When it came time to plan San Francisco Pride this year, Suzanne Ford, the organization’s executive director, reached out to some longtime corporate sponsors to ask how they planned to support the event.
Their abrupt responses stunned her: Not at all.
Several of the event’s largest sponsors — including Comcast, Anheuser-Busch and the beverage company Diageo — told Ms. Ford that they would not be providing funding this year. The companies, which together provided over $200,000 to San Francisco Pride in 2024, each told her that supporting the event was no longer in its budget, she said.
. . .
With only weeks left to lock in sponsors for the summertime events, Pride organizers across the United States say that many longtime corporate sponsors are suddenly being evasive about their financial commitments or abandoning their support entirely. While some companies cited tight budgets or economic uncertainty, Pride organizers see another factor: President Trump’s widening crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion, which has prompted corporate America to retreat from such initiatives.
This is an unexpected plus in my book. I am hoping now that no one is doing it for performative rainbow capitalism you will see who the true allies are because only the allies will be associating with pride.
And my needless expenditures have plummeted because I can’t shop anywhere.
Corporations never cared about pride, dei, BLM. It’s always been simple ROI and advertising and right now the ROI is terrible when a neo-Nazi government backed by a coward opposition party that would over on command.
Activist should always be of the opinion of use them but never count on them.
They should publish a list, immediately makes clear what companies supported the gays because of their beliefs and which did because of their greed and financial opportunism.
Good!
I was getting tired of going to corporate marketing parades disguised as Pride Parades.
I wish this was the reason they were backing out though.
i’d like to think most of us saw all of the pride/dei public promotion as virtue signaling (and being honest i was **not **one of those people). but now i hope all of those corporations get all the backlash. not because they were pulling back on all of that but because they were using the very public symbolism as a marketing opportunity and nothing else. it gives the impression that they never had implemented any of those practices or believed in people being who they are in the first place and that’s worse. i would not shop at those places just for these places using very public movements as an “US TOO!” crass commercial opportunity. end stage capitalism in practice, and now watch as these same corporations cry poverty and some sort of activist interference because the free market is reacting to their actions.
They never cared to begin with.
Corporations have treated Pride Month and events as just opportunities to sell their pride version merchandise. They’ve been doing that for years.
