May 22nd, 2025

Dear Community,

For the past nine years, VietLead has grown into a powerful force in our community—one of the few grassroots base-building organizations in the country rooted in Southeast Asian leadership. Together, we’ve won campaigns, developed new generations of leaders, and built deep, intergenerational relationships grounded in justice and self-determination.

FINANCIAL UPDATE & IMPACT ON COMMUNITY
It is with heavy hearts that we share that VietLead is pursuing a series of lay-offs for the first time in our history that will reduce our team by 70% by the end of 2025. These cuts, while extremely painful, are necessary for the long-term durability and sustainability of VietLead as a base-building organization. 

As the Co-Executive Directors, we take full responsibility for the financial management decisions that led to instability in our operations. 

We understand that these challenges are not unique to VietLead—they reflect a broader crisis within the social justice nonprofit ecosystem. Many movement-based organizations like ours are led by people with deep roots in base-building, organizing, and political education, but without the backend infrastructure or support to sustain large budgets and growing teams. We are often called to meet urgent needs and build power in communities that have been historically underfunded and over-extracted—without being resourced to do so with the stability and care our teams deserve. This situation was further exacerbated by the current political challenges, including federal funding cuts under the Trump administration that eliminated critical safety nets and erased the limited financial buffers we had built. 

What makes this even more painful is that those who are facing layoffs are not just incredibly talented, passionate, and sharp - many were themselves base-leaders that VietLead had developed over the years - our youth, our comrades, our community. No one is being let go because they weren’t doing their job well. They are being let go because we had to make difficult decisions about which core positions we need to rebuild our work with our limited resources. We will be supporting team members to transition out of the organization and call on movement partners to inform us if there are positions in the ecosystem that need filling in these times.  

REPAIR & REBUILDING IN PURPOSE
We are now taking concrete steps to repair and stabilize towards rebuilding. We are working 

closely with financial consultants, establishing systems of accountability and oversight, and investing in the tools and training needed to ensure values-aligned and informed financial stewardship. Most importantly, our leaner team remains as passionate and committed as ever to the political vision of our work: building Southeast Asian leadership and power in the Philadelphia area, to defend & protect our communities, in solidarity with other working-class communities of color. We know that now more than ever it is critical to sustain our base-building organizations, and support them to build the type of working-class power that will prove resilient to face the multi-layered crises that our generation faces: climate crisis, American Fascism, and more. We commit to growing Vietlead  stronger and more resilient than ever before with your support.  

COMMUNITY REFUGE & MUTUAL AID
As VietLead has attempted to weather this period, we have reached out to funders, community partners, and our base community - and the response has been absolutely humbling. For the past decade, we have tried to build our power in a way that strengthens the ecosystems within which we move, learn, organize, and seek refuge - and this same web of institutions, organizations, and people are coming forward and supporting VietLead by offering emergency grants, pro-bono services, and even offering ideas to co-conspire to fundraise to help us keep our doors open: we are so grateful. This is what community, solidarity and mutual aid looks like. Thank you to all our comrades, friends, community members, and organizations for practicing this with us. 

Towards this vision, we are asking for your support. To stabilize and move into our next chapter, we urgently need short-term financial contributions. These funds will help us meet immediate obligations—including staff severance and core operations—and allow us to invest in the capacity and infrastructure necessary for a more sustainable future. Your support in this moment is not just about survival—it’s about affirming the continued importance of community-rooted organizing led by those most impacted. By the end of June, we need to fundraise $250,000 to ensure a dignified transition for the organization out of this financial crisis and keep our doors open. Ultimately, to stabilize and move into our next chapter, we need $500,000 by the end of the year.

We are learning through this painful experience, and we know we are not alone. We share this publicly with humility and transparency, in hopes that it contributes to a larger conversation about what true sustainability, care, and accountability must look like in our movements