential growth year over year
Produce sophisticated data and evaluation
Expand reach, deepen outcomes, and diversify funding
“Do more with less”
…while refusing to fund:
Salaries at market rates
Administrative capacity
Technology and systems
Leadership development
Fundraising infrastructure
General operating support
This isn’t strategy. It’s extraction.
The Quiet Hypocrisy of “We Don’t Fund Overhead”
Let’s be clear: overhead is not a dirty word.
It’s rent.
It’s payroll.
It’s insurance.
It’s compliance.
It’s the CRM that tracks donor trust.
It’s the development staff ensuring sustainability.
When funders say, “We don’t fund overhead,” what they’re often saying is: We want the outcomes without responsibility for the conditions that produce them.
That mindset disproportionately harms Queer organizations and other historically underfunded groups, because we are already operating with fewer reserves, thinner margins, and less inherited wealth to buffer shortfalls.
Restricted Funding Is Choking the Work
Project-only funding assumes organizations exist in a vacuum. But real work doesn’t happen in neat, isolated silos.
Queer communities don’t experience:
Housing instability separately from healthcare
Mental health separately from safety
Economic insecurity separately from identity
Yet nonprofits are expected to contort their work into hyper-specific grant categories that don’t reflect lived reality, then absorb the operational costs quietly and invisibly.
That burden lands on staff. On leaders. On the most marginalized people inside the organization.
If You Want Innovation, Fund Stability
Here’s the truth philanthropy needs to sit with: Innovation requires slack. Time. Capacity. Room to think. Space to rest.
Organizations in survival mode cannot:
Experiment responsibly
Invest in leadership pipelines
Build long-term donor relationships
Collaborate across movements
Imagine beyond the next funding cliff
When funders refuse to invest in infrastructure, they actively prevent the innovation they claim to value.
Accountability Check for Funders
If you’re a funder reading this, ask yourself honestly:
Do we fund general operating support?
Do we offer multi-year commitments?
Do we trust organizations to allocate resources where they’re most needed?
Do we fund leadership, not just programs?
Do our reporting requirements reflect partnership or policing?
If the answer to most of these is no, then the issue isn’t nonprofit capacity. It’s philanthropic practice.
What Real Support Looks Like
Funders serious about impact must be willing to:
Fund unrestricted, flexible dollars
Commit to multi-year support
Normalize funding for fundraising, systems, and staff
Trust lived experience as expertise
Shift power, not just language
Because Queer organizations don’t need to prove their worth again. We need funders willing to match rhetoric with resources.
That’s That On That
Stop asking organizations to perform impact while starving their infrastructure.
Stop celebrating resilience while funding scarcity.
Stop calling it partnership if all the risk sits on one side.
If philanthropy truly wants impact, equity, and innovation, then it’s time to fund the conditions that make them possible.
Stability is not optional. Infrastructure is not indulgent. And accountability starts with the check.
Sincerely,
Queers
Queer For Hire provides fundraising support to Queer nonprofits, LGBTQIA+ cultural competency to straight-led organizations and corporations, and individual coaching for Queer professionals.
Learn about our Fundraising Services <here> – we’ll lead or support your fundraising efforts, whether you need general support or want to focus on raising money from and for the LGBTQIA+ community.
Learn about our Fundraising Trainings <here> – we can coach your board, staff, and fundraising team on how to fundraise and how to engage LGBTQIA+ donors.
Learn about our other services <here> or our resources <here>.
