Trevor Project staff allege union busting

When the results were finally released after several weeks of pressure, Latinx staffers showed the lowest level of satisfaction, numerous former staffers said.

That process angered staff who were tired of being ignored, Mitchum said. Resentments deepened following reporting in HuffPost about Paley’s role, when working as a management consultant for McKinsey & Co., working to reduce Purdue Pharma’s legal liability over opioid litigation brought by 47 state attorneys general.

“It became a ticking time bomb,” Mitchum said.

Enter the Trevolution — or the Trevorpocalypse, depending on whom you ask. The fire burned and burned, and Trevor’s board of directors eventually forced Paley out of the organization. The board quickly replaced him with Trevor’s co-founder, Peggy Rajski, in November 2022.

Trevor’s board, a former manager said, wanted to portray stability with her hire. But it ended up only exacerbating the controversies within the organization. Richard Vargas, who was Trevor’s senior operations associate and used to run the organization’s New York office, was one of many who raised red flags about her performance.

Critics pointed to her ousting from Loyola Marymount University, where she was the dean of its School of Film and Television for less than three years.

“She was known to rant and rave at people,” a former Loyola Marymount University professor said, according to The Wrap, which was first to report Rajski’s ousting.

Rajski spent her first weeks organizing listening tours –with a select few people chosen from each department and affinity group. Sources familiar with those conversations said she was sympathetic to staff concerns, saying that she couldn’t believe what Paley put the organization through.

The honeymoon was short lived as she started describing staff who spoke out as rude, arrogant, and worse, sources told the Blade. Current and former staff said she criticized workers for speaking out, blaming problems on everyone but herself, misgendering staff – and being offended when corrected – and making everything about herself.

“I saw that in all hands meetings, she would get very snippy, very combative,” said Vargas, the former New York office manager.

During a meeting in which she announced layoffs at Trevor – 12% of its workforce – she chided staff for using emoji reactions in the chat, he said.

The 44 mid- and upper-level staff were laid off after, seemingly, a huge budget hole emerged. It’s unclear how big exactly that hole is – a Trevor Project statement revealed a “sharp drop” in revenue but did not provide an exact figure, and no current and former employees who spoke to the Blade were able to provide an exact figure.

One former employee said they were told there was a $25.2 million deficit in late April of this year, but former Head of Finance and Administration Joel Lam said he had gotten the deficit down to about $6 million. Another former employee familiar with the organization’s finances confirmed that the deficit was between $4 million and $7 million around then.

That didn’t worry the Trevor Project’s executives, according to a former employee, because the organization had more than enough money in its reserves – about $55 million at the end of July 2022, according to public financial documents – to cover that loss. views. He did not respond to a request for comment.

But sometime between late April and June of this year, the Trevor ship sprang a huge leak.

The entire recruitment team, payroll team, the training team for Trevor’s hotline, much of the financial team, as well as other staff were laid off, sparking anger.

What, they wondered, happened to the $55 million the organization had reported in assets?

No one is sure what happened and a Trevor spokesperson declined to make executives available for an interview. But the staff have some ideas. They cite Trevor’s rapid expansion in the past years under Paley as a main cause and some described wasteful spending.

Trevor’s leadership would tell employees to spend surplus funds at the end of year, instead of putting them into Trevor’s reserves – even when the deficit was discovered, according to a former employee.

“There were no policies around spending either,” the source said.

988 Suicide Hotline & the Trevor Project

The National Suicide Hotline Designation Act of 2020 created 988’s LGBTQ+ subnetwork as a pilot project. During that pilot, the Trevor Project was the only organization running the section of 988 dedicated to LGBTQ+ youth. Mitchum said he pushed back on that, saying Trevor did not have the resources to run the lifeline by itself and even if it did, more than one organization should provide support. Then-CEO Paley, though, reportedly disagreed.

“I think Trevor became so bogged down in the minutiae of money, of notoriety, of power, that it lost all ideas of responsibility to LGBTQ people,” Mitchum said.

Nevertheless, 988 lifeline administrator Vibrant Emotional Health sent out a request for proposals for the pilot project, several former employees confirmed to the Blade, but it is unclear if any organizations other than Trevor applied.

The Trevor Project was the only organization running the LGBTQ+ line. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, charged with federal oversight of the 988 program, pumped $7.2 million into the pilot. The federal government vastly underestimated the numbers of callers and texters to the line, leaving Trevor short-staffed and unprepared for the surge of people seeking support, a source told the Blade. Long wait times were the norm, so much so that Vibrant rebuked Trevor over the issue, two former staffers told the Blade.

Trevor kept the news about the dedicated LGBTQ+ line quiet until December, when it announced the service in a press release – despite its soft launch in September of 2022.

A Trevor Project statement said that the organization made budget cuts, reduced outside consulting expenses, instituted a hiring freeze, limited non-urgent work travel, and used its reserve to close the deficit. Two current employees confirmed that travel restrictions seem to have taken place.

The organization created a new role that oversees both Trevor’s digital operation and its phone lines – instead of hiring one person for each. It did not hire more lifeline associates, a source told the Blade. Both employees pointed out, though, that there are several open roles on Trevor’s website. One employee said the organization considered the positions “mission critical,” which is why they were posted.

It’s unclear how much revenue Trevor lost – representatives for the federal government, Trevor, and for Vibrant Emotional Health all declined to reveal the figure. The Blade has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the numbers.

The layoffs upset those close to the Trevor Project, but they didn’t receive widespread recognition. Layoffs among the 988 anti-suicide line staff representing the Trevor Project did, though, thanks to TikTok.

“Basically, we are being told, you are without a job – we can try and get you a job but you might have a job, good luck out there,” Eli, a former crisis counselor working for Trevor, said in a viral TikTok video that racked up 62,000

“The Trevor Project is incredibly thankful to the federal government for the major investment in these life-saving specialized services,” Mitchum said in the press release. “It’s vital that all young people have access to culturally competent care in moments of crisis.”

The 988 program was successful enough for Vibrant to make the hotline a permanent fixture less than a year later in July. This time, the federal government allocated $29.7 million to the LGBTQ+ subnetwork – more than three times the amount that the entire 988 lifeline received in 2021.

As part of the expansion, Vibrant decided to increase the number of call centers running the LGBTQ+ crisis line from just one, the Trevor Project, to seven, with Trevor still on board. The change meant a smaller piece of the pie for Trevor – the $29.7 million would now be distributed among seven different organizations.

That decision came as a shock to Trevor, Mitchum reflected.

“After a while, Trevor leadership genuinely thought we would never have additional providers outside of Trevor,” Mitchum told the Blade.

A Trevor Project spokesperson said in a June statement that the organization had “recently learned” about the expansion of the LGBTQ subnetwork. The Trevor statement noted that the expansion would lead to “an exponential increase in support for the number of LGBTQ callers and texters to the 988 Lifeline.”

ROBBY

DIESU’S

husband worked for Apple for 11 years. The Blade is withholding his name out of fear of reprisals by the company.