Grantmaking Activities

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, and in many cases as a response to it, Stonewall Community Foundation had one of its strongest years ever in 2020, with over $1,200,000 of grantmaking to hundreds of organizations and, for the first time in our history, individuals. In 2021, we are on track to exceed that and create a new record of grantmaking for the third year in a row.

Grantee partner Rainbow Heights Club added peer support in a virtual space.

Emergency Response

In March of 2020, before Stonewall even transitioned out of its offices and into a remote work model, the team had already begun discussions of how to address the emergency needs of many of our grantee partners.  Non-profits, particularly service providers, work on razor-thin budget margins, and the financial burden of delivering services while protecting the safety of their staff and clients was anticipated to be intense.

Stonewall’s donors and fund partners were there for us so that we could be there for our community.

We provided Zoom licenses, laptops for case managers, funds for deep cleaning of shelter spaces, extra food for LGBTQ youth who were quarantining in shelters, and more.  We funded tech that helped service organizations create virtual help desks. We supported arts programs and health programs. We supported LGBTQ community centers across the city, and organizations serving some of the most marginalized LGBTQ populations across the country.   All told, in 2020, we made 46 grants to 31 unique organizations from New York City, but also upstate, in Washington DC, Washington State, and Nebraska.  These were small grants:  some under $100, none larger than $5,000, but they all made a difference to our community. 

Microgrant Programs

Most excitingly, two larger grantmaking organizations came to us with a challenge:  How do we get emergency cash grants into the hands of people who had fallen through the cracks?  Stimulus checks were messaged as a means of supporting (income) taxpayers, but what of people in survival economies, the undocumented, and the unhoused?   How would they survive?   Stonewall’s team worked diligently with our community and created two new programs, the Kate Barnhart Fund and El Fondo de la Señora Lorena Borjas, and made direct cash grants of $500 to 178 individuals across New York State, but also to individuals in Illinois, Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia.

The Bee Winkler Weinstein Endowment Fund (“Bee’s Fund”) continues its mission to benefit young women and gender nonbinary and nonconforming people whose families have withdrawn emotional and often financial support because of their sexual and/or gender identity. $37,000 in grants of various sizes were made in 2020 to support young people in taking steps toward becoming self-sufficient in their own lives, including larger block grants awarded to community organizations best positioned to deploy microgrants at their own discretion.  Stonewall trusts our community to know its own needs best.

 Scholarship Programs

Stonewall remains one of the most robust funders of LGBTQ college students in the United States.  We are very excited that in 2020 we established our newest program, the Little Bird Scholarship, providing help for undocumented LGBTQ students and funded by the very first recipient of a similar scholarship at Stonewall in 2014.

In 2020, 12 scholarships were awarded across six programs, including competitive programs like Stonewall’s Traub-Dicker Scholarship as well as programs administered by New York’s LGBTQ Community Center and Hetrick-Martin Institute, the home of the first NYC High School for LGBTQ youth.  Stonewall’s programs provided $41,000 in support to LGBTQ college students at the undergraduate and graduate levels last year.

Photo by Leandro Justen from the Brooklyn Liberation Rally and March in 2020, Brooklyn Liberation was a 2020 Vision Honoree.

Youth Programs

Organizations serving LGBTQ+ Youth are funded from a variety of Stonewall Funds but two of them, the LGBTQ Youth Fund and the Dad Fund are exclusively designed to serve young queer people.  Whether supporting affirming health care for transgender, gender nonconforming or nonbinary youth, providing shelter for those who have lost family support, easing access to educational opportunities, or providing artistic outlets and experiences, our discretionary youth funding provides the next generation of activists, civic leaders, academics, artists, and athletes with the space to explore and define their own identities safely.

Gender and Gender Identity

Transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary individuals and the organizations that serve them are under attack at increasing rates, with more than 120 anti-transgender bills across the United States in 2021 alone. Gender identity and the rights of self-determination are at the core of so much of our work and are a critical part of our mission and vision.   Work supporting these communities can be found in every single program area at Stonewall, but two Stonewall Funds focus exclusively on these individuals.

The Mx. Justin Vivian Bond Fund, founded in honor of the trans icon, artist, and New York City performer, supports TGNC-led organizing, activism, and advocacy.   The Stay Gold Fund, a fund founded by author and theater producer Tobly McSmith, was created to help trans people access gender-affirming surgeries.

In 2020, Stonewall Quarter Share, our young professionals giving circle, made its largest gift ever, $40,000, to support G.L.I.T.S. (Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society), a program that takes a holistic approach to health and housing issues faced by trans people of color.

HIV

One of the reasons that LGBTQ+ populations have handled themselves well during the COVID pandemic is that it is the second largescale health crisis many of us have encountered.  We recognize that there is no cure for HIV and that a full cure is a long way off.  In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of our siblings, cousins, parents, children, and friends are still living with HIV, its long-term impact on the human body, and the ongoing stigma surrounding it.  Many of our programs serve people who are living with HIV, many of our fund partners continue to support organizations like GMHC, Housing Works/Bailey House, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and we are engaged in helping to fund organizations serving the most marginalized populations of people living with HIV.

Our Amida Care Fund provides two-year grants to organizations that work on innovative prevention strategies, as well as those working to ensure that those clients who are living with HIV and are not virally suppressed are receiving appropriate care.  The HIV epidemic isn’t over for any of us until it is over for all of us, and we continue to work to end AIDS.