In honor of Pride month, our SFF LGBTQ2SIA+ employee affinity group curated this list of Bay Area organizations that inspire us with their hopeful and joyful service to our community. Some of us have benefited directly from the services provided by these organizations, and others have gained our attention because of personal connections to their work.
We encourage you to celebrate Pride with a joyful gift in support of these efforts!
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 law 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. [BLMP is a project of the Transgender Law Center.]
Lavender Phoenix (formerly named API Equality Northern California) builds queer and transgender Asian and Pacific Islander power in the Bay community lives and leads at the intersections of many of the most urgent issues of our time. In recent months, we’ve witnessed heightened attention to violence against Asians, and a slew of new anti-trans laws. Through organizing in the Bay Area, they’ve inspired and trained grassroots leaders, work to actively transform our values from scarcity to abundance, and continuously partner with organizations to sustain a vibrant movement ecosystem. Most recently, they have developed UP to Us, a community-led needs assessment of trans and non-binary APIs in the Bay Area. Throughout this report, trans and gender-nonconforming APIs speak to their experiences with police, searching for safe homes, surviving everyday violence, navigating health care, and finding the care we deserve. While the data can be heartbreaking, the research is a powerful tool to shape our solutions and the future we all deserve. [Lavender Phoenix is a project of Chinese for Affirmative Action.]
Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP) fuels leadership and creativity, sparks awareness, and galvanizes collective action. They nurture filmmaker-activists as leaders of social justice movements that incorporate the power of art as cultural resistance and cultural resilience, cultural reclamation, and cultural renewal. Through the QWOCMAP films and events, I have learned about the ways in which art has always been a source of cultural resistance, cultural resilience, and cultural renewal for LGBTQ People of Color as a way to declare our humanity.
Recommended by Austin Truong (they/them/theirs), Multicultural Fellow, People Pathway
Transgender Gender-Variant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) works to challenge and 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 their 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 Whyte 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/ella/mola), People Pathway Program Associate
Lavender Youth Recreation & Information Center (LYRIC) works to build community and inspire positive social change through education enhancement, career training, health promotion, and leadership development with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQQ) youth, their families, and allies of all races, classes, genders, and abilities. By working towards social justice and supporting young leaders, families, and allies, LYRIC builds a world that honors, supports, and respects young people for who they are and the leaders they wish to be. This organization inspires me because of their emphasis and centering of young people. Young people are not only the leaders of tomorrow, but they are also the leaders of today. We need organizations like LYRIC to continue to meet the needs of LGBTQQ youth in the Bay Area. Growing up, I wish I had an organization like this to guide and support me.
Peacock Rebellion is a Bay Area-based, queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and people of color (QTBIPOC) crew of artist-activist-healers. Best known for Brouhaha, their comedy training program; Liberating Ourselves Locally, their former maker space, and Liberate 23rd Ave., the first queer and trans BIPOC -centered land trust in the US. Peacock Rebellion makes sassy sexy art to help build social justice futures, with an emphasis on healing justice and disability justice. They amp the artistic work of QTBIPOC, with an emphasis on trans women of color, trans and gender non-conforming people of color with disabilities, and those who are under supported in queer spaces. I appreciate Peacock Rebellion’s balance of bringing joy and creativity to their work toward social and healing justice. They are an example of organizations that center marginalized leaders in their leadership and their work. [Peacock Rebellion is a project of the Social Good Fund.]
Recommended by Lalo Gonzalez (he/him/they/them), Multicultural Fellow, Power Pathway
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 (he/him), Senior Philanthropic Advisor
For more recommendations here in the Bay Area, or for help recommending a grant via your donor advised fund, contact your personal Philanthropic Advisor or donorservices@sff.org.
