As the numbers are becoming clear, it seems that SF Pride's financial situation is not so dire as it may have seemed a few months back, as corporate sponsors and parade contingents seemed to be in a Trump-inspired retreat. But that doesn't mean there isn't still a shortfall this year.

"We didn’t hit a home run, but we’re OK," said SF Pride Executive Director Suzanne Ford, speaking to the SF Business Times. "We’ll be around to fight another day."

And speaking to ABC 7 this week, Ford said, "I can assure everyone we're not going anywhere, but there are some hard decisions to be made."

Specifically, Ford said the organization may have to pull back on some entertainment costs at the Civic Center Pride Festival, which have grown in recent years.

In the good news column, corporate sponsorship revenue was essentially maintained, and maybe even grew a bit, thanks to participation this year from small and mid-sized businesses like Monkeybrains, Hot Cookie, and Babylon Burning. SF Pride also signed on some large new sponsors in 2025 like Twilio, Yahoo, and Turo. And major brands like Amazon, Salesforce, Apple, Alaska Airlines, Levi’s, United Airlines, Sutter Health, Gilead Sciences, Safeway, Red Bull, and Hilton all renewed their support.

What declined this year, as Ford told the Business Times, was parade contingent fees, which typically bring in $200,000 for the organization, with fewer companies looking to show public support for their LGBTQ employees.

Still, as anyone who watched the parade saw, there were many corporate contingents marching, including those from Apple, Amazon, Salesforce, United Airlines, McKinsey & Co, Sony's PlayStation division, Roblox, Live Nation, Sephora,  Genentech, Gilead, Kaiser Permanente, and Stanford Medicine, among others.

The big local companies who were conspicuously absent from the parade: Meta and Google.

Ford told the Business Times that SF Pride fell $180,000 short of its fundraising goal of $2.3 million — a gap that would have largely been covered by a $151,000 supplemental grant from the City of San Francisco that was cut off in this year's budget, after being given to SF Pride the past three years.

And, Ford said, that money should be seen as "an investment" from the city, which reaps plenty of dividends from sales tax especially when a million or so people show up here for Pride. She pledges to "keep making our case," and that is what she seems to be doing in speaking to ABC 7.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey showed his support, saying to the the station, "I'm going to tell you, there's a few events in San Francisco that really mean a lot to the bottom line, because of the amount of people that they bring to our city, the amount of economic activity that they generate. LGBTQ+ Pride is one of those."

And Dorsey implies that despite the city's long-term budget shortfall, and the need to "do more with less," maybe they can close the gap somehow, or start charging a small fee at the Civic Center gates.

Ford said that though donations at the gate this year were actually up this year, but alcohol sales were down, following a larger trend of Gen Z eschewing the booze.

Top image: Photo by Arun Nevader/Getty Images