(RNS) — The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for separation of state and church and for nontheism, is experiencing what its co-president calls a “Trump bump.”
National membership at the foundation has grown by over 2,600 members since October 2024, reaching a total of 42,450 by the end of March 2025. Over the last few years, the group has hovered around 40,000 members but had been losing a couple hundred members a month before the bump, said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of FFRF.
The group also saw a 56% increase in membership from 2016 to 2017, when Donald Trump won his first presidential term, growing by 10,000 net new members.
Other American secular civil liberties and freethought groups have seen similar increases in membership, and in contributions, since Trump was elected last year.
The American Humanist Association, a nonprofit that promotes secular humanism, reported a 68% rise in donations since Trump won the 2024 election — and a 77% increase since he took office, said Executive Director Fish Stark.
“Not only are people joining — or re-joining — the movement, but existing members are digging deeper and putting their trust in the humanist movement to defend our rights at a time when lots of institutions have failed us,” Stark …