San Francisco Gay Pride Festival Scrambling For Funds After Corporate Sponsors Jump Ship

A host of longtime sponsors have begun backing out of their involvement in San Francisco’s 2025 gay “Pride” celebrations, SFGATE reported.

San Francisco Pride, a nonprofit that host’s the city’s annual pride event, has recently been scrambling for other methods to raise $300,000 for this year’s festivities, according to SFGATE. Notably, the news comes amid President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to crack down on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts nationwide.

San Francisco Pride’s executive director, Suzanne Ford, told the outlet that she was “really disappointed” by the sponsors’ decisions. Sponsors pulling out of the pride event include Comcast, Anheuser-Busch, the company behind Budweiser and Beck’s beer; wine company La Crema, and Diageo, a beverage company known for producing Guinness, Ford told KTVU-TV in an interview published March 15.

The sponsors all cited a shortage of funds when informing San Francisco Pride that they were backing out of partaking in the 2025 pride events, and none of them mentioned the current political climate in the U.S., according to SFGATE. Still, Ford added that it was “very abnormal” for several multiyear sponsors to suddenly drop their support for the event.

A few sponsors pull their support every year, she said, but they typically do so after a series of conversations with the nonprofit, the outlet reported.

“I just interpreted that companies are making decisions that at this time it’s not good to be sponsoring Pride,” Ford told SFGATE. “I think in this political environment that they thought that was a risky decision. But that’s just me reading the tea leaves. I think for a long-term sponsor not to sponsor US