Three Lessons About Fundraising for LGBTQI+ Movement Orgs They Don’t Teach You in Fundraising School
Dear LGBTQI+ nonprofit and movement leaders,
Very few of us actually went to fundraising school. For most of us, we learned how to raise money by doing it, some of us have had excellent fundraising mentors, many of us learned through organizations like the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), or in my case, the now-disbanded Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training (GIFT). But for most of us, the lessons we have been taught about fundraising seem to fall short when it comes to fundraising for LGBTQI+ movement organizations. In short, funders relate to our organizations differently. Here are three lessons from my own fundraising experience that apply specifically to raising money for LGBTQI+ movement organizations.
1. Many funders really don’t understand LGBTQI+ community needs.
Outside of the country’s major metropolitan areas and a relatively small group of funders affiliated with affinity groups like Funders Concerned about AIDS and Funders for LGBTQ Issues, the truth is that many funders have not historically granted significant funding to LGBTQI+ movement organizations. Many of them don’t have LGBTQI+ people as trustees. Some have grossly outdated presumptions about us.
While it’s true that the responsibility of development staff in any non-profit is to educate funders about community needs as it relates to their mission, the difference is stark for fundraisers at queer movement organizations. My first fundraising job was at a community theatre. Our conversations with funders about community needs were quite straight forward. “Our ticket sales only account for XX% of our revenue needs, we are seeking funding to ensure high-quality, affordable theatre for this region.” or “Students in XX school district no longer have access to arts education during the school day due to state budget cuts, we want to provide free tickets for students and their families to have an opportunity to engage with arts and culture.” I still remember the cringe-worthy Janet Reno quote about the value of arts education to prevent violence later in life that I added to these grant proposals for the community theatre, many of which were funded.
When I founded an LGBTQI+ community center in the same community a few years later, I remember my early conversations with some of these same funders who were always pleased to support the community theatre and with whom I had developed strong working relationships. “There’s already a Boys and Girls Club, why does your community need its own space?” said one funder. Another asked if “there is enough gay money” in this city to sustain an LGBTQI+ specific non-profit. Repeatedly, I found myself not articulating the community need for specific programs we wanted funding for, but actually defending the community’s right to exist. Imagine if those same questions were posed to the theatre – “there is already an art museum, why do artists also now need a stage to perform on.” I was never once asked by a funder to provide an analysis on the percentage of people in the city who like theatre.
The ways in which some majority-population funders interact with LGBTQI+ movement organizations sounds ridiculous because it is.
2. Some funders think our needs have been addressed and have literally moved on.
After we won marriage, many movement leaders openly feared that funding for the queer movement would dry up because (in their view) the needs of same-sex couples had been finalized with Windsor and Obergefell. Enormous sums of money had been flowing into movement organizations to win marriage equality (our movement was still often outspent) and the thought was that there was donor fatigue and a lack of interest among funders in transferring to the next items on the checklist of civil and human rights.
The truth is that most funding for LGBTQI+ movement organizations didn’t dry up at that time, but more recently it has. Even some of the most prominent funders for LGBTQI+ issues, such as the Walter and Evelyn Haas, Jr. Fund, publicly sunsetted their LGBTQI+ programs. In a 2022 post announcing their sunsetting of their LGBTQI+ funding, their executive vice president wrote “When the Haas, Jr. Fund committed to this work in 2000, no U.S. state allowed same-sex couples to wed, openly gay people could not serve in the military, and a majority of the American public opposed marriage equality and believed gay and lesbian relations were morally wrong. It is astonishing how things have changed for the better. Now, LGBT equality has strong nationwide support.” Haas, Jr. provided $105M in funding for the LGBTQI+ movement over a 21 year period, but the current anti-trans backlash is a prime example of the challenges of funders thinking that our problems have been solved. This is one of numerous former funders of the LGBTQI+ movement that has more recently deprioritized our community’s needs even as attacks on the community have increased.
Now, at a time when LGBTQI+ organizations are facing unprecedented attacks from the Federal government, it is more clear than ever that our community’s needs are far from achieved, and in fact not all organizations will be able to survive this tumultuous time period.
3. LGBTQI+ people have always had to be our own self-advocates.
For about two decades, beginning with the end of the marriage equality movement and ending with the conservative backlash that landed Trump back in the White House, corporate funding of many LGBTQI+ organizations was at its peak. I’m not against corporate sponsorship or corporate funding of LGBTQI+ movement organizations (with some targeted exceptions that compromise our missions) because I have always felt that we, queer people, could use their money better than they, corporations, could. And like all funders, corporations are not monolithic, and their actual support for our movement orgs ranged from opportunistic to authentic. We should always be wary of funding that seeks to monetize our community, and there are ethical and unethical ways to manage corporate sponsorship that maintains the ability to protect the community we serve while also providing some marketing advantage for corporate sponsors.
But we should never compromise our mission or advocacy to seek funds. I remember a distinct moment of clarity for me – in the immediate aftermath of the shooting at Pulse, the LGBTQI+ community center I was leading endorsed a ban on assault weapons. One of our corporate partners wrote to me the next day saying that we were coming after “his lifestyle” and that they could no longer support our organization as a result. Today, as we see disheartening rollbacks of LGBTQI+ support across corporate America, we are reminded of our roots: That LGBTQI+ people have always had to be our strongest assets and self-advocates. That the corporations and billionaires were never going to save us. That we need the people-powered, donor-fueled movement organizations that can withstand corporate whiplash because at the end of the day, corporate philanthropy and sponsorship is entirely about their bottom line. Our movement organizations are not. So keep taking those corporate dollars while you can, but build a grassroots fundraising base so that queer programs and organizations have the longevity our community members deserve.
At the end of the day, what will sustain LGBTQI+ movements the most is grassroots fundraising. The good news is that any organization of any size can build a grassroots fundraising infrastructure. It doesn’t require golf outings, country club memberships, wining and dining donors, or – and I realize this is radical to say – rich people. I’ll say that again. Grassroots fundraising doesn’t require rich people. It requires us to organize donors differently to resource the money our communities need to sustain the programs that help us thrive.
I started and grew the community center I led in Pennsylvania mostly through grassroots fundraising (especially at the beginning.) And I have taught grassroots fundraising strategy to organizations of all sizes – from large organizations with full development teams to all-volunteer small organizations. Each of them has landed on a campaign that is right-sized for them and that is based on the authenticity of each donor relationship. The times we are in are unpredictable, but the power of the people in our communities who believe fiercely in the missions of our organizations may be the most predictable thing we can access! We have always had to be our own self-advocates, and this is true today just as it has been in the past.
Sincerely,
Queers
About the Guest Writer
Adrian Shanker (he/him) is principal of Shanker Strategies, a boutique consulting practice supporting LGBTQI+ and HIV movement non-profits with non-profit management, LGBTQI+ health, and federal advocacy consulting. He most recently served in the Biden-Harris administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy at HHS, following a long career in the queer movement, including as executive director of an LGBTQI+ community center in Pennsylvania and an HIV service organization in California. www.adrianshanker.com
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