Tag Archives: Fundraising

When Ancient History Meets Crowdfunding a Mobile App

Posted on January 28, 2013 | Leave a comment

When I was going through some tough times, I read and re-read this book about gay history. It gave me this feeling of being connected to something bigger than me. I’ve traveled from Sappho’s birthplace on the island of Lesvos in Greece to Harvey Milk’s store in the Castro District of San Francisco following that feeling of connection to my community. This is a huge part of what inspired me to become an activist.

I know not everyone is interested in history and wouldn’t actively seek out websites about this information or proactively search for places that tweet about it. That’s why I want to create an engaging mobile app that will bring this rich history to the world in a new way.

The LGBToday app will feature a story from “today in history.” For example, if today were January 13, when you open the app you will see that on January 13, 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on its first decision on a gay issue. For each event there would be a one-sentence description of the event, an image or video if available, a link to more information about the story, a cited source, a map of where in the world it happened, and more. For days with more than one event, one would randomly to be chosen to show up, but you could click to read the other(s). You can learn all about it at the fundraising page and the website. Of course, you can give the project a like and a follow, too.

I truly believe this project can help make some gay youth out there feel a little less lonely. Please donate and share the link to make sure that happens.

If you are a blogger or other press, please download the press release.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Fundraising, LGBT, Press

12 Communicationist Contributions of 2012

Posted on December 12, 2012 | Leave a comment

Today on 12/12/12, I continue my annual tradition at looking back at my year of giving. I do this not to brag, but give some attention to the causes I care about and to hold myself accountable to make sure I always walk the walk and give back. You can read 11 Communicationist Contributions of 2011 to catch up.

I didn’t make a donation or volunteer my time to the Washington Animal Rescue League (WARL), but I helped them in their mission to rehome homeless animals. I adopted two cats (and paid their adoption fees) and am so happy to be giving them a home. I’m especially touched by Nemo’s story — WARL had a choice of either performing an expensive surgery to amputate his leg or give up on him and they chose to save him. When we visited the shelter for the first time he was recovering from his week-ago amputation and they were caring for him so well and we wanted to help. After a rough first month at home with many vet visits, he’s doing great with his little brother, Moo.

I attended Heartly House’s annual Walk A Mile in Her Shoes event. (Heartly House is a domestic violence and sexual assault center in Frederick, MD.) Men walk a mile in high heels to raise awareness and funds for violence against women issues. It was really one of the best events I’ve ever been to! I love seeing allies who don’t need to stick up for an underserved population doing it anyway. My pictures are here. They had a fun way to donate – Vote with your dollars for the best dressed man. I voted for a mustached man in red pumps.

I wrote about my January 29 speaking engagement in this blog post. I am so proud to have volunteered in this way and recommend it to anyone with a story to tell.

I had the opportunity to attend the National Sexual Assault Conference in Chicago during August. While I was there, I bought a T-shirt to support A Long Walk Home, an organization empowering girls who have survived violence.

I made a donation to support the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary when I attended their vegan potluck Thanksgiving event in Poolesville, MD. There was a feast for the turkeys! Cute pictures of rescued farm animals are here.

I had somehow never heard of Movember before this year. My friend Matt kept posting about it on his Facebook wall til I clicked and was convinced to donate. It was actually my very first time giving to a men’s cause. (The idea is that you grow a mustache for the month of November to raise awareness and funds for prostate cancer.) When I went home for Thanksgiving I found out that my dad was participating and I ended up posting it to my own Facebook and sparking several more donations from Facebook friends.

This was my Kickstarter sponsorship of the year — An interactive theatre piece by my amazing writer friend Danielle Staubitz. She got funded!

This year I saw many individuals fundraising for their medical bills. I’m happy to see this trend of crowdfunding expanding in this way and wish I could have given to everyone. I made one small donation via GiveForward to the relative of a colleague undergoing cancer treatment.

A highlight of 2012 was my friend from Germany coming to visit the Americas. We toured Maryland, DC, Virginia, and West Virginia together, and then also a few days in Mexico! It was such a treat. We spent one night at Hotel Istirincha, which preserves land and wildlife. The state of Veracruz works with the hotel to help wild green sea turtles survive. My friend and I got to take part in releasing 100 baby turtles into the sea, an experience I will never forget.

I continued to re-loan my Kiva funds to individuals and groups on the site. I made a loan in January to the San Blas group from an organization I spent the summer of 2005 with, Fundacion Paraguaya. I also loaned to a women’s collaborative in Tanzania in September.

The organization I gave the most to this year was Marylanders for Marriage Equality, a coalition working to pass Question 6 in Maryland. I volunteered several hours during early voting days and Election Day in Bowie, MD and created a fundraising page that raised $270 from seven of my friends and family members. The emotional hours on the line and phone-banking were absolutely worth it.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Fundraising, International, LGBT, Nonprofit Giving, Volunteering

11 Communicationist Contributions of 2011

Posted on January 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

It’s important to always give back, no matter what you have to give. Looking back at my own year of giving, I donated time, goods, and money towards lots of pretty cool projects. I hope by highlighting their work here you’ll consider adding them to your own 2012 giving list.

Community Servings runs a great fundraiser each Mother’s Day — Meals4Moms. For a $25 donation that covered the cost of a local ill mom’s food for herself and her family for a week, Community Servings sent my mom a card with a message letting her know what was being done in her name. My mom was really touched and raved about it for weeks – Her favorite Mother’s Day gift ever!

On the coldest day of the year I wanted to do something for those who didn’t have a warm home to go home to like I did, so I made a donation to Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. I already knew about them as a leading local non-profit organization and I want to make my donation an annual tradition.

Most of us have heard of Kiva by now. I love microcredit and I am able to give loans to the exact women’s group that I worked with during my 2005 microcredit internship in Paraguay. I made 4 loans in 2011 and am hooked! I will definitely keep loaning in 2012.

I gave to a few projects on Kickstarter too, my favorite new fundraising website. I want to give to every project! I supported my friend’s independent short film, but you can find anything from magnets that turn your fridge into a robot to an anti-bullying theater production to contribute towards. I recommend checking out my co-worker’s inspiring year-long voyage: Will Travel for Vegan Food.

Saint Francis House is the local shelter in my neighborhood. My wife and I donate our clothes and other goods here several times a year. Give locally, think globally.

Whenever my office doesn’t need something anymore, I give it away on Freecycle. For a little bit of extra effort, items from folders to furniture have been kept out of landfills and go to local people who can get some use out of them. They’ve made some major upgrades to their website since I started using it and I highly recommend joining your local Freecycle group (even if its just to get free stuff).

I give a monthly automatic donation to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. We want to be able to give to so many causes regularly, but if you choose the one you are most passionate about you can really feel you are making an impact.

Donations don’t have to be monetary. My workplace donated pro bono consulting time by me and a co-worker to Sexual Minorities Uganda. See these posts for the full story.

I donated my personal time to the Boston Pride Committee. I volunteered more for them last year when I had an official position on the committee, but I helped out in 2011 too, including organizing their volunteers for their 2nd annual holiday fundraiser which benefited Youth Pride.

The Network/La Red is a Boston-area domestic violence organization for the lesbian/bisexual/transgender community. Its a worthy cause close to my heart and this year I donated my old cell phone to them. When I upgraded to my first smartphone, I dropped my old phone off in the drop-box at my bank. (Eastern Bank is a caring institution that gives back to the local community not only with a percentage of its profits each year but with things like community rooms at their branches for non-profit meetings.) The Network/La Red does a great job reaching out for partnerships for creative fundraising with places like The Pita Pit.

The organization that I gave the holy donor trinity (time, money, and fundraising) to was the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center for their 6th annual Walk for Change. Doing something positive and active felt even better than hitting the “donate” button and I was able to raise $626 for their work from my family, friends, and co-workers. Here’s my post on how I did it.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Fundraising, Nonprofit Giving, Volunteering

Competition or Collaboration

Posted on August 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

This week brought devastating news for my field: The Massachusetts HIV/AIDS budget is being cut by 25%. We have been weathering smaller cuts for the past several years but we’ve always been aware that whenever we get level-funded or receive a restoration in funding that it is at the expense of other important causes. The last state budget revision was good for HIV/AIDS but bad for domestic violence – Not a win.

Since the recession hit, more and more non-profits are merging with other organizations instead of closing completely, allowing them to continue the work of their cause. Umbrella organizations are popping up that help organize nonprofits with similar missions and pool their resources. With fundraising monies and government funding drying up, competition for what’s left increases, but we can choose to use this moment as a chance for creativity. Instead of each HIV/AIDS organization in Boston holding its own fundraising event with its own expenses, what if we all pulled together for one fundraiser and split the earnings? What if we created a volunteer-based resource-sharing organization to help our clients learn about support groups, informational brochures, hotlines, etc. from all local organizations? What if every employee in the field donated one hour per week to advocacy for restoring our funding?

We have an opportunity to choose to make the most of the remaining funds together. Across every issue and every state we are all dealing with similar challenges. Leave a comment with your idea on what financially challenged community organizations can do to collaborate.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Fundraising, Teamwork

Walk is Codeword for…

Posted on April 11, 2011 | Leave a comment

fundraise! Yesterday I participated in the 6th annual Walk for Change, put on by the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC). My original fundraising goal was $250 but I quickly realized I should set my sights higher and changed it to $500. I am proud to say that today my total came to $626. I called on my network of friends, colleagues, and family to donate to this important cause and they came through. I used the tools through FirstGiving, the program that BARCC uses for its fundraisers. You can see my fundraising page here.

I used some of their provided text for emails to donors but edited most of it and wrote a lot of my own. Here is an excerpt from an email I sent yesterday to my connections who hadn’t yet donated:

[The $571.22 raised so far] came from 13 separate donations, most of them under $30. It has really inspired me to see what what can achieve when we all pull together. My fundraising page will stay open and active for 3 months after the walk is over this afternoon. Please consider making a contribution or send my page on to anyone who might like to donate. The amount we have raised so far will cover the costs of 9 free counseling sessions for survivors and I would love to make it 10.

The walk itself was a moving experience. There were speakers at the beginning of the event who shared experiences of desperation and survival and T-shirts bearing stories from the Clothesline Project were hung up around the starting area. There was a great turn-out and I met some incredible women. I’m fortunate to have been able to contribute to this cause.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Fundraising, Nonprofit Giving, Volunteering, Writing

Beyond Raising Awareness

Posted on January 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

Frank Mugisha (see my past posts about consulting with him here and here) presented his new PowerPoint presentation last night at Arlington Street Church. He was part of a panel succinctly titled “Crisis in Uganda: Trans-Atlantic Parallels of Homophobia and Racism: the Export of a US Conservative Agenda to Uganda.”

Frank’s mission is to save lives of persecuted GLBTI Ugandans. When your PowerPoint is trying to aid a cause like that, you have to make sure that the presentation of your message does justice to your content. Frank’s original PowerPoint was already solid, but we can all benefit from an outside perspective.

What we really noticed was the importance of adding a clear call to action in a new final slide. Frank’s presentation is extremely moving with many personal stories painfully illustrating the dangers of being out in Uganda. Every audience member wants to help in some way by the end, but didn’t know how. I can’t stress enough how important the close is — Get that ask in! Many of us in the field of do-gooding don’t feel comfortable making a hard sell. It can feel like it cheapens the difficult and sensitive work that we do with the community to turn that community into a marketing point to ask for money, but think of it as another part of advocacy. You want to advance your mission and expand its work and getting the word out there is just the first part. Turning that awareness into action whatever your goal may be (Donate! Contact your representative! Sign the petition!) doesn’t make you corporate, it makes you a champion of your cause.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Community Organizing, Consulting, Fundraising, International, LGBT, Marketing, Teamwork

Volunteer Roulette

Posted on December 5, 2010 | Leave a comment

Even though I stepped down as a Chair on the Boston Pride Committee, I haven’t quit altogether. I’ve been keeping a less active role as a volunteer. I helped organize the volunteers for a fundraising holiday party for them last night, and acted as a volunteer myself. We needed volunteers to help run the silent auction, black jack tables, poker tables, and roulette tables, as well as serve as waitstaff and bartenders. I helped with the assignments and set-up, then moved on to my table.

: Me running the roulette table

Volunteers (especially at volunteer-run organizations) often end up wearing multiple hats at once. In addition to my roulette lady and volunteer coordinator roles, I was also a prospective donor and a community member. So in this case, Boston Pride would be trying to serve my wants as a constituent, hoping that I donate to the cause, hoping that I get others to donate to the cause, trying to make me happy so that I will volunteer again, supervising me, having me supervise other volunteers to make sure they are happy so they will volunteer again but also that they do their job and get community members to donate while recognizing that the volunteers are also community members who may donate…. Head spinning like a roulette wheel yet?

And all of that was perfectly OK because I feel comfortable volunteering for Boston Pride and am happy to take on more than one role. Putting a new volunteer in a volunteer coordinator role wouldn’t have been the right move, but if you find the right volunteer for the job, the roles can fall into place. It is important to keep in mind, though, that volunteers are never just your volunteers: They are the clients that you serve, the donors to whom you market, and the public to whom you advertise. Always put your best foot forward to them and keep them happy in all of their roles by choosing the best task for them as an individual.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Event Planning, Fundraising, LGBT, Teamwork, Volunteer Coordinating, Volunteering