In honor of Pride month, our SFF Multicultural Fellows, in partnership with SFF’s LGBTQ2SIA+ employee affinity group, curated a list of nine Bay Area organizations that are most impacted, and yet, least funded—characteristics which frequently go hand in hand. We are proud to highlight these organizations for their deep connections in trailblazing movements to advance justice and wellbeing for LGBTQ people, women, people of color, and immigrant communities across the Bay Area.
Data from Funders for LGBTQ Issues show that for every $100 awarded by U.S. foundations in 2020, only 23 cents specifically supported LGBTQ communities and issues. For every $100 awarded by U.S. foundations, less than 5 cents supported transgender communities in both 2019 and 2020.
In the face of that stark reality, and in this time of escalating assaults against Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) communities, we offer this give guide as a signal of immense opportunity for donors at all levels of giving to answer the call of our movements.
We invite you to celebrate Pride Month by joining us in making joyful gifts to LGBTQ+ groups like these, committing your love and support in the form of financial resources, to uplift those in our community who are leading bold, robust, and intersectional movements that benefit all of us.
Note for Donor Advised Fund Advisors: Donor Center Specifics are listed to help you locate the group in the Donor Portal to recommend a grant. For more recommendations here in the Bay Area, or for help recommending a grant via your donor advised fund, contact your Philanthropic Advisor or email donorservices[at]sff.org.
Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS)
Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS) exists to restore and recover the role of Two-Spirit people within the American Indian/First Nations community by creating a forum for the spiritual, cultural and artistic expression of Two-Spirit people. They are committed to holding space for our Indigenous Queer/Two Spirit community in many forms such as Drag transformation workshops, film screenings, and ceremonies.
Austin shares that “As someone born and raised in the ancestral and unceded land kept and held sacred by the Yelamu-Ramaytush Ohlone people, I honor them as ancestral keepers of the land I am living on, and I honor their descendants who continue to breathe sacred life into this land. The cultural and community offerings that BAAITS brings nurture the people and land that has nourished my family since they immigrated here.”
—Recommended by Austin Truong (they), Multicultural Fellow People Pathway
Donor Center Specifics
Grantee: Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits
Fiscal Sponsor: The Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples
Purpose: For Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits
Black LGBTQIA Migrant Project
Black LGBTQIA Migrant Project (BLMP) envisions a world where no one is forced to give up their homeland, where all Black LGBTQIA+ people are free and liberated. BLMP builds and centers the power of Black LGBTQIA+ Migrants through community-building and healing programs around the country, legal support and deportation defense work, increasing access to services and resources, and organizing across borders. BLMP uses leadership development, capacity building, and organizing to address the ways in which Black LGBTQIA+ migrants are targeted by the criminal legal and immigration enforcement system, and marginalized in the broader migrant community and racial and economic justice movements. BLMP’s vision reminds me to gather stories of what was going on at the time that my ancestors migrated and make room for what needs to be done in our current conditions to build a world for our collective liberation and freedom across the diaspora.
—Recommended by Lalo Gonzalez (he/they), Multicultural Fellow Power Pathway
Donor Center Specifics
Grantee: Black LGBTQIA Migrant Project
Fiscal Sponsor: Transgender Law Center
Purpose: For the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project
Brown Boi Project
The Brown Boi Project is a community of masculine-of-center womyn, men, two-spirit people, transmen, and our allies committed to changing the way that communities of color talk about gender. Brown Boi Project’s Financial Wellness Program is designed to address the chronic economic inequalities that exist for many marginalized communities across the U.S. with an emphasis on the experiences of queer and trans people of color. They focus on developing individual capacity for financial literacy through communal dialogues, workshops, educational modules, cohort experiences and Lending Circles.
—Recommended by Austin Truong (they), Multicultural Fellow People Pathway
Donor Center Specifics
Grantee: Brown Boi Project
Fiscal Sponsor: Movement Strategy Center
Purpose: For the Brown Boi Project
Oasis Legal Services
Oasis Legal Services provides a crucial lifeline for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. Winning asylum means so much: protection from deportation, the right to work legally, the opportunity to advance a career, pursue an education, seek medical care, and in hard times, the right to crucial social safety nets. It also means the freedom to finally embrace one’s true sexual orientation or gender identity, and to find community and acceptance without the fear of persecution. I have made dear friends abroad who have relayed to me the gut-wrenching realities of hiding their true identities given the community they are a part of. And I feel very fortunate that after growing up in a non-affirming community myself, in the Midwest U.S., I was able to move to the Bay Area and thrive in a place that fully celebrated who I am. I support Oasis Legal Services because I want everyone to have the same access to an affirming community that I have benefited from.
—Recommended by J. M. Johnson (any pronouns), Senior Philanthropic Advisor
Donor Center Specifics
Grantee: Oasis Legal Services
Purpose: For general support
Parivar Bay Area
Parivar Bay Area is our country’s only transgender-led and transgender-centering organization led by Global South Asian transgender individuals. Parivar’s core intent is cultivating a community of light, love, and acceptance, striving toward Transgender economic justice, Health care equity, Intersectional unity, social inclusion, and LGBTQIA+ Immigration Equity. Parivar advocates for safety and belonging for transgender immigrants and asylum refugees through policy, community building, and through the arts. In their work, they center Global South Trans Immigrants and Asylees and uplift the culturally diverse Hijrah, Kinnar, Thirunangai, Khwaja Sira, and all transgender identities of the South Asian Diaspora.
—Recommended by Austin Truong (they), Multicultural Fellow People Pathway
Donor Center Specifics
Grantee: Parivar Bay Area
Fiscal Sponsor: Center for Immigrant Protection (DBA The LGBT Asylum Project)
Purpose: For Parivar Bay Area
Rainbow Community Center
Rainbow envisions a society that advocates for and celebrates gender and sexual diversity, racial justice, safety, and liberation for all through healing-centered engagement. The Rainbow Community Center provides free HIV testing and hosts counseling services and community socials for LGTBQ people of all stripes. They also have resources for queer survivors of hate crimes and intimate partner violence. Rainbow Community Center is committed to racial and economic justice through the work of solidarity, positive representation, equity, and advocacy, to achieve freedom of limits.
—Recommended by Eduardo “Lalo” Gonzalez (he/they), Multicultural Fellow Power Pathway
Donor Center Specifics
Grantee: Rainbow Community Center of Contra Costa County
Purpose: For general support
RYSE Youth Center
After nine years on the Richmond landscape, the RYSE Youth Center is a place where integral parts of a hurting and glorious city come to shed conflict so that they may seek and create solutions creating safety and belonging for youth to envision a new future. The Alphabet Group is a safe space for LGBTQQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*, Queer, Questioning, Intersex) youth to dialogue about their experiences and identity. Youth engage in topics ranging from healthy sexuality, education, advocacy, allyship, academic and career opportunities, and current issues in the community. It is also a general resource to all RYSE members to learn about topics such as gender justice and sexuality.
—Recommended by Austin Truong (they), Multicultural Fellow People Pathway
Donor Center Specifics
Grantee: RYSE Youth Center
Purpose: to support The Alphabet Group
San Mateo County Pride Center
The Pride Center is the first-ever LGBTQ+ community center in San Mateo County where LGBTQ+ individuals can gather in solidarity with others to share stories, build relationships, learn, grow, create, and heal together. The Pride Center’s vision is to create an innovative, respectful, and equitable community of all ages, ethnicities, cultures, sexual orientations, and gender identities that supports complete inclusion, is free of discrimination, strives for knowledge, challenges barriers, and seeks to empower agents of social change. They understand anti-oppression to be the active work of building and empowering communities against the systems of oppression that cause harm. Anti-oppression means working against classism, racism, ableism, white supremacy, cis heterosexism, xenophobia, etc., all of which harm members of our community.
—Recommended by Eduardo “Lalo” Gonzalez (he/they), Multicultural Fellow Power Pathway
Donor Center Specifics
Grantee: County of San Mateo
Purpose: For the San Mateo County Pride Center
Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project
Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) works to end human rights abuses against transgender, gender variant, and intersex people—especially transgender women in California prisons and formerly incarcerated. TGIJP does some direct service legal work for intersex individuals caught within the prison industrial complex and continues to expand its leadership development, worker rights, movement organizing, and transformative systems change work in order to fully realize its mission. TGIJP has also been working to increase the visibility of intersex issues in their current programming (e.g. publishing information in their newsletter and political education); conducting internal education for staff, core leadership, and members; developing collaborative relationships with intersex organizations; and conducting outreach to identify imprisoned intersex people, share information and support their ability to self-advocate and self-organize.
Charity shares that: “It is an honor to be TGIJP’s grant point of contact at SFF. This group walks the walk of being an anchoring, empowering, space that centers belonging in a time when folks continue to experience deep hatred, gender-based violence, and systemic oppression.”
—Recommended by Charity Whyte (she/mola), People Pathway Program Associate
Donor Center Specifics
Grantee: Transgender Gender-Variant Intersex Justice Project
Purpose: For general support
