Faith in Public Life, a nonprofit that organizes clergy and faith leaders toward progressive causes, laid off 90% of its staff, CEO Jeanné Lewis confirmed to Sojourners.
Lewis said the decision, which reduced FPL’s staff from 19 to just two on Aug. 1, was both strategic and financial, in response to changes from institutional philanthropy and grant-makers. FPL and its sister organization, Faith in Public Life Action—which Lewis also heads—will scale back programming as a result of the shift.
For the foreseeable future, Lewis said FPL will rely on contractors, including former staff, for specific projects. She said she presented FPL and FPLA’s boards with several staffing scenarios in early June. The board voted later that month, and staff were notified the second week of July.
“Looking at both the fundraising climate, but also the political climate, and thinking strategically about where we can be most impactful, part of the decision was how do we focus our programmatic priorities in order to be most impactful,” Lewis told Sojourners.
For example, Faith in Public Life is scaling back a campaign to help churches protect immigrants. Earlier this year, the group organized more than 100 faith leaders to sign a pledge not to comply in advance with federal actions targeting undocumented immigrants. It also provided congregants with trainings on their rights and ways to “denounce political violence and protect immigrants.” FPL originally planned to keep expanding to more faith leaders and more protests and vigils in front of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices.
“The scale of that, to coordinate a simultaneous action in four cities, live-streamed at the same time on the same day, requires a lot of labor. And the staff did a beautiful job,” Lewis said. “We’re not going to be able to operate at that scale. Instead, we are continuing to work with folks who signed the pledge and our coalition to do training.”
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FPL is not the only organization in the faith and justice sector facing financial challenges. Equal Justice USA, a nonprofit that worked on community safety and criminal justice, announced its closure in August. The organization itself wasn’t faith-based, but it had a flourishing evangelical network of thousands dedicated to ending the death penalty and promoting restorative justice.
“EJUSA had already seen a shift in the funding landscape prior to the election. Foundations and corporations, which were quick to pour money into racial justice after the murder of George Floyd, had grown much more cautious. Some had pivoted to different issue areas,” the organization published on its about page after their closure.
EJUSA had already laid off eight staff members due to those funding constraints. Then, in April, the Trump administration cut over $800 million in grants to community organizations, many of them violence intervention programs. EJUSA lost more than $3 million.
“After dozens of meetings and so many hours of analysis and deliberations, the leadership of this organization, on our staff and the board, came to the difficult decision to wind down EJUSA's operations with the same dignity and grace with which we have carried out this mission for more than three decades.”
Sojourners has also faced financial challenges, culminating in four layoffs and one unfilled position in June. [Editor’s note: Under Sojourners’ protocol for reporting on itself, no Sojourners staff outside of the editorial teams reviewed this story before it was published. Read more about our editorial independence policies.] Matt Murphy, Sojourners’ chief operating officer, said in an email that the organization is navigating an “increasingly challenging funding environment where many funders, especially foundations, are rethinking their strategies in the wake of the election in November 2024.”
“This has meant delays to funding decisions and in some cases wholesale changes to the types of programs and projects being funded,” Murphy said. “Funding continues to be difficult because funders are responding to new challenges arising from the actions of the current administration that leaves gaps in essential programs (cutting of funding to [U.S. Agency for International Development], PEPFAR, [Corporation for Public Broadcasting], etc) as well as the threat of increased regulatory scrutiny. … The state of funding is particularly troubling right now when there is urgent work to be done to create a just future for our neighbors and people across the world, and that work is hindered when resources are lacking.”
Financially, Lewis said FPL began the fiscal year—which runs from July through June—with some cash, capital, and grant commitments, but that the group wanted to “use that money wisely.” Despite increases in individual giving, launching a major donor program, and growing board giving, the diversified income streams weren’t enough to match rapid changes in institutional philanthropy.
“If you had asked me last year, I never would have imagined this was a possibility,” she said. “We did have some large grants that were coming to an end, but until very recently … we expected at least some of them to be renewed, if not all of them to be renewed. There has been a hesitation to make commitments on the part of institutional philanthropy since last fall, so even before the election. It was very hard to gauge what institutional philanthropies would or wouldn’t do, what they might be interested in, their priorities, or what they might commit to. And that’s been an ongoing issue over the last nine to 12 months.”
Lewis said staff received severance packages as part of the layoffs, and that she and the board thought carefully about how to ensure their new contractors were being treated equitably.
“None of our contractors are working full-time, and that’s a huge part in trying to remain equitable so that our contractors have other time that they can use to earn income in other ways,” Lewis said. “There are also no restrictions on whether our contractors can hold a full-time job or part-time job with benefits elsewhere.”
Multiple former FPL staff members declined to speak for this story, directing Sojourners to Lewis. Lewis declined to say whether outgoing staff were asked to sign nondisclosures or similar agreements as part of their severance, saying it could “violate some of the negotiations and privacy of staff,” as well as put staff “in an awkward situation.”
Rev. Jen Butler founded FPL and FPLA in 2005 as a project of the Center for American Progress before it became an independent organization in 2008. Butler served as CEO until 2022, when Lewis became interim, and later permanent, CEO. Butler went on to serve as director of faith outreach for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in 2024.
Faith in Public Life is a 501(c)(3), meaning donations to the organization are tax deductible, and it cannot primarily focus on lobbying and is prohibited from endorsing political candidates or parties. Faith in Public Life Action is a 501(c)(4), meaning it can engage in unlimited lobbying and a limited amount of political campaigning, but donations are not tax deductible.
FPL received a “significant multimillion-dollar gift” from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in 2021 and reported $6 million in revenue in its tax filings. In 2023, however, the organization reported only $225,000 in revenue against $1.9 million in expenses and has shown a loss of more than $2 million in total assets since 2021.
The Scott grant, Lewis said, helped FPL add a few staff members each year before the layoffs, but the organization had been frugal with the funds, investing portions in an investment account for the first time in its history.
Lewis said that despite having “very positive relationships” with various philanthropic funders, she felt frustrated and disappointed by the loss of funding.
“But I also feel hopeful about the opportunities from individual donors, as well as the opportunities for funders who may not have been considering funding faith-based organizations in the past,” Lewis said. “I’ve heard from many funders that they are no longer funding faith groups, or they don’t understand the strategic importance of faith groups … Our type of work is still really important to bringing about healthy democracy, and specifically the strategy to do that.”
Lewis said she hoped individual donors would understand the “power in donating to groups like Faith in Public Life and other faith-based groups, even if they’ve never donated before or if they themselves are facing financial challenges and feel they can only donate a small amount. Those sustaining donors who donate even a small amount consistently over time really make a difference.”
“If you had asked me last year, I never would have imagined this was a possibility." —Jeanné Lewis, CEO for Faith in Public Life
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