STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Organizers for San Francisco Pride say several corporate sponsors have pulled out and that leaves one of the biggest parades of its kind in the world short on funds. KQED's Carlos Cabrera-Lomeli reports it's not the only pride event with less corporate support.
CARLOS CABRERA-LOMELI, BYLINE: Suzanne Ford grew up in Kentucky during the '70s and remembers watching San Francisco's first pride parades on TV.
SUZANNE FORD: It was like a dream. It was somewhere out there in the world where people could really be who they were and that everyone celebrated, and it looked joyous to me.
CABRERA-LOMELI: Ford is now the executive director of San Francisco Pride.
FORD: It's a miracle that for $3.2 million, we put on an event that had over a million people.
CABRERA-LOMELI: It's funded mostly through corporate sponsorships, but Ford says that earlier this month, longtime sponsors pulled out. That includes Comcast and Anheuser-Busch, who didn't respond to requests for comment, and the drink company Diageo, which said in an email statement that there had been some changes to their sponsorship budget but added that they're still sponsoring a smaller pride event in Long Beach.
IKE SILVER: This isn't just budget constraints that we're dealing with.
CABRERA-LOMELI: That's Ike Silver. He's an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Southern California. He looks at how companies get involved in social issues. And while he says that companies may be giving less in an uncertain economy...
SILVER: We're also dealing with very real economic risks associated with continuing to be involved with causes that are controversial, or that might provoke the ire of the president, these sorts of things.
CABRERA-LOMELI: He says corporate support of pride and other LGBTQ spaces expanded after the Supreme Court recognized same-sex marriage in 2015. But he points out that since then, there's been more polarization on LGBTQ causes like transgender people in sports and the military. Houston Pride also confirmed that they're seeing some companies give less. And while New York City Pride says donors are maintaining financial support, some are scaling back branding for their floats. But some queer organizers say it's time for Pride to stop being so dependent on corporate sponsorship.
JES DISTAD: Pride was founded by riots and rallies and bricks and blood and by the labor of Black and brown trans women.
CABRERA-LOMELI: Jes Distad is part of San Francisco's Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, which has called for companies that have ended their diversity initiatives to be banned from Pride.
DISTAD: We have fought too long and too hard to be lamenting that a couple of companies with billionaire interests don't want to pay for our party.
CABRERA-LOMELI: San Francisco Pride organizers say that since they first announced that corporations were stepping back, individual donations have gone up.
For NPR News, I'm Carlos Cabrera-Lomeli in San Francisco. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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