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Horizons Foundation Gala - October 5, 2019 - Farimont San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO BAYTIMES LGBTQ News & Calendar for the Bay Area CELEBRATING FOUR DECADES ( 1978–2019 )
OUR LGBTQ FOUNDATION See Pages 15–17
Investing in LGBTQ organizations
Creating a culture of LGBTQ giving
Securing our community’s future
Executive Director Roger Doughty speaking at the Horizons Foundation Gala (2018)
On the Verge of an Incredible Moment
By Roger Doughty
Founded in 1980, Horizons is the world’s first community foundation that is of, by, and for LGBTQ people. We invest in LGBTQ nonprofits, strengthen a culture of LGBTQ giving, and build a permanent endowment to secure our community’s future for generations to come. Ultimately, we aim to create a world where all LGBTQ people live freely and fully.
Next year is a big one for us—2020 is our 40th anniversary. As we look forward to the momentous occasion, we also look back on the incredible year that was 2019. At the annual Horizons Gala on October 5, we’ll celebrate this year’s important moments while we raise critical funds that allow us to continue our important work into our 40th anniversary and far beyond. We hope that you will be able to join us.
One of this year’s important moments was on Give OUT Day, Horizons’ national day of giving for the LGBTQ community. Together, we made history, raising $1.1 million for over 475 nonprofits—the first time that so many LGBTQ nonprofits raised so much through a single-day campaign. Organizing Give OUT Day is one way that Horizons invests in LGBTQ nonprofits while also strengthening our community’s rich culture of giving. I encourage you to read more about this success in this spread.
Though we should celebrate this success, we must also remember that our community still has a long way to go. This is true even in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has a reputation as a welcoming place for the LGBTQ community. Though many in our community are thriving, many face significant obstacles to participating fully and equally in society and to accessing programs and services to meet fundamental needs. This is exactly what we found in our LGBTQ Community Needs Assessment, which we released this year—another important moment for the foundation and our community. The Needs Assessment investigated critical areas of need like safety, economic and housing security, medical and mental health care, drug and alcohol recovery, legal assistance, community connection and social life, and civic engagement. See some of the top-line findings in the infographic in this spread. As our 40th anniversary inches closer, I encourage you to learn more about Horizons and get involved at https://www.horizonsfoundation.org/ Thank you for being in community with us. Roger Doughty is the President of Horizons Foundation.
Dr. Marcy Adelman, Openhouse Co-founder and San Francisco Bay Times columnist, presented the Adelman/ Gurevitch Founders Award to Horizons’ Roger Doughty at the Spring Fling. (2016)
Dr. Royce Lin with Roger Doughty at the Openhouse Spring Fling (2017)
San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ Community Needs Assessment
By Francisco O. Buchting
Because the San Francisco Bay Area has a worldwide reputation as a welcoming place, it might be assumed that LGBTQ people here are, put simply, doing fine. And it is true that many in our community are thriving.
At the same time, many in the Bay Area’s broad and diverse LGBTQ community face significant obstacles to participating fully and equally in society and to accessing programs and services to meet fundamental needs. Indications of those needs permeate the scores of applications for grant support that come to Horizons Foundation each year.
There had been no systematic effort to assess a wide range of needs among LGBTQ people in the Bay Area in 24 years when Horizons Foundation first conducted such a study. The world has changed considerably since 1995. Because of the importance of knowing the community’s needs—especially as described by diverse LGBTQ people themselves—Horizons commissioned a needs assessment.
By surveying more than 1,400 community members across the Bay Area’s nine counties, researchers investigated critical areas of need like safety, economic and housing security, medical and mental health care, drug and alcohol recovery, legal assistance, community connection and social life, and civic engagement.
The study assessed how people access services and resources in the Bay Area, looking for gaps between needs and available services and for the barriers keeping community members from accessing these services. Additionally, the study probed deeply into difference in experience across factors like sexual orientation, gender identity, race and ethnicity, age, income, ability, and geography. Francisco O. Buchting, PhD, is the VP of Grants, Programs, and Strategic Initiatives at Horizons Foundation.
Horizons’ Now and Forever Campaign
It’s easy to create your Legacy of Pride with Horizons, the nation’s oldest LGBTQ community foundation. Your gift fuels LGBTQ organizations that help all of us in the Bay Area and beyond to live with pride, dignity, justice, and joy.
Change Our World Forever
Since 1980, Horizons Foundation has been meeting the needs, securing the rights, and celebrating the lives of LGBTQ people in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. The Foundation has helped thousands of people in need to receive lifesaving or life changing services from hundreds of organizations, and has made great strides towards real equality and full inclusion. Horizons’ work is far from done, however. Many LGBTQ people—even in the relatively progressive Bay Area, as Roger Doughty mentions in this issue—still experience widespread discrimination, violence, economic inequality, illness, and isolation. LGBTQ youth, elders and the most vulnerable people in our community need our support now, and will for the foreseeable future. While we cannot predict what challenges we will face, we do know that if we act today—with the resources we have—we can change our world.
The historic Now and Forever Campaign will ensure that nonprofits have the funding they need to serve and advocate for the LGBTQ community, here in the Bay Area and further afield. Now in the Campaign’s second phase, Horizons has set a goal so audacious as to be unprecedented in the LGBTQ movement: by 2020, Horizons Foundation will have secured a minimum of $100 million in legacy commitments from our community, for our community. This campaign will: • create permanent resources for our community (through the LGBTQ Community Endowment Fund) to face our current challenges and the challenges we cannot predict;
• mobilize increased, dependable, long-term support from LGBTQ people for organizations serving and advocating for LGBTQ people; • ensure a strong, enduring philanthropic institution dedicated to the LGBTQ community—forever.
Moms Make Movements
Together, We Raised $1.1+ Million for 475+ LGBTQ Nonprofits on Give OUT Day
By Nikole Pagan
April 18 was Give OUT Day, the only national day of giving for the LGBTQ community. And together, we made history, raising $1.1+ million for 475+ nonprofits—the first time that so many LGBTQ nonprofits raised so much through a single-day campaign. Horizons Foundation organizes Give OUT Day because we believe that building a stronger future for the LGBTQ community requires us to strengthen the organizations, from youth groups to senior centers, from choruses to advocacy groups, from nonprofits in Alaska to Puerto Rico, working every day to ensure all LGBTQ people thrive. One of these organizations is The Source LGBT+ Community Center in Visalia, California, a rural, conservative community located a couple hundred miles southeast of San Francisco. The Source has participated in Give OUT Day every year since 2016, growing its success each year.
In 2017, The Source secured enough individual donors to win second place on the national leaderboard for small-budget organizations, earning additional prize money. The next year, they took first prize, which helped to fund a move to a larger building for their organization to provide critical community services. Founding Board Members of The Source
The Source has grown rapidly, this year moving to the medium-budget category—and winning first prize yet again. Funds raised on Give OUT Day this year will go toward their critical youth programs.
And The Source is only one of over 475 participating nonprofits. Organizations across the country, mostly small, local groups with limited fundraising capacity, use Give OUT Day to secure critical operating funds that power the LGBTQ movement.
The success of Give OUT Day is a community-wide effort. This success is because of the over 12,500 donors who made contributions. It’s because of the hundreds of participating nonprofits. And it’s because of our partners, including our funding partners, Laughing Gull Foundation, Harnisch Foundation, Lesbians for Good, and two anonymous funders; our promotional partners, Clever and The Blade
Foundation; and our technology partner, Click & Pledge. There’s no doubt that our community has incredible power when we join forces. Here’s to building a stronger future, together.
Nikole Pagan is the Program Officer and Give OUT Day Program Manager of Horizons Foundation.
2019 Financial Planning Day
