How can LGBT organizations best access external funding?
For non-profit organizations working on less mainstream issues, it can often feel like your funding is subject to the whims of others.
But if LGBT issues are flavor of the month with many donors and even in the corporate sector, how best can LGBT NGOs take advantage?
Sitting in the sunshine on the Schloss Terrace, in front of the Leopoldskroner Teich, Geeta Misra, executive director at Indian women’s rights organization, CREA, had the following recommendations for those seeking funding:
Think more politically and strategically;
- Speak to each other more - don’t compete, collaborate instead;
- Speak to the unconverted - this is an unprecedented moment of openness;
- Look at your own organization and ensure it is as inclusive as the society you hope to build;
- Become less reliant on foundations’ donations
Through the ‘conversation’ exercise, with input from absent Faculty Raj Thamotheram and Nicky McIntyre, more advice was shared, the clearest piece being that LGBT groups need to move away from the alphabet soup of identities and “suffering competition” between them to find opportunities to advance all their causes.
Instead of focusing on moving their own of part of the LGBT community up the ladder of sexual hierarchy, which ultimately is a hindrance to others, groups should work to remove the ladder.
