Numerous major corporations retreated from Pride Month sponsorships this year, sending organizers, particularly for large-scale parades and festivals, scrambling to make up for budgetary shortfalls. This followed a more modest scale-back in corporate Pride Month support last year, according to CBS News.
Coinciding with declining Pride Month support, more corporations, including Ford Motor, Molson Coors, Lowe’s, Target, Brown-Forman and Harley-Davidson, are no longer submitting data to the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which ranks corporations by their stated policies and support of LGBTQ individuals in the workplace.
All of which leads to the question of how important is corporate support to the LGBTQ Pride movement. According to many in the community, corporate support is largely performative, meant to serve corporate goals – “rainbow washing” – not support the real issues confronting LGBTQ individuals and the community.
“We had Pride before corporate sponsors paid us any attention. We’re getting back to our community roots with people wanting to connect and collaborate with each other,” said Eve Keller, co-president of USA Prides, an organization that support Pride Festival organizers.
Corporate Sponsorship Waning, Community Skepticism Growing
In its annual survey of major corporations’ Pride engagement, Gravity Research tracks the recent pullback in corporate support. In last year’s survey, some 30% of what it classified as “consumer staples” companies, like retailers, planned to change their Pride engagement strategies. Across the entire survey sample, only 9% expected any changes.
In 2025, the share that planned to pull back jumped to 39% of all major corporations surveyed across all industries, not just consumer staples, and no company surveyed expected engagement levels to increase. A 61% majority said pressure from the new administration was causing the change, followed by 39% that were concerned about a conservative backlash.
Their withdrawal of support this year largely resulted from changes to internal corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies following the Trump administration’s restrictions on DEI programs across the federal government, including among federal contractors. Additionally, corporations don’t want to become targets for potential discrimination lawsuits or negative publicity from influential anti-DEI activists like Robby Starbuck, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“This year’s corporate Pride rollbacks are certainly an escalation, but not a new trend,” shared Jack Mackinnon, senior director of cultural insights at research firm Collage, which just released a survey about the Pride movement.
Collage’s survey revealed a growing trust gap among LGBTQ individuals where corporations are concerned. Over three-fourths of LGBTQ individuals said trusting a brand is important when making purchase decisions; however, only 36% said that brands and companies are trustworthy – a 40 percentage point disconnect in trust.
“LGBTQ+ American’s cynicism about corporate support for Pride has been rising for several years,” Mackinnon added.
That cynicism is in full view in a provocatively titled article in The Intercept, “Corporate Pride Is Dying. Good.” by Austin Ahlman, a reporter and researcher with the Open Markets Institute’s Center for Journalism and Liberty.
“Corporate support was a cynical marketing ploy to tap into the perceived disposable income of LGBTQ+ Americans,” he wrote. “This was never allyship: it was a highly lucrative protection racket. Corporations’ money bought social legitimacy on all sides at a fraction of the cost of most feel-good advertising campaigns.”
Ahlman concluded, “This is a necessary wake-up call. It creates an opening to rebuild Pride from the ground up. Pride can once again be funded by and accountable to the community it serves.”
Challenges Create Opportunity
Many Pride organizers turned to GoFundMe to build that ground up support. GoFundMe’s communications manager, Brian Hill, reported that since January 2024, more than 1,000 fundraisers on the platform have raised over $1.2 million to fill the gap left by declining corporate support.
And Pride USA’s Keller said her organization hasn’t fielded any panicked calls about funding shortfalls from the Pride organizers it supports. Rather this year’s funding challenge is calling on organizers to reach further into their local community for support.
“They’re being a lot more creative. So they’re just being smarter about ways to level it up and in the decisions they’re making,” she shared.
For example, Pride organizers have shifted from bringing in big-name entertainers and putting local acts into the spotlight. Some have also dropped sponsorship fees so that more local small businesses can participate.
“They’ve just decided to work harder and look in places and around corners they haven’t before,” she said, adding, “Pride isn’t just for June. Pride is year-round.”
Such bottom-up, grassroots support benefits the LGBTQ community by making meaningful, personal connections within their wider community, the true allyship that Ahlman was talking about.
He suggests that big corporate dollars “actively damaged the character of Pride,” turning events into an “endless stream of corporate logos and turning what were once human rights marches into mobile billboards.”
Tide Is Turning
While there is still a lot of work to do to support members of the LGBTQ community, a just-released Pew Research poll among members 4,000 LGBTQ adults found a growing acceptance for gay and lesbian individuals.
Some 61% of gays and lesbians reported a great deal or fair amount of acceptance and another 29% feel some acceptance. And a majority (52%) of bisexuals feel accepted; however, significantly fewer nonbinary (14%) and transgender (13%) feel the same.
Interestingly, about half of gays and lesbians feel they have a great deal or fair amount in common with straight individuals, perhaps because this year marks the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. The Pew survey suggests this milestone was a turning point in social acceptance of the LGBTQ community.
Nearly half (47%) of all LGBTQ individuals surveyed said the Supreme Court ruling made people somewhat more accepting and 20% who say it made people a lot more accepting. Further, the vast majority of those surveyed feel more accepted today than ten years ago and believe even more acceptance will follow over the next ten years.
Choose Partners Carefully
The Pew survey found LGBTQ members believe having more religious leaders express support for the LGBTQ community (61%) and having more openly LGBTQ political leaders (60%) would do a great deal or a fair amount to increase public acceptance. Corporations and organizations expressing support of the LGBTQ community plays a far lesser role (45%).
And the vast majority of those surveyed (68%) recognize that most or all companies promote Pride Month to further their business interests with only 16% saying more or all do so out of a genuine interest in the LGBTQ community.
“The LGBTQ+ market has incredible purchasing power and brand loyalty, but only when that support feels genuine,” shared Lawrence Johnson, co-founder and CEO of Pure for Men, a leading wellness brand for LGBTQIA+ individuals.
“We’re witnessing a powerful shift back to Pride’s authentic origins. While major corporations slap rainbows on their products for thirty days and call it allyship, we’re here 365 days a year serving our community’s real needs. Our community deserves businesses that fight for them and don’t just profit from them.”
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