Jul 15, 2005  |  By: Mubarak Dahi  | COMMENTS     

RECENT STUDY by the New York-based organization Funders for Lesbian & Gay Issues unveiled an unfortunate problem with gay and lesbian groups across the country, whether they were local or national institutions: Our organizations are woefully under-funded.

The study, released in April of this year, looked at the charitable giving patterns of the country’s top 1,000 corporate and private foundations through fiscal year 2002.

It found that only one-tenth of one percent of all the money given to charitable causes went to organizations working for gay and lesbian causes. Furthermore, the overall percentage of money going to gay and lesbian causes from such foundations remained flat for 13 years, from 1989 to 2002, the last year that was included in the study.

On the bright side, corporate and private philanthropies are giving about $30 million annually to support gay and lesbian-related concerns. The study’s authors say that reflects how much mainstream philanthropic organizations have opened up in the past decade or so to giving grants to gay-related organizations.

This becomes more troublesome when viewed against the backdrop of just how much money anti-gay fundamentalist groups are successful in raising to promote their anti-gay agendas. The organized religious right raises an estimated $400 million annually to push their agenda, of which defeating gay rights is a cornerstone. In 2004 alone, conservative forces raised an estimated $125 million to fight same-sex marriage at the ballot box in numerous states.

In contrast, the combined budget of all the national gay and lesbian organizations working on gay and lesbian rights issues was only about $40 million, excluding groups that primarily do AIDS work.

While fund-raising isn’t a glamorous or fun topic, the hard truth is that in our current political and social system, it takes money to get out your message.

It takes money to run political campaigns aimed at protecting gay rights, it takes money to buy media spots (especially on TV). It takes money to produce educational kits to get out to the public. It takes money to pay for lobbyists to try to sway the opinion of politicians, whether it’s in Washington D.C., or a state capital.

As it turns out, we as a gay and lesbian movement are not awash in cash. There are three major funding sources for gay groups: public or government funding, private or corporate foundations, and individual donations.

With the current political atmosphere and the strength of the mostly anti-gay Republican Party, both at the national and local levels, it seems unlikely to hope for any significant increase in public or government money for groups that support gay and lesbian organizations.

Corporate giving may be a more hopeful avenue. Few major corporations want to be perceived as anti-gay anymore. Non-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation are standard fare among most big companies, and are even pretty common among smaller ones.

The business world has come to see nondiscrimination as a bottom-line, dollars-and-cents issue: In an economy where businesses are hustling for all the best possible workers, it just doesn’t make good economic sense to discriminate against gays.

However, the move to better business practices and job policies doesn’t necessarily translate into more money from corporations or foundations for gay and lesbian-related groups or causes.

In the business world, giving away money to non-profits is still an exercise in public relations, and it is still much safer and more heartwarming to cultivate your public image by giving money to open a hospital wing to treat children with cancer than it is to help fund a gay and lesbian community center.

Gay groups and gay organizations should still ask for and push for more money from corporate and foundation sponsors. But realistically, it doesn’t appear as if a huge increase in cash flow is going to be forthcoming overnight.

THAT LEAVES PRIVATE, INDIVIDUAL donations. Fund-raisers for gay and lesbian groups say, on the whole, we as gays and lesbians lag in our private donations, particularly considering what an affluent segment of the population we are often portrayed to be.

No doubt there are some historical influences at work, including the huge financial, emotional and volunteer strain the AIDS crisis has taken on gay men and lesbians. But another factor, experts say, is that our movement is so young, it hasn’t yet done a good job of getting members used to the notion of regularly giving money.

Instead, we tend to often operate simply under “crisis” mode — for example, when an anti-gay initiative hits close to home, gay people will pound the pavement and open their wallets. But even in a place like ...