Fundraising and the LGBT Community—Increasing Involvement, Recognition

An interview with Mickey MacIntyre of realChange Partners, LLC

This interview is part two of a two-part series on how fundraisers and nonprofits can better serve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) donors. Part one appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of Kaleidoscope.

Describe an ideal scenario in working with LGBT donors.

First, an ideal scenario is when nonprofits treat their LGBT donors the same way as they treat their non-LGBT donors. Second, fundraisers need to do their due diligence with their LGBT donors. Thorough prospect research, looking at the whole family, making sure that records and databases are connected and that salutations are correct, and proper donor recognition all play a part. Third, as fundraisers, we often have an idea of what an LGBT person is and would be interested in and therefore don’t see the connection to non-LGBT causes. My second-largest gift personally was to the National Parks and Conservation Association. I am not just gay.

How can a nonprofit better serve the LGBT community as a whole?

There is, for example, a preponderance of LGBT kids in runaway situations and the suicide rate for LGBT kids is much higher. But when they try to access services such as youth shelters and teen suicide hotlines, these organizations don’t always recognize them as a population and the intrinsic needs that they might have. They also don’t realize that LGBT donors see this as an issue and would be willing to fund an expansion of existing services to LGBT kids.

The same goes for gay seniors. Imagine living your whole life in a loving relationship, and then when you move into a retirement community you’re separated from your partner because you’re not allowed to live together in that setting. That’s what many gay couples are now facing.

Another example is healthcare access. Unmarried people with dependent kids, people who are not allowed to be married, have considerable trouble getting coverage. It might mean having three separate insurance policies for one family. This is a natural bridge between the gay and non-gay communities as our families take on different compositions.

The immigration policy in the United States is family focused. LGBT people thus have a huge stake in this policy as well. Causes that an LGBT donor may support are much more varied than one might think.

The bottom line is that fundraisers see LGBT people as only giving to LGBT causes when they actually give about 50 percent to non-LGBT causes, as reported in Creating Communities: Giving & Volunteering by Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender People published in 1998. The same study showed that LGBT people give and volunteer more than their non-gay counterparts.

There is lots of room in the LGBT giving community for all kinds of giving to all kinds of organizations.

Are LGBT fundraisers better at understanding the needs of diverse groups?

My experience is that good fundraisers are good fundraisers. They live the mission of their organizations. They are consistently sharpening their skills and they are looking at their donors and future donors as partners in the mission. You can do that only if you are looking at the whole donor and looking for a partnership with honesty and integrity and full faith. It’s a partnership. Put yourself into it. LGBT people are in every single organization whether you know it or not, no matter how conservative the organization is or how immoral the organization thinks homosexuality may be. You can take advantage of the benefits of this community of people and include them honestly, or you can pretend they aren’t there.

Any other comments?

I find fundraisers, by and large, are organizers across class and often are the ones who are the most cutting-edge about accepting everybody and trying to live the mission, vision and values of the organization. LGBT people bring a deeper richness to the organization simply because they are another voice and because they bring another set of experiences that may not already be visibly present in an organization.

All LGBT people do not subscribe to a set of values. We’re not given a handbook. LGBT people are a part of every single subset of the population, spanning the political spectrum.

Mickey MacIntyre is principal of realChange Partners, LLC, in Celebration, Fla. He served as co-director of the Denver-based Gill Foundation from 1995 to 1999, and has served as development director for the AIDS Action Council and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force.