For weeks, nonprofit organizations in Washington have braced for President Donald Trump to issue a sweeping executive order they fear would target their tax-exempt status — and threaten their very existence.
Trump’s Friday Truth Social post saying the government would revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status raised the fears of nonprofit groups to yet another degree. Although lawyers say there’s not a legal pathway for a mass revocation of status by the president, nonprofits are worried not just about the prospect of an expensive legal battle, but also about major donors getting jitters.
Rather than await a possible attack with a bullseye pinned to their backs, environmental groups and other not-for-profits of all types are trying to preemptively prepare for a fight.
About 5,000 officials from a wide range of nonprofits joined a mid-April call to learn about the administration’s possible actions and begin organizing in response, according to Caitlin Legacki, spokesperson for Americans Against Government Censorship, which organized the call. Rumors of a new wave of Trump executive orders had reached a crescendo, with environmental groups particularly afraid the administration would go after climate-affiliated organizations.
“What there has been in the last couple of weeks is a very robust organizing effort to make sure … that there’s an effort to link arms across the nonprofit sector,” Legacki said.
Trump hasn’t yet issued the rumored executive orders, and advocates say they don’t know if he ever will. A White House official told NOTUS on Friday that “No such orders are being drafted or considered at this time.” On Saturday, however, The Wall Street Journal reported that the officials were discussing ways to change the rules surrounding tax-exempt status for nonprofits.
But the preemptive activity is an indication that nonprofit groups are preparing for a different response to possible White House actions than the more conciliatory approach embraced by some law firms and universities, officials with these groups say. Rather than back down, they say they’re ready to fight back.
“Those who stand up and fight are actually succeeding,” Colin Seeberger, spokesperson for the liberal group Center for American Progress, said of organizations targeted by Trump. “They are getting an influx of donations and support because that’s ultimately who people want to be in this fight with and meet this moment with — with people who are not cowering, people who are not allowing threats with no basis in law paralyze them from the work they need to be doing.”
That’s not always the case, though. More quietly, some organization officials acknowledged to NOTUS that they’ve taken hits even without any formal attack on tax-exempt status, from nervous donors hesitating to share funds and the general chaos and fear getting in the way of focused and productive work.
“There’s no question that there’s been a chilling effect,” Sen. Ron Wyden told NOTUS. “I think that’s what some of the ‘DOGEers’ and others want, is to try to get in the way of the ability to carry out programs and nonprofits they don’t agree with.”
The fight between the White House and the wider nonprofit community has already begun. These groups have hired lawyers, staged internal strategy sessions, conducted audits and held emergency board meetings.
The Trump administration has now attacked several key pieces of the infrastructure used by people and groups he considers opponents, including large private law firms that provide pro bono services for challenges in court and Ivy League schools that often serve as incubation grounds for resistance movements. DOGE has further hamstrung the universities and other nonprofits through massive grant and contract funding cuts, leaving many on the verge of financial collapse even before any possible attack on tax-exempt status.
Trump has also issued executive orders calling for greater Department of Justice scrutiny into the liberal fundraising platform ActBlue. On Thursday, he directed a federal funding agency to stop all cash flow to nonprofit media companies NPR and PBS.
But the White House might face unexpected pushback if it formally targets nonprofit groups because that sector includes organizations of all ideological stripes, nonprofit officials told NOTUS. Go after the rights of one of them, and the administration might face pushback from entities they would otherwise consider their allies.
“You’ve got both pro-life and pro-choice, gun rights and gun control, all united within section 501(c)3. For us, the disagreement is a part of what makes the nonprofit sector what it is,” said Rick Cohen, a spokesperson for the National Council of Nonprofits.
Cohen hopes to see unity from across the political spectrum should any attack on nonprofit status move forward. But he warned that there are likely some groups that won’t be able to risk the political consequences of speaking up, and that it will depend on the specifics of what the Trump administration does.
Officials from a few organizations told NOTUS that they have heard interest from more conservative and right-wing nonprofit groups that are interested in supporting other nonprofits in the event of a broad attack on their status. Whether they’ll still lock arms if and when an order comes remains to be seen.
Legacki said the rumors that Trump would soon target some nonprofit groups rippled throughout the sector, including some organizations that generally stay away from politics and others with different ideological goals. It’s why so many joined the call in April, she said.
“It was a little bit of a wake-up call for folks who in the past maybe thought this wouldn’t affect them but began to realize this may have very significant consequences for the entire nonprofit and charity space,” Legacki said.
Attorney Jeffrey Tenenbaum, whose firm only represents nonprofits, told NOTUS the second Trump presidency has already triggered a mass uptick in clients, in part over the threat of losing their tax-exempt status.
“Since the beginning of the year, that growth has been off the charts,” he said of his firm’s nonprofit client base, pointing to fears about tax exemption, anti-DEI efforts and federal funding.
Tenenbaum said he’s been trying to reassure clients that sweeping changes to who can qualify to be tax-exempt are under the authority of Congress, not the president.
The legal pathway for Trump to mass revoke nonprofits’ status is somewhere between tenuous and downright impossible. It’s not inconceivable, however, that an executive branch employee could manually change the status of a set of organizations in the government’s business master file to comply with a presidential directive, he said.
“It’s not lawful, it doesn’t comply with IRS rules here, but could it happen? I can’t say no,” he said. Still, his advice to most groups is to stay calm and trust that they’ll have a strong case to fight back if Trump takes an aggressive step.
The threat of revocation alone is enough to cause problems for nonprofits, with their leaders spending time gaming out possible scenarios and even some usual donors hesitating until there’s more clarity. One leading environmental nonprofit group told NOTUS that the general distraction, chaos, and fear have been disruptive to the overall movement.
“It has certainly drained a lot of time from nonprofit leaders, as well as their boards, having these conversations about ‘what happens if?’” Cohen said. “Leaders have to focus on scenario planning and coming up with, you know, ‘If our funding is cut in half, how many people do I have to lay off?’ etc.”
The National Council of Nonprofits saw visits to its resources about how to shut down a nonprofit just about triple in April compared to more average months, Cohen said.And the Council on Foundations, a similar group that represents philanthropies, found that 70% of their member organizations were considering making or already had made two or more changes to how they operate, according to a March pulse survey of 183 members.
About 11-12% of their respondents said they were reducing a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in their internal practices and policies and external communications, and one nonprofit shared in the survey comments that they underwent a mock IRS audit.
Progressive members of Congress who work closely with nonprofits that could find themselves in Trump’s line of attack told NOTUS the fear is undeniable — and funding the legal fight is also a hard sell to donors.
“It’s part of an authoritarian playbook to paralyze these nonprofits — even if he can’t legally do this,” Rep. Delia Ramirez, vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told NOTUS. “It’s also meaning that a number of nonprofits are now having to seek legal counsel. The $100,000 that they would have been using to help someone move into permanent housing, or to their shelter or to soup kitchens, now they’re having to use to hire a lawyer. I’m hearing that a lot, and who wants to pay for that part?”
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Claire Heddles is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Alex Roarty and Anna Kramer are reporters at NOTUS.