The Trevor Project, a national LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, announced Friday that it will undergo a “transformation” that will include layoffs and restructuring. The timing of the announcement, just days before the start of the second Trump administration, has staffers particularly concerned.
Jaymes Black, who became the nonprofit’s CEO last July, said the organization, which has around 600 employees, is in the midst of a “perfect storm” — soaring crisis calls and messages from LGBTQ youths, an increasingly hostile political climate for LGBTQ rights and a drop in individual donations.
The California-based Trevor Project, like many LGBTQ advocacy groups, is expecting the next four years to be challenging. President-elect Donald Trump leaned into anti-transgender rhetoric during his campaign and has promised to institute a number of policies targeting the community, including restrictions on transition-related care for minors and a ban on trans girls participating in women’s sports.
The project’s financials, which are publicly available, show a mixed picture. In its last reported fiscal year, which ended in July 2023, the nonprofit reported $87 million in revenue and $105 million in expenses, up from $67 million in revenue and $60 million in expenses the prior fiscal year.
When asked about the 57% jump in year-over-year expenses, which outpaced the nonprofit’s revenue growth, Black cited several reasons: investments in research, advocacy, public education and TrevorSpace, its online community for LGBTQ young people; increased pay for direct services and crisis intervention staff; and the launch of its crisis services for LGBTQ youths in Mexico, which required hiring new staffers.
But Black added that the top-line numbers in the nonprofit’s latest financial reports do not tell the full story. Aside from one large government grant, which can be used only to fund its work related to the government’s 988 suicide and crisis lifeline, every other fundraising category “came in under the budgeted revenue” and has continued to decrease (the financials for the fiscal year ending in July 2024 are not yet publicly available).
“To be able to consistently meet the needs of our community, it is imperative that we adapt accordingly,” Black wrote in a letter shared on the organization’s website Friday. “This entails a number of solutions that will reinforce our services within the context of constrained resources.”
The organization, founded in 1998, will eliminate some existing roles and create new ones. While it hasn’t yet disclosed how many roles will be cut or how many will be added, the net result will be a smaller total staff. The restructuring, Black said, will focus on moving resources to the project’s 24-7 crisis lines, with more staff providing direct support to LGBTQ young people in crisis.
The percentage of union positions that make up the organization’s total staff will remain the same, at about 75%, Black said, and the organization plans to limit newly created jobs to existing employees.
Black, who uses they, she and he pronouns, described the changes as “difficult but necessary” ahead of the incoming administration.
“This is the time now to fortify the frontlines and to ensure that our youth know that we hear them, we see them,” they told NBC News. “The fact that we are increasing the number of day-to-day interactors, the frontline who are going to support our youth, to me, is a signal of evolution, versus that we don’t have the resources.”
More than 500,000 emergency calls and messages were made to The Trevor Project through its crisis hotlines during its 2022-23 fiscal year, according to its annual report, with more than 3,700 crisis counselors supporting LGBTQ youth.
The Trevor Project’s union, which the nonprofit voluntarily recognized in 2023, was caught off guard by the news of layoffs and restructuring, according to Luis Benítez-Burgos, a representative with the Communications Workers of America, which represents the project’s union members. The nonprofit’s management team announced the changes during a meeting Tuesday where there were no members of The Trevor Project union present, according to Benítez-Burgos, who was one of two CWA employees in the meeting.
Benítez-Burgos said staff were informed of the changes the same day, though management did not share when layoffs would happen or how many positions would be affected, so “our union was not prepared to deal with the influx of calls of stress, of anxiety, of frustration,” he said. “Like I told Trevor [management], this should have been addressed in a different way.”
Black said this type of news is difficult to receive no matter how it’s shared.
“The timing for this transformation is challenging for all of us — I recognize that,” Black said in an interview. “But the reality is that this needs to be set in motion now. We informed the union when we had the appropriate level of detail to share with them.”
One Trevor Project employee, d saulsbury, a shift supervisor on the organization’s crisis phone line who does not capitalize her name, said that the crisis support staff’s job has been more difficult recently and that the news of the transformation “isn’t making things any easier.”
Rather, saulsbury said, management has “a continued interest in making unit members suffer and bear the brunt of hardship when it comes to a financial crisis that is informed in part by the incoming Trump administration, but also has in part to do with mismanagement of our organization’s funds.”
Black denied that there has been a mismanagement of funds and said the organization has strategically invested in programs, such as its crisis services in Mexico, to address LGBTQ youth suicide.
“These investments positively impact LGBTQ+ youth across many aspects of their lives,” Black said. “In order to fund these investments, we relied heavily on fewer large gifts, which is not sustainable in the current fundraising environment.”
saulsbury expressed disappointment in how the transformation was announced and fears it will make the organization’s work even more difficult during an already challenging time.
“I hope when we go into bargaining around these layoffs, that they will make choices now that serve as a way to rebuild trust together,” saulsbury said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com