Out In The Mountains : News - Outright Cites Shift to Marriage Equality

       Burlington – Like many nonprofits – gay and otherwise – Outright Vermont found itself last month not just in a temporary funding hole for the fourth quarter of the year, but looking at large splashes of red ink into 2006.
      An emergency email went out in early October to supporters, alumni, friends, volunteers and others detailing the agency’s plight – and their plans to stabilize Outright's funding.
      One major impact came from the Vermont Department of Health's denial of $10,000 in HIV prevention grants last fall, an exclusion that reaches into 2007. Another is the remaining fallout from the Vermont Department of Education's cancellation of funding for presentations in schools following backlash from the civil unions battles of 2000.
      "Our funding has always been cyclical," agreed Outright Co-director Lluvia Mulvaney-Stanak. "We've been having a rough year since January 2005. Two weeks ago we were looking at the projected final quarter budget and realized we would come up short."
       Many nonprofits, she added, "operate with a deficit, counting on a grant or the next phonathon to float you through." But for Outright, there was no relief in sight for next year. "For 2006, we didn't receive grants from Gill, Colin Higgins, or the Children’s Trust Fund."
       At least one of those funders, the Denver-based Gill Foundation, "told us they were shifting their funding priorities to programs with 'statewide impact,'" Mulvaney-Stanak said, "and by that they mean marriage quality."
        Outright's emergency email likewise cited the shift in funding priorities: "[W]ithin our own LGBT movement we are fighting the shift in resources to support marriage equality."
       Asked to comment on the competition for fundraising dollars, Robyn Maguire, field director of the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force, said, "Gill usually doesn't fund organizations for very long. Shifting their focus to support marriage is not new information."
       It is common nonprofit wisdom that funders would prefer to underwrite start-ups or special projects than ongoing direct services. "The object," added Maguire, "is for the [receiving] organization to diversify its fundraising so it won't be dependent on Gill."
       Mulvaney-Stanak said that Outright has "a strong ally relationship" with the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force. "We watch each other's backs so that the kind of backlash that hurt us in 2000 doesn't happen again." The agency, she said, was watching out for "divide and conquer" tactics.
       Maguire confirmed that the two organizations have met to "talk about how to work together on fundraisers and other events, so we're not stepping over each other."
      One solution for a nonprofit in financial straits is to merge with another nonprofit with deeper pockets. "The Portland [Maine] Outright – to whom we're connected only by a name and a summit meeting once a year – in June decided to become a program of an outpatient clinic. We can't let that happen here," declared Mulvaney-Stanak.
       One result of the Community Alliance Initiative process in pursuit of a Unity Project grant that proved elusive, Mulvaney-Stanak indicated, was consistent feedback "from founders, youth, and others was that we should stay separate, maintain a youth-only space. Losing a youth [to suicide] this summer has really made that point."
       The agency's co-director acknowledged that Outright has been in dire financial straits before. But the point this time, she said, is to put in place the structures to ensure a more stable future. To that end, she is expecting that the board of directors will double in size this fall to 13 members, including four youth. Fundraising efforts will be intensified. The board will be working on a strategic plan that not only addresses ending the current year in the black, but provides funding for services and programs into 2006 and the future.
       Otherwise, Mulvaney-Stanak said, "we'll be having hard conversations about which services to cut." The hardest services to fund, she said, are those in the education program that had been funded in part by the Department of Education. "We've rebuilt a lot of those connections" in schools, but schools generally cannot fund such training on their own. Outright is seeking funding directly from the Commissioner of Education. "You can't pass anti-bullying legislation and not fund the training to make it work. We're the only culturally competent people doing this kind of work."
      On the bright side, an anonymous donor promised that if they could raise $10,000 before the end of the year, the donor would match it. The agency has also received $7,000 from the Funding Exchange for the first time.
      "The community won't let us not exist," Mulvaney-Stanak declared. "We're working on positive growth and not just crisis response."

For information on how to help, see www.outrightvt.org, or call 865-9677.