Messages from the Executive Director

Sandy Ho, Executive Director
Disability & Philanthropy Forum

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July 30th, 2026

Dear Americans with Disabilities Act,

Since I’ve known you forever, I’ll call you ‘ADA’ throughout this letter. I thought that by 36 years you would have it all figured out by now, but alas here we are. 

You came into existence in 1990, at a time when I was still a child coming to understand that getting ahead in life meant asking for help, and advocating for myself whenever a need arose. To be honest, I wasn’t sure of what I needed — all I knew was that the adults around me provided their best efforts at various “solutions” to my needs, and wants.

Eventually, I came to understand that you, the ADA, would provide children and adults alike the right to try — try to ask for help, try to advocate for yourself; and, ultimately, try to bring about broader inclusivity.​

Today, I carry two powerful lifelong lessons that you taught me over the past 36 years:

1. ​Everyone needs help and support. To believe anything else is an ableist myth.
2. My right to ask for and receive that support deserves protection because I am enough.

Despite the repeated attempts at your demise, I am proud that your lessons continue to hold more firmly than ever, and especially now, against 250-year-old ideas.

In fact, I believe one of our primary concerns should be how our elected leaders, who willingly use their positions to spread disinformation and bigotry, are trying to thrust us back to a time when you did not exist. It was a time when disabled people were given few other options aside from institutionalization, being charged with the crime of existing in public according to “Ugly Laws”, or pushed to work in sheltered workshops for pennies. Unfortunately, their efforts have only crystallized in this era of alternative facts and misinformation.

Just last week, the country’s leadership ordered “warning signs” be placed outside the Smithsonian’s American history museum — all because he, along with many of his supporters, would rather prop up a lie than confront the extremely detailed and well-documented facts of our nation’s history. And yes, American history includes the insights of our disabled ancestors held long before “the pursuit of happiness” became intertwined with the American Dream.

In the midst of all the upheavals, tantrums, and distracting decoys I want to make sure you and I are still focused on this evergreen reality: everyone will live to experience disability. Every single one of us. You and I, along with all 40 million+ disabled people in this country understand this plainly. And yet, as a consequence of our government’s ongoing dilution of disability rights (to name just one area of our democracy under attack) not everyone will experience, much less fulfill, their “American Dream.” 

Our democracy has always required disabled people to place our trust in its process, in exchange for the crumbs of our freedom, our dignity, and equality. For example, even with your existing protections in place, up to 10 million people could lose access to Medicaid as a result of the 80-hour-per-month work and other superfluous eligibility requirements. Opportunities for participation, community integration, economic self-sufficiency, and access to care should not be considered abstract (or anti-American) guarantees, as many on the fringes may claim. Because, at the end of the day, disabled people and our communities are part of our democracy, past, present, and future.

So when this system (and its process) is designed to exclude and/or segregate disabled people, the solution becomes building a more inclusive version of our country and democracy. Personally, I don’t subscribe to the idea that such an overhaul can be done in one generation, but I am adamant that in partnership with you as our floor, and starting point, we can get to a more representative and inclusive democracy much sooner than the next 250 years. 

In my role as the executive director of the Disability & Philanthropy Forum (DPF), every day I see the opportunity before us: to protect, care for, and support everyone in their capacity to thrive – especially disabled people of color and disabled trans people. That should be our country’s pledge and promise to its people, because when we accommodate and push for adaptation, we are all moved closer to our fullest potential and purpose. 

This belief is core to our work at DPF where to date there are 108 signatories to the Disability Inclusion Pledge. The purpose of the pledge is that it guides foundations to understand how to “do” disability inclusive work, and organize internal systems in greater alignment with the principles of disability justice and inclusion. By following this learning journey, philanthropic institutions are reorienting their approaches to power, access, and who gets to lead. These are also the essential considerations of our democracy. 

Transforming philanthropic ways of operating requires a deliberate process that involves time, resources, and leadership – such as the senior executives serving on the Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy. Additionally, I believe the most vital element that facilitates the most progress is trust. The trust to challenge one another in our thinking, to ask often frank questions between Foundation leadership, and of one another along the way, has often meant the difference between perceived obstacles and actually advancing disability funding for communities. The changes, while they require intentional and thoughtful work, are possible because I have witnessed them at every level: when a funder makes the decision to shift all of their resources to disability justice. Or when a President of a Foundation considers the opportunity to invite a disabled leader to join the Foundation’s board. Among the many insights that this journey has surfaced, one that resonates in this moment is that it actually matters very little whether or not a foundation identifies as a “disability funder.” Our efforts are ignited by the point that especially in this moment – we can and must – all shift to increasing inclusion at scale. As you well know, ADA, without disabled people and these perspectives, no representative agenda is complete – there is ultimately no democracy at all.

At the Forum, we have the privilege of seeing the multitude of ways disability justice, rights and inclusion all offer our democracy something it cannot build without disabled people. These civil rights that were hard won by disabled advocates, and frameworks created by disabled activists, are all honest enough to name who our current systems leave out, and visionary enough to imagine something different. I want to be clear that much of what is being asked of philanthropic organizations in our pledge are foundational. Similarly to how you, ADA, are the floor for our country’s disability rights. Still, the Foundations that have signed onto the Disability Inclusion Pledge, and our leaders on the Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion are doing just that – working towards a stronger infrastructure in which to then fund in ways that will hopefully be more inclusive, and more equitable than before. 

When I imagine something different for all of us, here are a few ideas that come to mind: 

1. Over the course of this ‘great American experiment’ our country will finally, without hesitation or doubt, claim access and inclusion to be a central part of our national ethos. And then act on those understandings, accordingly. 
2. We recognize, protect, and equitably fund all ways of building power in our communities and not just those that align with our own particular ideas of democracy. Especially when these approaches are often led by disabled people of color, and disabled trans and queer people, who have always been organizing outside of the traditional pathways of democratic participation. 
3. Compliance with basic standards of accessibility is enforced and defended as a public good, and never again considered an afterthought or add-on. 
4. Our public and private resources are directed in ways that plan for disability for everyone. By centering the voices, lived-experience, and perspectives of disabled people as the essential standard rather than the standard exception, we can improve human dignity and well-being for all. 
5. Our rights to access help and support are protected, enforced, and fully funded. These are tools that should be available to anyone without having to perform for proof, or go through extraordinary measures and hoops. 

Our efforts at still trying to improve our democracy are far from over. And at this point in our experiment, I hope we can all agree that fully actualizing “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is impossible without you, and all of the disability rights that came later. In the meantime, I will continue to do my part of reimagining the philanthropic sector by centering disability justice, rights, and inclusion as essential to equity and collective well-being. My promise and pledge to you, ADA, is that I will always commit to defending everyone’s right to ask for help and support in perpetuity.

Until next year!