Horizons Foundation Awards Over $715,000 to 50 Grassroots LGBTQ Nonprofits

March 1, 2024, San Francisco – Horizons Foundation announced an all-time high in total dollars – over $716,400 - being awarded through its flagship funding program, Community Issues, to 50 grassroots LGBTQ grantee partners in the nine counties of the SF Bay Area. 

These grants further Horizons Foundation's ongoing commitment to “help advance a world where all LGBTQ people live freely and fully.” While our community has achieved major in the fight for equal treatment, LGBTQ people still face major challenges, including discrimination, poorer health outcomes, and poverty, with even greater needs among youth and elders, transgender people, LGBTQ communities of color, and many more. We know from our own Needs Assessment, and due to increasing wealth/income inequality in the SF Bay Area, that some parts of the LGBTQ community continue to be underserved and under-resourced.  

This year’s increased funding underscores Horizons’ continued deep commitment to supporting and growing the LGBTQ nonprofit-grassroots ecosystem, making grants available across the multiple demographics and identities within our tremendously diverse community, and importantly, growing a permanent source of resources for our community in the face of unpredictable times, a reality painfully underscored by the nation’s 45th presidency and the devastating and sudden impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

These 50 grants, which include 21 multiyear awards, will support organizations working across broad funding areas: advocacy and civil rights, arts and culture, community building and leadership, and health and human services. Some of the projects receiving funding include:
  

• Supporting marginalized queer communities. The Deaf Queer Resource Center works to support, inform, educate, empower, and bring more visibility to marginalized deaf LGBTQ communities. 
• Providing safety to LGBTQ immigrants. The LGBT Asylum Project is the only San Francisco nonprofit organization exclusively dedicated to providing accessible legal representation for LGBT asylum seekers who are fleeing persecution. 
• Convening empowering cultural offerings. Queer Surf increases equitable access to nature by supporting LGBTQ mental and physical health through a relationship with the ocean, while Drag Story Hour celebrates reading through the glamorous art of drag. Their chapter network creates family programming where kids can express their authentic selves. 
• Centering indigenous, queer youth of color. The Queerceanera Project brings to the stage the voices of Queer Youth of Color and ancestral Indigenous teachings to reclaim the narrative of sacredness for us.  

The largest portion of Community Issues’ funding comes from an annual draw-down from Horizons’ LGBTQ Community Endowment Fund, a permanent source of resources for the community. 
 

About Horizons Foundation  

Horizons Foundation envisions a world where all LGBTQ people live freely and fully. The world’s first community foundation of, by, and for LGBTQ people, Horizons invests in LGBTQ organizations, strengthens a culture of LGBTQ giving, and builds a permanent endowment to secure our community’s future for generations to come. Learn more at horizonsfoundation.org.  

Media Contact:
Rae Godin, Senior Communications Manager
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510.955.7166