With Pride organizations facing corporate retreat in the wake of President Trump’s assault on the LGBTQ+ community and DEI efforts, Phoenix Pride announced on Thursday that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The group cited “rising operational costs, economic uncertainty, shifts in sponsorship and fundraising partly due to the current political climate and administration.”
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Phoenix Pride owes $432,000 to creditors, according to Axios.
The Pride organization is not shutting down, however, organizers said.
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“This process allows Phoenix Pride to continue operating while reorganizing its finances under the guidance and oversight of a court-appointed trustee,” the group wrote. “Our events, programs, partnerships, and community work will continue as we move through this process.”
Phoenix Pride remains scheduled for October.
News of the group’s reorganization follows Tucson Pride’s announcement in January that it was shutting down for good, after a reduction in corporate donations pushed the 50-year-old organization, already suffering accusations of financial mismanagement, over the edge.
“With all those DEI cuts and those funding cuts, it’s a trickle-down effect, right?” Phoenix Pride executive director Mike Fornelli told Arizona’s Family.
That effect is being felt at Pride organizations nationwide this year as they struggle to fill funding gaps that opened last year. San Francisco, New York, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., and Seattle are just a few of the Pride organizations facing big operating deficits this year.
Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, and Nissan all pulled sponsorships from San Francisco Pride in 2025, costing the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars. NYC Pride announced a $750,000 budget shortfall last summer after corporate sponsorships declined. Those companies are not coming back in 2026, let alone providing the level of support they have in past years.
“We’re not going to return to 2019, where we had much bigger levels of sponsorship prepandemic,” Patti Hearn, executive director of Seattle Pride, told The Wall Street Journal.
Companies that have dialed back support or pulled out completely cite a range of reasons, said Ryan Bos, executive director of Capital Pride Alliance in Washington D.C., including Trump’s crusade against DEI and an uncertain business climate.
“There were those that said, ‘We don’t know what we can do because of federal contracts or DEI,’” he said.
While some companies are dropping Pride altogether, others are scaling back to put their businesses at a politically safe remove.
Mastercard won’t sponsor NYC Pride this year, but did pay fees for about 100 employees and executives to walk with the company’s banner, according to a spokesperson. In San Francisco, Starbucks will hand out coffee to Pride marchers, but is skipping a corporate donation, the coffee maker said.
In Tampa, Pride is on an official one-year “hiatus” this year after multiple corporations dropped their sponsorships, under twin political pressure from both the Trump administration and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
The board running Tampa Pride said in a statement last August that the “current political and economic climate,” “challenges with corporate sponsorships,” and “the discontinuation of DEI programs under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis,” forced the temporary shutdown.
Corporations are weighing the benefits and liabilities of Pride sponsorship, which could expose them to litigation, political retaliation, or consumer boycotts, said E. Ciszek, who studies advertising and public relations at The University of Texas at Austin.
“What once was [an] organizational asset, has now become an organizational risk,” Ciszek told WNYC. The moment is testing “the limits of corporate allyship, particularly when LGBTQ visibility has become really politically costly.”
In Phoenix, reorganization is forcing organizers to rethink their financial strategy, with a new focus on community support. The sponsorship of one longtime local supporter, Phoenix gay bar Stacy’s at Melrose, “helps build trust” with the community, says co-owner Brandon Slayton.
Slayton said a move away from corporate reliance for Pride is a good thing.
“I’m kind of excited to see what those changes might be. I think that there’s an opportunity for the community to come together,” he said.
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