2025 Annual Report

For all of us who care about science, evidence-based policymaking, our changing climate, and democracy, this has been a sobering year.

The people who provided a check on President Trump and his administration’s attacks on science and scientists during his first term are gone, and whatever actions the federal government had taken to limit climate pollution have been undone. The president and his cronies are pursuing authoritarian means of increasing their power while dismantling the federal scientific enterprise—with potentially dire consequences.

But thanks to your support, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has been monitoring and responding to these attacks with the arsenal of tools at our disposal.

We’ve joined multiple lawsuits over the administration’s violations of federal law, sent our experts to testify against dangerous policy proposals, brought widespread media attention to the communities facing the greatest risks to their health and safety because of the administration’s actions, and rallied the scientific community to fight together.

And as you’ll see in this report, we’re seizing every opportunity we can to make progress on our issues: state-level policy wins for clean energy and transportation, justice for people and communities sickened by US nuclear weapons production and testing, and science-backed voting reforms.

With your partnership, we’re planning for the near term while also looking past this administration to chart a course toward a stronger democracy and a safer world, where decisions are guided by science and serve the greater good. These goals are not out of reach. It’s imperative that we keep our shared vision of a better world in our minds as we fight our way through this one.

Thank you for staying with UCS. We’re in this together.

The Union of Concerned Scientists continues to benefit from the generosity of our more than 100,000 members and foundations, who work in partnership with us to build a healthy planet and safer world. The majority of our support—86.6 percent—came from generous individual donors through outright and planned gifts, while support from foundations represented 13.2% of our donor revenue.

Eighty-seven percent of every dollar spent by UCS in the fiscal year 2025 directly funded our program work, with the remaining 13 percent spent on the critical administrative infrastructure and fundraising that support our programs. With an annual budget of around $50 million, UCS continues to strengthen our unique ability to help solve our planet’s most pressing problems with the power of independent science.