SAGE, an organization for LGBT seniors, is currently conducting a survey of LGBT adults in the Atlanta area to find out what their needs and wants are for housing.
To take the survey, click here.
It takes about 10 minutes to complete and questions include if people want to live in a inclusive facility, one that includes LGBT and heterosexual residents; if one prefers to live in their own home but have services provided; how much people are willing to pay; as well as age and health needs.
From the nine organizations that responded to the GA Voice LGBT organization survey, several key financial themes emerge:
• Individual donations make up a smaller percentage of budgets than you might think in a community as large as ours, coming in far below 50 percent for every organization except Savannah Pride (which has a small budget of only $50,000) and the StandUp Foundation (which benefited from a major anonymous donor in 2012).
• Federal and state grants support a large portion of some health agencies’ HIV work, but no local LGBT groups receive government funding.
• Corporate sponsorships are not common, either. Even Atlanta Pride, which gets chided from some activists for being “too corporate,” gets less than half of its funding from corporate sponsorships — and a miniscule 4.7 percent from individual donations.
Survey participants included Atlanta Pride, Georgia Equality, The Health Initiative, Lost-N-Found Youth, Savannah Pride, the StandUP Foundation, AID Atlanta, Positive Impact and Someone Cares Atlanta.
As Creating Change, the national LGBT equality conference, comes to Atlanta, GA Voice surveyed 15 local organizations to provide a snapshot of what it will take to “create change” for LGBT people here in our state.
The answers? Education, outreach, more volunteers, and, yes, more money.
The nine organizations that responded to the survey include the Southeast’s largest Pride festival, the Southeast’s largest AIDS service provider and our state’s largest LGBT political group.
Local organizations host public meeting on housing discrimination
The Human Rights Campaign has announced its keynote speaker for the upcoming HRC Atlanta Dinner and Awards Gala.
U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wi.), who represents the state's 2nd Congressional District, will be the dinner's featured keynote speaker. Baldwin, a candidate for one of Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate seats, is the founder and co-chair of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus and one of only four openly gay members to serve in the U.S. Congress. She was the first person to be openly gay when elected to Congress (others had come out while in office) and if successful in her current campaign, would be the first openly gay U.S. senator.
The HRC says of Baldwin: