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NEWSLETTER
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After Gay-Rights Victory, a New Challenge for Grant Makers By Michael Seltzer
Two days before the 44th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which occurred on the streets of my neighborhood, Greenwich Village, the Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act violates the constitution of the United States and states have the right to pass same-sex marriage laws.
While the decision came on the heels of another Supreme Court decision dealing an unconscionable blow to voting rights, the court’s decision on same-sex marriage will long be known as one of the most significant and historic civil-rights victories in our lifetimes.
It also marks a time for philanthropy to reflect on its power to further social justice: Nonprofits, with the support of foundations, paved the way for this decision, but now donors have much more work to do to help assure full equality for all.
It was just a little more than four decades ago when Stonewall ignited the birth of hundreds of grassroots nonprofit organizations to provide refuge for gay people suffering from hostility and to fight flagrant discrimination and homophobia.
In Philadelphia, where I resided in the 1970s, the first LGBT organizations in that city opened their doors. They included the Eromin Center (an acronym for erotic minorities), which provided mental-health services; CALM (Custody Action for Lesbian Mothers), which assisted women who were caught in legal battles to retain custody of their children, and the Gay Activists Alliance.
A handful of foundations, including The Philadelphia Foundation, the van Ameringen Foundation and the People’s Fund (now known as the Bread & Roses Community Fund) provided support to these organizations. Yet the grants were few nationwide. Most organizations managed to survive solely on donations from individuals.
In the mid-1970s, a small number of grant makers who had come out—including Terry Lawler, Katherine Acey and I—gathered at the Network of Change-Oriented Foundations to form the Working Group for Funding Lesbian and Gay Issues to redress this glaring absence of foundations in the civil-rights struggle of LGBT people.
Fortunately, foundations have traveled a long road since those early days. In 1987, the Paul Rapoport Foundation broke ground when it opened its doors as the first private-endowed foundation focusing on lesbian and gay issues. Other private foundations, like the Gill Foundation, soon expanded their ranks. In 2000, the Arcus Foundation was founded to promote lesbian and gay equality worldwide. According to Funders for LGBTQ Issues, in 2011 close to 400 foundations had awarded 3,078 grants totaling $123 million to projects and organizations working on LGBT issues across the United States and around the world.
Some of those grants focused on promoting same-sex marriage. The Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund awarded the first grant in support of freedom-to-marry efforts in 2001.
Other grant makers formed partnerships to maximize their impact. By 2013, the foundations that are part of the Civil Marriage Collaborative, among them what was the Open Society Institute and now is the Open Society Foundations, had invested close to $17 million, making it one of the leading sources of support for charities that promote same-sex marriage. Its money has supported grantees in 20 states and the District of Columbia.
As a result, nonprofits were able to develop and carry out innovative, multipronged public-education efforts using the latest research and evaluations to figure out what approaches would work best. Foundation money helped support public education, research, polling, message development, coalition-building activities and efforts to mobilize citizens and influential leaders to push for change.
Local foundations have also made a huge difference. Late last year, the trustees of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation took the extraordinary step of adopting a statement in support of same-sex marriage.
Yet in spite of the Supreme Court’s momentous decision, foundations still must play a leading role in supporting the next phase of the fight for gay rights. Twenty-nine states do not protect lesbian, gay or bisexual workers from employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. And 37 states have not yet made same-sex marriage legal.
Fortunately, other players have started to support equality efforts. Last November, the Ford Foundation, the nation’s second largest foundation, announced a 10-year, $50 million effort to secure equal rights and protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Surina Khan, director of the foundation’s gender-rights and equality program, notes, “We believe that LGBT rights are fundamental civil rights. We have chosen to fund statewide and national efforts to improve the lives of LGBT people, promoting greater inclusion, acceptance, and respect for LGBT people—and indeed for all people.”
J. Bob Alotta, executive director of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, notes that the work to secure civil rights is far from completed: “We have funded in 43 states and 81 countries and have learned that we must not draw neat lines around decades or movements and say, 'Done.’ Our work is not done. We are erasing the torture of our ancestors, the toil of our predecessors, and our best imaginable selves if we do not rise up immediately and demand justice. We have no choice but to physically stand where the law now refuses to go. But I am so, so proud of all of the people who have brought this day to fruition. I also deeply believe in tomorrow.”
Michael Seltzer, a distinguished lecturer at Baruch College School of Public Affairs at the City University of New York, is on the executive committee of the LAFF Society. This article appeared originally in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
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