JULY 2026 | NAIROBI, KENYA | Hosted by Waypoint Commons

A global gathering of practitioners, funders, and others congregated in Nairobi alongside several concurrent global convenings. Building on themes that were discussed in Not a Side Issue, a funder-only session held in Oxford during the Skoll World Forum, Waypoint Commons organized a convening exploring risk and visibility to leverage expertise gathered in one place. Risk is consistently among the most influential and least understood barriers funders raise in supporting programs serving LGBTIQ+ communities.

This session brought funders, intermediaries, and practitioners into the same room. What follows draws on that session, on meetings around it, and on a wider set of site visits and conversations over recent months, spanning East, West, and southern Africa, South Asia, and the United States. Contributors included organizations providing emergency and transitional housing, refugee support, HIV and sexual health services, mental health care delivered both in person and through technology, livelihoods, entrepreneurship and skills building, youth advocacy, and education; international NGOs and regranting intermediaries; private and family foundations; and independent advisors working with funders on safeguarding. Refugee, trans, and queer lived experience was present throughout.

We cannot hide forever, but we also need to be safe

Practitioners were frank about this. They knowingly take on risk, though not always knowing to what degree. Some level of exposure has been accepted as part of the work. Risk and visibility showed up together throughout the conversations, shaping each other. Visibility keeps organizations fundable, keeps communities findable, and keeps work legible, invisibility is often what keeps people safe. What practitioners have experienced as commonly addressing this is unremarkable on its face: being able to safely talk with those funding them. Real conversation is what turns risk from something carried into something that can be weighed and chosen.

Being willing to actually talk

The clearest example of what works came from a practitioner describing a funder who simply asked, directly and early, what the organization needed. Not a survey, not a due diligence form. A conversation, a funder willing to actually talk. This open dialogue is where protection gets defined, and by whom.

One practitioner put it plainly, we protect our funders, reversing the presumed direction of protection.

A practitioners describing grants structured with NDAs specifically to shield the funder from exposure or an intermediary described its operating model along similar lines, treating the people closest to the work as partners rather than grantees or beneficiaries, an approach they call "people and populations as partners". Funder practices that work follow the same logic, handing the decisions over to practitioners. The exact language for public materials, how the work gets described, whether the organization is named at all. Not a funder deciding how to protect an organization, but asking what protection means to that organization, then doing exactly that.

Intention doesn't always produce protection, though. One practitioner described an event deliberately kept unpublicized to enable their participation safely, no livestream and no public program. Word reached their home country regardless, and they received a call from a trusted contact warning them not to go home. No single precaution is a guarantee, which is why the relationship and the ongoing conversation matter more than any one safeguard inside it.

What's already in practice

Risk and visibility are being solved constantly, in practice: by practitioners deciding what to reveal and what to hold back, by intermediaries absorbing exposure from one side or both, and by funders who have built flexibility into how they contract, communicate, and fund.

What came across clearly is that this group holds knowledge about operating under these conditions that the sector could learn a great deal from.

The following organizes that knowledge and experience into three areas where decisions on risk and visibility come up most:

who stands in front of the work,
how work is represented, and
what's in place to keep people safe.

1. Who stands in front of the work

One of the most common responses to risk is working through intermediaries or other proxies. A person represents an organization that can't be seen. An organization signs on behalf of another. A funder grants through a third party so its name isn’t in associated documentation. Practitioners, intermediaries, and funders all use this, and the roles are adjusted depending on what's needed: a practitioner can be the proxy for another practitioner, a funder can act as an intermediary for other funders, and an intermediary may itself need a proxy in a particular country. What stays constant is the question underneath: what can't be done directly, why not, and who can do it instead. In some cases this is the only workable option.

Four representations of this approach came up: physical presence; formal relationships; financial transactions; access and referral.

PHYSICAL PRESENCE. Someone doesn't have to be visibly LGBTIQ+ to be at risk. Physical participation in meetings, advocacy efforts, and convenings can also mean individual exposure or exposing movements (e.g. border crossings, immigration check) or costs an individual or organization can't carry. Deciding who is physically present weighs safety, cost, and how a person will be read in that particular room.

One organization works regularly in spaces where affiliation with LGBTIQ+ communities can stall a conversation, unravel relationships built over years, or put individuals at risk: meetings with police or religious or other local community leaders. They've identified proxies who can carry the organization's positions into those rooms without carrying its exposure.
A livelihoods program by and for highly marginalized individuals sells products directly to their surrounding community. This involves moving around, negotiating in person, and being seen repeatedly, so it is handled by those whose identity is least outwardly discernible, which protects the group as a whole.

FORMAL RELATIONSHIPS. A formal relationship creates a visible link between two parties. Agreements, contracts, and memoranda of understanding often enter public records, and a grant creates a traceable line between a funder and an organization. The exposure runs both ways, since the school, ministry, or funder on the other side takes on the association too. So when a direct relationship would expose either side, someone else can holds it instead.

One international NGO known for delivering remote support to LGBTIQ+ communities operates through local organizations with established trust in the community. Those partners hold the agreements with schools and government offices and deliver the program.
One funder wanted to support an LGBTIQ+ healthcare provider but weighed its own exposure, its other grantees in that country, and staff across all parties. It moved its support through a funder partner with less politically sensitive ties there, and that partner holds the relationship.
Pooled funds commonly play the same role. Donors place money into a fund with a broad gender or feminist mandate and indicate where it is intended to go, and the fund disburses to the practitioner, so neither end is directly linked to the other.

FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS. In countries where supporting LGBTIQ+ communities is treated as illegal, organizations with evident social missions often fail to successfully register at all, resulting in community programs operating for years without legal status. Where an entity does exist, bank accounts are frequently closed with no notice, often citing a violation of community standards with no explanation and no route to appeal. Refugees without documentation can't open individual accounts, and visibly trans people face being turned away outright from financial institutions. Where funders require financial statements (often audited), that expectation becomes its own barrier for programs running on individual accounts. This is an area where intermediaries and proxies often do the work.

Community programs that can't register their work often use fiscal sponsors or other partners as hosts. Some are NGOs taking this on for another organization; others are entities offering fiscal sponsorship as a core service. Many working with LGBTIQ+, refugee, or other similarly restricted populations structure it so they can regrant to individuals as well as entities.
Where accounts in an organization's name can't be kept open, money sits in individual accounts that don’t face the same risk of closure. Two or three signatories are often added so financial controls stay intact. Where the person who would ordinarily hold it can't get an account, a colleague who is less visibly identifiable holds it instead.

ACCESS AND REFERRAL. Organizations often operate under unrevealing names, describe their work with coded language, and sometimes maintain no public presence at all. The same choices that keep them safe can leave the people who need them, and the funders who would support them, unable to find them. Intermediaries and proxies fill that gap, usually someone already trusted by both sides.

One organization credits community-knowledge of a single staff member's first name as the most common access point to reach people. Those seeking support ask for this person, and from there people are brought into services quietly.
Several intermediaries offering regranting services describe how funders rely on them both to identify which programs exist in a given place and to judge whether supporting one is sound, and the intermediary makes introductions where requested.
One funder discreetly aligns all LGBTIQ+ partners to a common staff member who also holds other portfolios, an arrangement that appears in no job title and with no specifically named portfolio.

While these arrangements are useful, they are not entirely clean solutions. Intermediaries carry their own interests and priorities, and regranting adds overhead and administrative cost, and with less oversight than a funder is used to. Proxies or intermediaries without shared lived experience may provide security while missing what someone with it would catch. What name is attached cuts both ways and not always predictably. An intermediary with a recognized LGBTIQ+ name or associated social mission, or an individual known in the community, can lend legitimacy in one context and be the exposure in another. A broad institutional name (i.e. “The World Bank”) lends credibility without saying anything about who a program serves. Large institutions absorb incidental association cheaply while small organizations often cannot.

2. How work is represented

How work, organizations and the people inside them are represented publicly is one of the most established strategies in this space. Practitioners built it over years out of necessity, and it now runs through registration documents, program descriptions, partnership agreements, websites, and reporting. Organizations that name their work plainly and unapologetically tend to be those where advocacy is central, since being seen is part of how that work functions.

Language and positioning chosen to manage exposure isn't a single practice. It runs along a range, from a spectrum of approaches of coded or protective language to saying nothing publicly at all.

OFFICIAL LANGUAGE	ABSTRACT FRAMING	IMPLICIT INCLUSION	NO PUBLIC PRESENCE
The population or work is named directly, but in terms from official sources. The language carries institutional weight and reads as policy rather than activism. While it conceals less, some terms are broad enough to cover people well beyond the population in question.	Coded language that is protective on its face while still signaling to those who need to read it is arguably the most commonly used approach. Pooled funds can sit at a similar level of abstraction, since a broad gender or feminist mandate can obscure the purpose of a particular partnership or association.	Language that never explicitly gestures at LGBTIQ+ populations. Nothing is substituted and nothing is untrue, with the intended population included implicitly. Identity may not be tracked, since measuring creates a record. Outcomes are described in general terms, and the same logic applies to how roles and portfolios get named inside institutions.	For some, sharing nothing at all is determined best. People working in this space frequently don't discuss their role publicly or within their own communities. An organization may have no meaningful presence to find at all and can only be reached through someone who already knows it.
EXAMPLES
Gender and sexual minorities (GSM) Gender and sexual diverse (GSD) people Key populations	Cultural inclusion Inclusive services and practices Gender lens Marginalized and vulnerable populations	HIV outcomes, not queer HIV outcomes Livelihoods outcomes, not queer livelihoods outcomes Regional portfolio manager, not LGBTIQ+ program officer	No staff named on the website No employer listed on personal profiles No photographs in public materials No social media presence

An organization may move between approaches as circumstances change, and within any one approach the specifics need updating over time as those they were meant to obscure from eventually learn to identify coded language or implicit inclusion. Just as visibility is tied to risk, it is tied to funding and driving impact. Case studies, impact stories and evidence of reach all speak to funders, boards, and partners, and often require an organization to be more legible than may be safe.

3. What's in place to keep people safe

Choosing who stands in front of the work and how the work gets described are both protective decisions. Alongside them sits a more deliberate layer: the protocols, systems, and resources organizations put in place to keep people safe, and the ability to change quickly when something shifts. Most organizations have more of this in place than they realize, practitioners and intermediaries especially, though some funders as well.

Existing practice. One organization runs a documented response protocol: document the incident first, then move the person away from the risk, including short-term accommodation, then provide mental health support. A residential program maintains a standing incident committee alongside cameras in shared and private areas, and uses referral-only intake with a probation period, so someone the house already trusts has to vouch before anyone new comes in. Another organization has a written security assessment policy requiring a risk review before any activity, and makes deliberate decisions about where activities take place. Where these types of practices aren’t systemic, they still often exist as organic and responsive, built in reaction to something that already happened rather than designed in advance.

Data protection is where that shows most clearly, an area of emerging concern where experience is still accumulating and solutions are not settled. Platforms widely assumed to be secure may not reliably be so (organizations have lost access to channels they depended on or found information moving through them that shouldn't have). One organization saw repeated unknown login attempts with staff locked out and passwords changed across email, website, and data systems. Social media sits in the same category, both what an organization posts and what it allows to be posted about it.

Ongoing assessment. Some funders ask about safeguarding, risk response, and organizational preparedness directly. The strongest version treats these as continuous. One regranter assesses risk thoroughly at the outset and then reassesses across the life of the partnership, so it stays a live question rather than a box ticked at intake. Asking early does something beyond the assessment itself: it signals that the answer will be worked with rather than held against the organization.

Resources to respond. Circumstances change quickly, and change costs. A staff member may need to relocate, an organization may need to move its headquarters, or a residence may need to shift neighborhoods when local attention rises. Coded language that has stopped working or a compromised email system needs replacements. One intermediary holds resources specifically for this, enabling rapid response when something happens. It's a practice worth adopting more widely, and it has three parts:

hold a dedicated response fund,
tell organizations at the outset that it exists and what it covers, and
pre-authorize the redirection of committed funds so a crisis doesn't require a fresh request.

An organization that knows resources are available, and believes it can ask without the relationship suffering for it, operates differently from one that doesn't. Being able to redirect money already committed is also often faster and more useful than making a new request mid-crisis.

Risk doesn't have to be the barrier

Organizations are already doing the work: deciding who stands in front and when, calibrating how the work is represented and updating that continuously as it stops working, and maintaining the protocols and resources to respond when something shifts. These are, often, sophisticated practices, developed over years by experience, though largely undocumented.

Funder practices follow the practitioner's lead. Practitioners are used to protecting their funders, what is asked in return is engagement:

Ask about risk and safeguarding at the proposal stage, and reassess across the life of the grant rather than at intake alone. Risk management should be context-specific and those closest should have meaningful input on visibility decisions.
Use the organization's own language in grant descriptions and public materials, and file the grant under headings the portfolio already holds. Get explicit consent before identifying a partner in any public material, and treat that as a live decision rather than a one-time permission.
Drop requirements for identity data or disaggregated reporting that would create a record, and leave the organization's hand on what gets told about its work.
Adjust internal processes to respond to programs operating through fiscal sponsors or with individual accounts rather than screening them out.
Hold a dedicated response fund, say at the outset that it exists and what it covers, and/ or pre-authorize the redirection of committed funds.
Fund through intermediaries and regranters where a direct relationship would expose either side.

What is missing is that little of this is held in common. Funder-side practice in particular is thinner than practitioner practice and needs building deliberately, with funders at the table rather than waiting to be handed a framework. Waypoint Commons is developing a funder-facing resource for this very reason, starting with practitioners and people with lived experience, then adapted for funders and the contexts they work across.

This brief was informed through ongoing collaboration, consultations, convenings, and informal exchanges with practitioners, organizations, and ecosystem partners. Examples throughout have been anonymized, with identifying details generalized or removed where their combination could expose an organization, individual, or community. Contributors were invited to review the text prior to publication. Named contributors and affiliated organizations are included only where explicit consent has been provided, recognizing that visibility, public affiliation, or participation may carry differing levels of professional, institutional, or personal risk across contexts. Listed contributors represent only a portion of the broader ecosystem of organizations, practitioners, funders, and communities whose experiences and perspectives continue to shape this work.

NAMED CONTRIBUTORS:

Ayebale Innocent (he/ him), Founder, Refugee Dignity Initiative (Kenya) Bertram Ouma Odhiambo (he/ him), Executive Director, African Youth Advocacy Network (Kenya) Jono McKay, Co-founder, SameSame (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana) Sulah Mawejje (he/ they), Founder, My Mental Health Hub

Tyler Nelson (he/ him), Convener, Waypoint Commons (Global)

We Cannot Hide Forever: Navigating Risk and Visibility When Working with and Supporting Vulnerable Populations