Today, the LGBTQ+ movement makes its presence felt across nearly every facet of American life. Movies, advertisements, schools, libraries, and even federal agencies all push the message. How was this done, who paid for it, and how much did it cost? The database below tells a major part of this story.

Our database profiles the LGBTQ+ activism of nearly 1,600 companies, including all Fortune 500s and every company scored by the Human Rights Campaign in its 2022–2023 Corporate Equality Index. It also provides a sampling of these companies’ DEI initiatives, which are too numerous to list in full. We ceased collecting data after Pride 2024.

The data we collected show that companies fund a large, grassroots network of LGBTQ+ causes, many of which seek to transform society through extra-legislative means. In all, we identified more than 2,500 unique causes. Though companies seem to be particularly interested in youth- and transgender-related organizations, they support a wide range of causes. From queer fetish museums and NGOs working to import transgender and HIV-positive “asylum seekers” to Pride organizers, LGBTQ+ community centers, educational initiatives, and professional activists, these causes work tirelessly to remake the nation in their image.

The more than $1 billion in funding we uncovered is only a fraction of the total amount companies gave to these causes. The actual amount remains unknown, because companies rarely disclose the full extent of their activism to the public. We believe our database is a much-needed step toward transparency, a resource that illuminates some of the controversial actions companies take to engage in social engineering and to benefit fringe political movements in the name of philanthropy.

See the Database