Good afternoon,

What you need to know this week: Private foundations pledge $50M goal for public media, expect more mega-gifts in 2025, nonprofit-driven lawsuit over Texas redistricting, and more.

—Tamara Straus, senior editor

Mark Thiessen/AP

• Banding together: A coalition of grant makers called the Public Media Bridge Fund is providing $26.5 million to stabilize the stations most at risk, with the goal of giving $50 million by the end of the year, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
• Emphasis on the local: The money is not targeted to NPR or PBS but will instead go to the local public radio and TV stations that historically received more than 30 percent of their support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB is shutting down following congressional approval of $1.1 billion in federal funding cuts. In an opinion piece for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Stephanie Martin argued that public media is a linchpin for democracy.
• Private foundations stepping up: The Knight, Ford, MacArthur, Robert Wood Johnson, and Schmidt Family foundations, along with Melinda French Gates’s Pivotal Ventures, have committed more than half of the $50 million goal.

• The effect of the new tax law: Tax code changes and other political and economic forces are causing some ultra-wealthy donors to wait until the end of the year to donate or to give quietly, reports Maria Di Mento in the Chronicle. President Trump’s bill, which goes into effect in January, removed some of the tax breaks that have benefited wealthy donors and have traditionally encouraged charitable contributions.
• 2025’s $100M+ gifts: Last week, Nike co-founder Phil Knight and Texas financier David Booth announced university-related gifts of $2 billion and $300 million, respectively. But overall donations of $100 million or more were down a third compared with the first half of 2024.
• 4th quarter bump: “Many donors may have been holding back on their giving because they wanted to see how the tax code played out,” Laura MacDonald, founder of the Benefactor Group, a fundraising consulting firm, said: “Every time there’s been a significant change to the tax code, there’s then a significant bump in giving in the fourth quarter of the year.”

• Democratic filing: Several Democratic-aligned and civil rights groups — the National Redistricting Foundation, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the League of United Latin American Citizens — are readying to sue over new proposed congressional lines in Texas as lawmakers look to advance a GOP-friendly map ahead of the 2026 midterms, the Hill reported on Monday.
• Republican filing: Meanwhile, California Republicans filed a suit seeking to block Governor Newsom’s redistricting plan, arguing that Democratic lawmakers violated 30-day disclosure rules in the California Constitution, the New York Times reported.
• Challenge to Voting Rights Act: “Despite bipartisan opposition among Texans, the Texas legislature is pushing forward a congressional map that includes even fewer minority opportunity districts than the current discriminatory map, which is already being challenged in court for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Foundation, in a statement.

• Disincentivizing nonprofit labor: The Trump administration has released for public review new regulations designed to limit student loan forgiveness under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, Forbes reported. The program, first enacted under President George W. Bush in 2007, encourages borrowers to take traditionally lower-paying jobs at government and nonprofit organizations.
• ‘Substantial illegal purpose’: The new rule would cut off nonprofit and government organizations from participating in the program if the Department of Education determines that “a qualifying employer has engaged on or after July 1, 2026, in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose.” Those include providing health care services to transgender youth, facilitating the violation of federal immigration laws, violating state laws, or engaging in activity that facilitates illegal discrimination.
• Making a statement: The National Council of Nonprofits is urging submission of public comments by the September 17 deadline.

• ‘Illegal DEI’ in education ruling: A federal judge halted the White House effort to cut off federal funding from schools and colleges that practice what the administration calls “illegal DEI,” the New York Times reported. Judge Stephanie Gallagher of the Federal District Court in Maryland wrote that the administration had not followed proper administrative procedure and said its plan was unconstitutional, in part because it risked constraining educators’ free speech rights in the classroom.
• ‘Generational loss’ for environmental groups: Lawsuits, internal turmoil, lost federal grants, and legislative reversals are adding up to a “generational loss” for environmental groups, according to the New York Times. Donors have been slow to fill the gap left by rescinded federal grants, though some are looking for ways to further support clean energy efforts.
• Nonprofit stats by congressional district: A new interactive dashboard from Candid provides details on “the scope and scale of the nonprofit ecosystem in each congressional district — essential information for advocates working to protect community services.” Users can filter to any of the 435 U.S. House districts (plus Washington, D.C.) to reveal the number of registered 501(c)(3) nonprofits, the number of nonprofit employees, aggregate revenue flowing to nonprofits, and the distribution of nonprofits by subsector and organizational size.

““What’s different now is that political loyalty itself is being written into the rules, turning what was once an imperfect but needs-based system into one based on loyalty.”

— Matt Watkins in the Chronicle op-ed “Adapt or Resist? How to Survive the Threat of Political Litmus Tests for Federal Grants”

If you have any tips for this newsletter, email us.