After more than 10 years, Californian fashion advocacy organization Remake will cease operations this week. In an announcement made on February 19, the non-governmental organization (NGO) behind the #PayUp campaign, which pressured global brands to pay for $22 billion in canceled orders during the pandemic, cited insurmountable funding issues as its core reason for shuttering.
Remake isn’t alone in its struggle to secure funding. Other NGOs say that the current geopolitical landscape has caused governments to reduce humanitarian aid budgets and funders to be more cautious, often demanding higher returns for shrinking pots of money. Remake’s closure is a symptom of an existential crisis that many NGOs face as both philanthropic and government financing channels have pulled back, threatening the future of fashion’s vital watchdogs. Several NGOs say they’re pivoting focus, diversifying income streams, and reducing their output in a bid to navigate this turbulent moment.
“Donors can be fickle,” says Remake founder Ayesha Barenblat. “The theme that we saw, if I were to put it in a sentence for you, is changing political and economic ties. That’s really been the story of the last two years.” The majority of Remake’s funding came from philanthropic foundations and high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) in the US, who Barenblat believes are more conservative in the wake of the 2024 election. A January report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy found that 61% of US NGOs have experienced or anticipate losing funding from foundations in 2026, while 53% said they’ve experienced or anticipate losing individual donor funding this year. Seventy-one percent of surveyed NGO leaders said they were concerned about their organization’s financial stability.
“There are so many issues right here at home, but also [they didn’t] get the return on investment they wanted from pouring the money into progressive candidates, and so they’re just not giving in the same way,” Barenblat says.
Alongside philanthropists, governments around the world are reducing their humanitarian funding packages. President Donald Trump’s second term began with stripping down the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and cutting around $31 billion from its international affairs budget, the impact of which will be catastrophic for millions of people, according to new research. Official Development Assistance — foreign aid from 34 countries in the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee — is projected to drop by $42.6 billion this year from 2023 levels. In 2024, the Dutch government cut its NGO funding by 70% (€1 billion over five years), and in 2025, the British government introduced a three-year reduction plan for all foreign aid, which will bring spending to its lowest level since 1999. Several other European governments have followed suit.
NGOs are vital to holding the fashion industry accountable for its impact on workers and the planet. They activate communities of citizen activists around common missions, produce advocacy campaigns and educational programs to educate and increase transparency, and track the industry’s progress (or lack thereof) through annual reports on issues like fair wages, production volumes, and fashion’s reliance on fossil fuels.
Alongside its #PayUp campaign, Remake played a pivotal role in the 2021 passing of California’s Garment Worker Protection Act, as almost 10,000 people undertook its #NoNewClothes 90-day shopping ban, while its annual Fashion Accountability report tracked 52 of fashion’s biggest brands on issues like environmental justice and traceability between 2019 and 2024. Without this degree of monitoring and pressure from independent organizations, the industry risks backsliding on already precariously held targets and commitments.
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“That’s really problematic, because the fashion industry is not just unnecessarily destroying a lot of lives of workers and the planet, it’s eating itself with the usage of raw materials,” says Ineke Zeldenrust, international coordinator for Dutch NGO Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC).
Funders increase scrutiny, expectations and reporting
The combined loss of government and philanthropic funding has been a twofold setback. CCC, founded in 1989, is made up of 220 global organizations and coalitions, with an international office in Amsterdam. “Our money was traditionally always about 50% Dutch government money, and the other 50% was a mix of EU funding and bigger private philanthropies,” says Zeldenrust. “Over the last 10 to 15 years, we have been handling large-scale grants and then regranting them to our partners. Some of that money was indirectly USAID money, or it came from US foundations, who, when the whole USAID crisis came, decided they were going to change gears.” The funding challenges have resulted in CCC International losing 40% of its staff, meaning a reduction in output, says Zeldenrust.
NGOs say that funders now prefer program-specific funding over general year-round support. “Across the sector, core funding has become harder to access, with most money now tied to specific projects,” says Shruti Singh, director of Fashion Revolution India. “That means the organization is in a constant state of shorter fundraising cycles for projects, and that can limit their ability to build stable capacity and systems.”
With project-based financing, salaries and overheads are scrutinized more heavily, says Singh, with funders now looking for “demonstrable, measurable, and tangible” results for their funding. “Advocacy does not always produce linear or easily quantified results. Much of its value lies in influencing mindsets, policy conversations, and ecosystem behavior. I meet a lot of people who would say they’re doing what they’re doing because they read something that Fashion Revolution published,” she says. “That impact is real, but it is not always easy to quantify in traditional grant metrics.”
Reporting requirements have also increased, according to Christina Dean, founder of Hong Kong and UK-based NGO Redress. “I’ve definitely seen much more demanding funders wanting ‘Dollar in, KPI out’,” she says. “On the reporting side, we’ve seen much heavier due diligence. In order to renew funding, they want more for their money.” Last year, Redress cut its team by a third in response to funding delays, and continues to face funding challenges this year.
Finding alternative funding
Neither CCC nor Remake accept funding from fashion brands in order to maintain their independence. “I’ve had investors tell me, ‘You should just get brands to pay you for consulting,’” says Barenblat. “But as a watchdog organization, we simply could not do that.” Fashion Revolution has an Ethical Funding Policy for brand partners, and Redress works with brands on initiatives like its clothing collectsion program in various Zara stores around Hong Kong. This isn’t a reliable funding source either.
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“We do take money from fashion brands, and therein lies part of our funding problem,” says Dean. “We’ve experienced that fashion brands have got bigger problems to deal with, like managing their supply chains, tariffs, retail growth, and how consumers are changing. So discretionary spending on nice-to-have programs goes out the door, and that includes us.”
Dean believes a solutions-based approach to working with brands could unlock more funding opportunities for NGOs, while recognizing that this depends on the NGO’s original remit. “The fashion industry is a big beast. It makes loads of money. [When fundraising] we need to think about what’s in it for the fashion business that we’re talking to, and there’s always something there. We need to be much more entrepreneurial,” she says. As well as running the clothing collectsion scheme, Redress owns and operates a charity shop and hosts pop-up stores in Hong Kong. “That is our directly controlled revenue-generating, impact-generating waste reduction program, which gives us unrestricted funding.”
In a bid to diversify its funding, CCC launched its small donor program in 2024. It hasn’t filled the large gap left by government funding (in 2024, it made up just 1% of total donations), but it’s a growing income stream. “It’s been successful in the sense that we’ve more than doubled what we had within the space of a year, but we came from almost nothing,” says Zeldenrust. Singh from Fashion Revolution believes that a strategic mix of core funding, project funding, consulting, and citizen-based funding is now necessary for NGO survival. “The key is balance. When any one source becomes disproportionately large, organizations become vulnerable to shocks, whether [that is] geopolitical shifts, or changes in government or philanthropic priorities,” she adds.
The NGO landscape could benefit from greater diversification of smaller organizations that specialize in one element of sustainability, Singh continues. “Funders today are gravitating toward organizations with a clear thematic focus and tangible, measurable outcomes.” She notes organizations like The Or Foundation, which is focused on textile waste in Accra, Ghana, as one such example. In 2022, The Or Foundation announced it would receive $15 million over three years from Shein to support its work, a partnership that at the time was considered controversial among the fashion community. “The broader lesson for the sector is that organizations cannot tackle all problems at the same time. Choosing a few priority pillars and demonstrating depth and progress within them is increasingly essential for securing long-term support.”
Reflecting on Remake’s impact in the last decade, Barenblat sees that (in the words of her idol Jane Fonda) activism is not a marathon or a sprint, but a relay race. She believes that the global network of activists who supported its mission will pick up the baton for Remake. “I think about our 3,000 Changemakers in 80 different countries, and the outpouring of love and support on Instagram, on LinkedIn, and in direct messages to us,” she says. “They have told us: ‘We will continue to organize. We will continue to meet up. The fight continues. The seeds you’ve planted will continue to bloom.’”
