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Fact check: What are the laws regarding anonymous donations to social movements in 2025?
Executive Summary
Laws on anonymous donations to social movements in 2025 vary sharply by jurisdiction: several national reforms and state-level proposals either restrict anonymity or protect donor privacy, producing a patchwork of outcomes. El Salvador enacted a strict Foreign Agents law in May 2025 that bans anonymous foreign-funded donations and taxes them, while other jurisdictions—according to legislative updates and advocacy reports through 2025—saw proposals that would threaten donor anonymity but mixed legislative success, and some tax reforms explicitly preserve anonymity for certain charitable gifts [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. How El Salvador changed the rulebook and removed anonymity
El Salvador’s May 2025 Foreign Agents law is a clear legal turn toward transparency and government control: the law requires registration for recipients of foreign funding, prohibits anonymous donations, and imposes a 30% tax on foreign funding, while granting broad monitoring and sanctioning powers to the state [1]. This is a definitive statutory prohibition on anonymous foreign donations to civil society and social movements in that country as of May 2025, and the law’s features—registration plus taxation—signal an intent to both identify funding streams and deter foreign-supported organizing. The passage date in May 2025 frames this as a recent and deliberate policy choice [1].
2. U.S. states: dozens of proposals, few outright victories
Across U.S. state legislatures in 2025, advocacy groups tracked numerous bills targeting donor privacy; 27 states considered 86 bills that could harm nonprofit advocacy and donor privacy, driven in part by retaliation against critics of officials, though reports indicate no state successfully compelled nonprofits to disclose entire donor lists by law during the 2025 sessions [3]. The landscape is characterized by proposals—some modeled on “original source” or retribution-motivated disclosure schemes—that raised alarms among donor privacy advocates and nonprofit groups, producing active legislative pressure without uniform nationwide outcomes [2] [3].
3. Advocacy reports flag threats and political motives
NGO and advocacy analyses in 2025 emphasized political drivers behind disclosure proposals: a February 2025 memo catalogued donor privacy threats in 34 states and linked many proposals to retaliation against nonprofits critical of officials, warning that Arizona-style “original source” disclosure laws were being considered [2]. These reports frame the trend as reactive and politically motivated rather than purely fiscal or regulatory, highlighting how proposals often aim to expose individual funding sources to public or official scrutiny. The timing—February and post-session summaries through September 2025—shows sustained attention throughout the year [2] [3].
4. Tax law updates that preserve some anonymity for charitable gifts
Not all 2025 reforms limited anonymous giving. A series of income-tax legislative moves in mid-2025 restored exemptions for anonymous donations to religious-cum-charitable trusts, reversing prior proposals to tax such donations at 30% and maintaining donor anonymity protections in that tax regime [4] [5]. Parliamentary action in August 2025—through an Income Tax Bill passed in the Lok Sabha—specifically retained exemptions and procedural flexibility for tax claims tied to donations, indicating that some governments balanced transparency concerns with traditional charitable privacy protections [4] [5].
5. Tax changes elsewhere that reshape donor incentives without mandating visibility
Other tax code adjustments in 2025 modified charitable deduction rules without directly mandating donor disclosure: new limits on itemized deductions and caps on charitable write-offs were enacted in some jurisdictions in 2025, altering incentives for donors but not equating to legal exposure of identities [6]. These fiscal changes—reported in October 2025—can influence the volume and patterns of giving, especially among high-earners, but they are distinct from laws that explicitly ban anonymity or require donor lists, illustrating how legal change can be financial rather than transparency-focused [6].
6. International patchwork: counter-radicalization funds versus NGO funding controls
Internationally in 2025, government programs and proposed NGO-targeting laws coexisted: Canada announced funding to counter radicalization but did not change anonymous-donation rules in the reporting, while other regions—like Israel in prior proposals—considered taxes and restrictions on NGOs receiving foreign governmental donations without necessarily addressing anonymous domestic gifts [7] [8] [9]. The reporting through October and August 2025 shows divergent priorities—security funding, NGO-targeting tax proposals, and civil-society transparency efforts—resulting in a varied international picture where anonymous-donation rules depend on national political choices [7] [9].
7. Big picture: mixed legal outcomes and political motives matter
In sum, 2025 produced a mixed legal map: some jurisdictions outlawed anonymous foreign funding (notably El Salvador), many U.S. states entertained disclosure bills but achieved limited wholesale donor-list mandates, and other tax reforms preserved anonymity for certain charitable gifts [1] [3] [4]. The year’s pattern shows politically motivated disclosure efforts alongside countervailing protections in tax law, with advocacy reports highlighting retaliatory agendas behind many proposals and recent national statutes demonstrating how outcomes depend on domestic politics and legal design [2] [4].