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Outright VT Fundraising Update
Outright Vermont
Fundraising Update
by Lluvia Mulvaney-Stanak
With the end of the year nearing
and the recent coverage of Outright Vermont's financial challenges over
the past months, we thought folks could use a bit of an update.
Over the past couple of months,
friends of Outright VT (volunteers, supporters, donors and especially
our youth) have responded to requests for support with an incredible amount
of love, understanding and dedication. It is warming to know that Outright
VT truly is important to so many generations of people in our state.
We are proud to report that
our family of donors hasve not only responded to this year's grant short-comings
by pledging donations, but that they have also "recruited" friends,
family and co-workers to join our family of donors. We have also received
an anonymous challenge donation of $10,000, to help motivate our board
and donors to match this gift by the end of the year. To date, we are
more than half of the way there, again in large part to the response from
our donor base. Thanks to the recent doubling of our board, we are confident
that we will both meet and exceed this goal.
As part of the community response
to our requests for support, eight new board members have joined, to bring
our numbers up to 13! However, the truly exciting part is that three of
these members are YOUTH! Outright VT hasn't enjoyed a board of this size
and depth since pre-Civil Unions days and we are excited at the amount
of energy, passion and experience that our new members bring to our organization.
In addition to our new
board and growing family of donors, we have also started to receive some
good news from grant foundations. As reported in last month's Out
in the Mountains, queer youth organizations are finding fewer and
fewer foundational support sources for direct service work for queer youth
this year. In an effort to curb this recession in our grant support, we
have sought funding from more progressive funders like the Astraea Foundation,
Funding Exchange and Milagro Foundation. Much to our joy, ALL of these
foundations recognized the importance and impact of our work with queer
youth in Vermont and actually funded us this fall to help sustain our
work. This is the first time we have been funded from ANY of these organizations
and Outright VT is now the FIRST organization that the Milagro Foundation,
an international funder, has ever funded in the state of Vermont.
While all of this news is fantastic,
the board and staff at Outright VT realize that this truly is only Phase
One of a much larger effort to secure the future for our organization.
We all believe that despite our tough times this year, this will truly
be Outright VT's finest moment; we are all dedicated to building a solid
foundation to keep us steady in uncertain times. This way, we will be
able to protect ourselves against the fallout from shifts in funding on
a national or state level. We know that the core of Outright VT is the
people of Vermont who support us on a regular basis.
We are proud of our history as one of the first queer youth organizations
in this country, and that we remain not only the oldest queer direct services
organization in Vermont, but the sole queer youth organization in the
state. We take pride in the fact that we are the leaders among queer groups
in Vermont, as we continue to fight for justice for all by working to
end racism, transphobia, heterosexism and homophobia in this state.
Through careful planning,
funding strategy and a concentration on seeking & maintaining sustainable
support from the community, we do believe that we will not only uphold
our current services and structure into 2006, but that we will also continue
to grow as an organization.
Simply put, Outright Vermont
saves lives, and our donors know this. Losing a youth to suicide this
summer is a very real reminder of the need for Outright’s services.
For 16 years, our organization has focused on advocating for and supporting
queer youth, and in doing so we have made the lives of ALL youth safer,
healthier and brighter. We are also helping children of queer parents,
youth who are perceived to be gay and even, any and all youth who are
victims of bullying via homophobic acts. These young people deserve the
support and refuge of a place like Outright Vermont, a place that is inclusive
of all identities. We need everyone who "never had a place like Outright"
to make sure that there is never another Vermont youth who grows up saying
this.
We encourage those who
are not involved with Outright VT or who have let their involvement lapse,
to rejoin our family of Vermonters who are united to continue to support
the lives of young queer people in our state. For more information on
how you can help, please visit our (soon to be new) website: www.outrightvt.org
Lluvia Mulvaney-Stanak is a co-director of Outright Vermont.