14
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NOVEMBER 11, 1994
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FUNDING IT
Why our groups are always struggling financially
by Betsy Tabac
Some gays and lesbians are very generous with the time, talent and money they contribute to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. However, the resources presently available to our community are not sufficient to meet all the needs or to accomplish the goals that have been articulated. More people are going to have to give more.
But what about philanthropy among gays and lesbians? Aren't we just like everyone else when it comes to giving our money away?
I don't think so. In fact, there are several factors that negatively influence the philanthropic impulse among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Identifying and disarming these are a necessary and important part of broadening the resources available to support efforts on behalf of sexual minorities.
The factors fall into two broad categories: those that influence our ability to give and those that influence our willingness to give.
These are some factors influencing our ability to give:
Lower pay. We don't know this for sure, but evidence is emerging that shows gay men and lesbians are paid less for the same work than non-gays. Gays are paid from 11 to 27 percent less than straights and lesbians earn 5 to 14 percent less than other women. In addition, lesbians are more likely to have lower-paying jobs than straight women, and gay men are less likely to have managerial positions than straight men. Another factor influencing income is that networking with professional colleagues may be problematic for some homosexuals.
If it is true that our earnings are depressed, we need more of our income just to survive than non-gays do and subsequently, we have less money to contribute.
Lower self-esteem. Most people struggle with issues of self-esteem. However, gays and lesbians receive more than our share of messages that the way we are is not acceptable. This takes a heavy toll on our ability to realize our fullest creative potential and to come across as confident human beings. Our ability to appropriately assert on our own behalf doesn't come easily. This applies when negotiating salary with employers, when we make career choices and a myriad of other decision points. Over a working lifetime, a lack of self-confidence reduces the ability to
earn.
AIDS. The epidemic is taking a toll not only in the tragic and premature loss of life but also in the money available for gay and lesbian causes. People dying from AIDS are often not yet at their peak earning years and they have not had time to accumulate as much money as they would have had they not gotten ill. Thus, resources available to gay and lesbian organizations is reduced since some of this money would likely have been destined for gay and lesbian organizations. Also, a lot of money from gays and lesbians is going to fight the disease and cannot be used on other community needs.
Disinheritance. In the next 20 years, an enormous transfer of wealth from the older generation will occur. Our parents lived through a period of unprecedented economic growth. They were able to save, and are now able to pass on, more than $3 trillion. Children are the usual beneficiaries of this largesse, but this may not be true for gay and lesbian children. If parents have not been able to accept their children's homosexuality, they may leave their money elsewhere, thus reducing the pool of discretionary money in the lesbain and gay community.
Fewer benefits. We have less discretionary money than non-gays because, in most situations, we do not get various benefits associated with being straight or with being single parents. Each of us carries an auto insurance policy and pays for health insurance. We cannot file income tax returns jointly to receive the breaks married couples get.
All these inequities nibble away at the amount of money we could give away. But even if we are able to accumulate enough money to give some away, there are factors influencing our decisions about where to give it away. If we aren't aware of these factors, we might decide not to support queer programs.
Internalized homophobia. People who are told, over and over again, that they are not acceptable have a difficult time recognizing the need to give money to support efforts on behalf of that which is "unacceptable." It is especially hard for gays and lesbians to treasure the invaluable work that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender organizations are doing locally, statewide and nationally. One evidence of this is the continual criticism that is directed at groups serving our community. Another is the marginal nature of most gay and lesbian nonprofit organizations. Giving these groups adequate resources to do their work professionally simply has not been a high enough priority for gays and lesbians.
Few role models. There are very few queers we can see who are philanthropic role models. Everyone's aware of the robber barons, millionaires who subsidized colleges, paid for concert halls and created foundations. But there are only a handful of wealthy gays and lesbians in the United States who have given big bucks to support gay and lesbian organizations and they have done so very recently. For a long time, there were no formal organizations meeting the social, cultural, advocacy or social service needs of our community to receive funds. A tradition of queer philanthropy for queer organizations will take time to build.
Along with building the tradition, we'll have to build a development infrastructure that longer established nonprofits, such as universities, have. I'll discuss this in more detail in future columns.
Sexism and racism within the gay and lesbian community cause innumerable problems and much personal pain. They also affect our attitudes toward philanthropy for gay and lesbian organizations. It is almost impossible to identify lesbians of wealth who are out, active members of Cleveland's gay and lesbian community. There are many reasons they aren't more involved, but gay male sexism is one of them. Thus the money, not to mention the talent, that wealthy lesbians could bring to our movement is lost. The same applies to racism. When an AfricanAmerican, Latino/a or other minority is deciding which organizations to give money to, the recipient is not likely to be an organization that does not welcome minorities or a community that tolerates that behavior.
Poor planning. Gay and lesbian organizations are unwilling to come together to plan and set priorities. We try to do everything at once. Thus, our philanthropic dollars are spent haphazardly, in a scattershot manner instead of in a focused, rational fashion. This pattern of philanthropy reduces the effectiveness of organizations and ultimately makes them less attractive candidates for donations than their well-run counterparts.
I raise these issues associated with homosexual philanthropy directed toward homosexual organizations so we can think about them and work to change those that can be changed. We're in for the long haul and need to do everything possible to encourage and enable philanthropy within our community. Meeting the unmet human service needs of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, promoting gay culture, working for our civil rights, keeping the recreation programs going, educating the public about homosexuality, supporting the religious organizations all the necessary and worthy activities our community needs requires money and lots of it. Most of it will have to come from within our community.
What are you doing to promote queer philanthropy?
Betsy Tabac is president of GrantMaster, a grants funding research and proposal writing firm in Cleveland.