Equity Action announces $32,000 in second round of grants
Recipients -- Comprehensive Community Action, Options, Imperial Court of RI -- reflect opportunity and challenge for nonprofit organizations

Equity Action, completing its first year as a Rhode Island Foundation endowment targeting the needs of the state's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and questioning (LGBTQ) communities, today announced that three nonprofits will receive a total of $32,500 in grants.

While all three -- Options Newsmagazine ; Comprehensive Community Action, a social service agency; and Imperial Court of Rhode Island, a social organization known for fundraising through drag queen/king performances -- have long histories serving LGBTQ individuals and groups, each presented a unique challenge and an opportunity for funding, says Foundation Program Officer Kris Hermanns.

“The advisory board to Equity Action has known from the beginning that every application we receive is more than a request for money,” she notes. “Almost all the gay and lesbian organizations in Rhode Island are run entirely by volunteers, as are Options and the Imperial Court . As they expand services and increase membership, they must develop new and more complex infrastructures. That's a giant, and often painstaking, step to take.

“And we want to encourage efforts by ‘mainstream' providers like Comprehensive Community Action that are willing and eager to design programs and outreach efforts to the LGBTQ communities that are culturally-appropriate and sensitive. That can require significant collaboration and training of staff to achieve.

“In both cases, the grants process is individualized, and Equity Action might offer small grants to meet with an organizational development consultant, for example, with an invitation to return with a larger request,” Hermanns continues.

Options hiring its first paid staff
Options Newsmagazine is a good example of the latter. Equity Action is granting $15,000 to Options , formally Gay and Lesbian Options of Rhode Island, to take a dramatic step in hiring its first paid staff, a managing director, Hermanns said. The publication received planning grants from both The Rhode Island Foundation and Equity Action in the past year.

“Over the course of more than 20 years,” the organization states, “ Options has grown from a two-page newsletter, produced in one gay couple's living room every other month, to a 32-40 page periodical published 10 times per year. Its mailed circulation has expanded from a few hundred to about 3,700 people, agencies, and libraries, while another 2,000 complimentary copies are distributed at local bookstores, nightclubs, restaurants, offices and other venues.”

Yet the growth has taken its toll on the all-volunteer collective. Not only have members usually made up any shortfalls between advertising revenue and expenses, but in the last two years alone, five longtime volunteers have resigned and four others have reduced their volunteer hours.

“This very important publication and community resource will not simply hire a managing director with the Equity Action grant. It will restructure and reaffirm its way of doing business to ensure that it can continue to grow and meet the needs of Rhode Island's LGBTQ communities,” Hermanns adds.

Comprehensive Community Action to hire outreach worker Comprehensive Community Action is the first ‘mainstream' organization to receive a major grant from Equity Action. Working with such groups is another of the funder's goals to expand LGBTQ access to services.

A $10 million, 180-staff social service agency created in the wake of President Lyndon Johnson's ‘War on Poverty', the Cranston-based organization has a mission to serve “low income, disadvantaged and disenfranchised community residents.”

To its credit, the agency has actively welcomed lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender individuals for more than a decade as part of its broad mandate, says Hermanns. In 1994, CCA conducted a study of the prevalence of gay hate crimes in Rhode Island, which revealed a “complete lack of service available to the LGBT community for both health and mental health issues.” Since then, the agency has offered a full array of services through its Family Health Services division for LGBT as well as the Latino and Cambodian communities.

“But CCA wants to do more,” reports Hermanns, “and Equity Action granted it $15,000 to hire an outreach worker for its three goals:

1. To increase the LGBT community's awareness and utilization of affordable, culturally sensitive primary and preventive health care and mental health care for all members and their families
2. To reduce key health and mental health disparities and health trends with the LGBT community, and
3. To establish baseline data for further programming and research.  

Imperial Court wins planning grant
The Imperial Court of Rhode Island is a chapter of a national organization founded in San Francisco nearly 40 years ago as a social group through which the LGBTQ community could also raise funds for grassroots nonprofits. Rhode Island's chapter -- they exist in nearly every state as well as Canada and Mexico -- is 13 years old, and has been all-volunteer since its inception.

The local organization reports it has raised $600,000 which it has distributed to nonprofits from AIDS Care Ocean State to the House of Compassion to Sojourner House, as well as others. “Up until now, the Imperial Court has managed without its own meeting space, gathering instead twice a month in borrowed space at AIDS Care Ocean State . Its officers argue that it needs a centralized location for meetings, office work, storage, equipment, and networking.

“Equity Action voted a $2,500 grant so the Imperial Court can work with a consultant to explore how renting space fits into the organization's priorities, how it will raise money to pay for the space, and to project where the organization is going in the long-term.”

Another funding cycle begins April 15
Equity Action has two funding cycles per year. The next deadline for applications is April 15, 2005 for approximately $50,000 in available grant funds. Interested organizations can obtain further information by visiting Equity Action at www.rifoundation.org.

Equity Action continues to actively fundraise for the endowment. “We are very close to meeting a $200,000 challenge by the National Lesbian and Gay Community Funding Partnership, which has promised a total of $100,000 in matching funds.