Trump’s foreign aid freeze has left Stonewall crumbling, with up to half its staff facing the axe. At least, that’s the story the organisation appears to have leaked to the Times. But it’s deeply fishy.
Workers at the LGBTQ+ charity were told on Thursday that restructuring would take place, and that only roles with dedicated funding would be safe.
Simon Blake, the Chief Executive of Stonewall, made the announcement in an office-wide Teams call, which was said to have left its 114 staff “shell-shocked”.
Sources said they believed up to half of the workforce could be made redundant in the move, which they were told would “secure the future of Stonewall for the long term as a significant LGBTQ+ organisation able to deliver impactful campaigns and legislative change across the UK and further afield”.
Insiders believed the announcement was linked to decisions made by Trump over the provision of foreign aid. Blake had previously warned of the impact Trump’s move would have on Stonewall’s operations.
Funding from the US came to Stonewall through the Global Equality Fund (GEF), administered by the US State Department, which has given the charity more than half a million pounds in the past three years. The GEF focuses on “advancing LGBTI rights around the world” and is a pooled fund with contributions from numerous countries and private businesses, but it has not published accounts since 2015. …
Stonewall has also lost funding elsewhere. Its most recent accounts said it incurred a deficit of £858,000 in the 2023-24 financial year. This rose from £437,000 the previous year.
Income from fees, for example from its Diversity Champions workplace inclusion programme, fell between 2023 and 2024, as did income from other programmes.
Worth reading in full.
Why do I say it’s fishy? Well, making half the 114 staff redundant because Stonewall is no longer going to receive ~£166,000 a year from USAID only makes sense if its 114 staff are being paid, on average, £2,912 a year each (57 x 2,912 = ~166,000). So, the nasty orange man’s spiteful cuts to Stonewall’s funding must be an excuse, not the real reason for the redundancies.
This is the take from an informed critic of the organisation in a WhatsApp group I’m in:
They’re assuming (probably rightly) that all their staff are innumerate and they are using this as an excuse to make redundancies easier to sell. Better than saying “We’re shit, we’ve destroyed our brand, we can’t get a decent CEO, we can’t keep board members, experts are genuinely surprised that we managed to get our accounts signed off last year with a operating deficit of nearly a million” – and this way they get rid of dead weight, restructure and go cap in hand to the Government.
If any Stonewall employees are made redundant by the organisation for this bullshit reason they may have a case in the Employment Tribunal.
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Hallelujah!
Rejoice!
Stonewall getting a stoning. Good riddance, but beware those reduntant troublemakers getting up to gender-bendering mischief elsewhere. Once a twerp, always a twerp.
Oh well never mind eh couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people.
Does Stonewall grow food, create energy, create useful goods, make things work, create timeless art, contribute to extending the success of humanity?
No, it is a cancer on society.
It money launders and promotes mental illness and perversion.
I don’t care whether it’s Trump pulling the funding or not, it’s great news.
And why USAID funding them anyway? If they were…
“workforce”
Some good news at last!
Why should any charity/NGO expect funding from Governments, they should survive on donations, not from Government funds, and if people were to examine the salaries paid out to CEO’s as they are now called of these organisations, there is very little charitable about it at all. To me if you work for a charity you do it on a voluntary or an accpetance that you do not get paid much because the money should be going to the cause.
If Stonewall needs Government money to survive then it really doesn’t have the support of the community it says it represents.
We know why they like these non-reproductive sexualities it isn’t rocket science. My impression is that couples will feel a lot more horny now thanks to Trump. The sense that there is a future and it is perfectly fine to have six kids, even if one or two of them turn out to be feral. The sunshine and carefree sense of fecundity is back. It is a beautiful time to be energised by the spirit.
The Chief Executive salary was recently advertised at £110000 a year. To me earning 27000 a year that chief is not doing a job for charity.