Global LGBT Funding Up But Worry as Bulk Goes to North America

Although funding to support sexual minorities is growing, reaching about $250 million in 2016, three-quarters of the money is going to western countries, campaigners said on Wednesday. More than 500 foundations and governmental agencies gave a total of $524 million to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) causes in 2015 and 2016 combined, almost a quarter more than in the previous two-year period, researchers found. But LGBT groups received a tiny fraction of international development aid, estimated at about $140 billion in 2016, according to the New York-based Global Philanthropy Project, which is working to boost LGBT funding in developing countries. “Only four cents out of every $100 awarded by governments and multilateral agencies funds LGBTI work,” Matt Beard, executive director at U.S. rights group All Out, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “There also continues to be a worrying imbalance in terms of the geography of global LGBTI funding.”