The Equality Fund announces $145,000 in grants, celebrates new Advisory Committee members

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Boston – The Equality Fund at the Boston Foundation is pleased to announce that the Fund awarded $145,000 to 30 organizations in its 2021 round of grants. The grantees were recognized during the Equality Fund’s Annual Pride Event. In addition, the Fund recognized five new members to the Equality Fund Advisory Committee, who will help oversee the Fund’s grantmaking and other efforts.

“At a time when LGBTQ+ organizations are working both to support recovery from the pandemic and to fight renewed efforts at discrimination in some areas, these grantees represent a broad cross-section of LGBTQ+-led and -serving efforts to protect, support and uplift our community,” said Catherine D’Amato, CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank and co-chair of the Equality Fund Advisory Committee.

“Last month’s Equality Fund Pride Event served as a great opportunity to highlight the good works going on throughout greater Boston in support of the LGBTQ+ community,” added Elyse Cherry, CEO of BlueHub Capital and co-chair of the Equality Fund Advisory Committee. “It was also wonderful to recognize the new Advisory Committee members, and premiere the Massachusetts LGBT Chamber’s new show, Studio Queer, which featured three of this year’s grantees.”

Studio Queer, which the Massachusetts LGBT Chamber of Commerce plans to produce monthly, was made possible in part by a grant from the Equality Fund, and featured LGBT Elders of Color, the Transgender Emergency Fund of Massachusetts and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) in its first episode.

Equality Fund Advisory Board

With the addition of new members, the Equality Fund Advisory Committee now includes:

David Aronstein, Consultant and Community Leader
*Nineequa Blanding, Vice President of Grantmaking, Health Resources in Action
*Eric Brown, Senior Vice President, KeyBank
Elyse Cherry, CEO, BlueHub Capital - Co-chair
Catherine D'Amato, President and CEO, Greater Boston Food Bank - Co-Chair
*Jude Erondu,Analyst, Pathstone Federal Street
Arlene Fortunato, Senior Vice President for Advancement, Greater Boston Food Bank
Dean Hara, Consultant and Community Leader
Billy Lagor, Interim Chief Growth Officer, The Juice Plus+ Company
Andrea Light, Senior Director, U.S. Knee Commercial Marketing, Smith & Nephew
*Cameran Mason, Chief Development Officer, Museum of Fine Arts Boston
*Ricardo Rodriguez, Founder, Ricardo Rodriguez and Associates
Alexandra Schuman, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, Alexion and & President, Alexion Charitable Foundation

*new member

2021 Equality Fund grantees:

The Equality Fund Advisory Committee is pleased to announce the following grantees for 2021. All funds are given as general operating support.

Bisexual Resource Center: $4,000
The Bisexual Resource Center works to connect the bi+ community and help its members thrive through resources, support, and celebration. We envision an empowered, visible, and inclusive global community for bi+ people.

Boston Alliance of LGBTQ Youth (BAGLY): $8,500
The Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Youth, is a youth-led, adult-supported social support organization, committed to social justice and creating, sustaining, and advocating for programs, policies, and services for the LGBTQ+ youth community.

Boston Pride: $3,000
Boston Pride creates change and progress in society by embracing our community’s diverse history, culture, and identities, promoting community engagement and inclusivity, and striving for visibility and respect in unity. Boston Pride produces events and activities to achieve inclusivity, equality, respect, and awareness in Greater Boston and beyond.

Breaktime: $5,000
Breaktime is a Boston-based nonprofit working to end young adult homelessness through purposeful transitional employment and financial empowerment. We empower young adults experiencing homelessness to secure stable employment and permanent housing while bolstering the health of their communities.

Bridge Over Troubled Waters: $4,000
Bridge Over Troubled Waters provides effective and innovative services to runaway, homeless and high-risk youth, helps youth avoid a lifetime of dependency on social services, guides youth towards self-sufficiency, and enables youth to transform their lives and build fulfilling, meaningful futures.

Children's Friend: $3,000
Our mission is to improve the lives of children and those who love them by creating, supporting, and strengthening families. Our commitment to care for and serve children and their families has remained constant throughout our long history.

Coro Allegro: $4,000
Dedicated to providing access to choral music to broad audiences, to commissioning and performing works by diverse composers, and to serving as a model LGBTQ+ organization through artistic excellence and visibility.

Dancing Queerly: $5,000
Dancing Queerly is an annual festival featuring workshops, mixers, discussions, and performances by and for the LGBTQIA+ community, friends, and allies. Our mission is to bring LGBTQIA+ folks with varying dance experience together in the joy of dance as audience members and participants.

Ethos: $7,500
Ethos is a private, not-for-profit organization that promotes the independence, dignity, and well-being of the elderly and disabled. Ethos achieves its mission through the coordination and delivery of high-quality, affordable home and community-based care.

Fenway Community Health Center: $4,000
Fenway Health advocates for and delivers innovative, equitable, accessible health care, supportive services, and transformative research and education. We center LGBTQIA+ people, BIPOC individuals, and other underserved communities to enable our local, national, and global neighbors to flourish.

GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD): $4,000
Through strategic litigation, public policy advocacy, and education, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders works in New England and nationally to create a just society free of discrimination based on gender identity and expression, HIV status, and sexual orientation.

Greater Boston PFLAG: $4,000
We are a group of parents, families, friends, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. We help change attitudes and create an environment of understanding so that our LGBTQ family members and friends can live in a world that is safe and inclusive. We accomplish this through support, education, and advocacy.

Health Law Advocates: $4,000
To provide pro bono legal representation to low-income residents experiencing difficulty accessing or paying for needed medical services. HLA is committed to ensuring universal access to quality health care in Massachusetts, particularly for those who are most at risk due to such factors as race, gender, disability, age, or geographic location.

History Project: $5,000
Focused exclusively on documenting and preserving the history of New England’s LGBTQ communities and sharing that history with LGBTQ individuals, organizations, allies, and the public.

LGBT Elders of Color: $9,500
LGBT Elders of Color conducts outreach to isolated lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender older adults of color, to build community through social engagement events, creative programs, and provide necessary resources for health care and aging services. Particular emphasis is on locating and supporting this population. 

Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC): $5,000
MTPC works to ensure the wellbeing, safety and lived equity of all trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive community members in Massachusetts.

My Life My Choice: $4,000
At My Life My Choice, we fight the Illegal sex trade by harnessing the strength of survivors. We empower youth to defend themselves and demand a society that does not tolerate the buying and selling of children.

OUT MetroWest: $5,500
OUT MetroWest builds communities where LGBTQ+ youth thrive. It offers more than a dozen free meetings and events for LGBTQ+ youth and allies each month. They serve youth from communities across eastern and central Massachusetts.

Peter DiMuro Public Displays of Motion: $5,000
Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion (PDM), is a dance/theatre production company, comprised of several intergenerational dancers and dance-makers. Their work, spanning decades, has included the lives of LGBTQ+ communities worldwide, from the early days of the AIDS crisis mid-’80’s, to some of the first works to include a spectrum of the community, including trans artists over 20 years ago.

Political Asylum Immigration Representation Project (PAIR): $4,000
Serves low-income asylum-seekers from across the world, unaccompanied minors, and immigrants who are unjustly detained, guiding them through the first step on the journey to becoming United States citizens.

Project Out: $5,000
Project OUT provides support and financial assistance to transgender and gender non-binary individuals who do not have access to life-saving gender-affirming services & products that allow for authentic living. Through education, advocacy and gender-affirming programs, Project Out is dedicated to eradicate bias against the transgender community while empowering the trans community to live safely and authentically each day.

Quincy Asian Resources (QARI): $4,000
QARI's mission is to foster and improve the social, cultural, economic and civic lives of immigrants and their families in order to benefit Quincy and its neighboring communities. Through collaborations and partnerships, we provide culturally competent services, such as workforce development, adult education programs, youth development, and cultural events as well as information and referrals to public or other community organizations.

RESPOND: $4,000
RESPOND partners with individuals, families and communities to end the serious public health issue of domestic violence. RESPOND strives to achieve its mission through prevention, intervention and education services that promote safe, healthy relationships.

School of Arts and Social Justice At Make Shift Boston: $5,000
Make Shift Boston is a collectively-run co-working, events and community meeting space striving to offer Greater Boston an affordable place to be, a safe space to organize, and a sanctuary space for LGBTQ people, People of Color, Immigrants, and persons with disabilities.

Silver Lining Mentoring: $5,000
Empowers youth in foster care to thrive through committed mentoring relationships and the development of essential life skills.

South Coast LGBTQ Network: $5,000
Seeks to build and maintain a comprehensive support network for LGBTQ individuals and families across the age spectrum.

Trans Club of New England: $5,000
TCNE’s primary mission is that of being a social and support club for transgender peoples in the New England region.

Transgender Emergency Fund of Massachusetts: $5,000
The Transgender Emergency Fund is the only organization dedicated to supporting low-income and homeless Transgender individuals in Massachusetts. The Transgender Emergency Fund assists with homelessness prevention, shelter assistance, nutrition assistance, prescription co-pay assistance, transportation and escort to medical appointments.

Victory Programs: $5,000
The mission of Victory Programs, founded in 1975, is to open doors to recovery, hope and community to individuals and families facing homelessness, addiction, HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C, and/or other chronic illnesses.

Y2Y Network: $4,000
Y2Y Network is building student-led programming to interrupt the cycle of homelessness for a generation of young adults. Y2Y Network employs a youth-to-youth model to provide a safe and affirming environment for young adults 18-24 experiencing homelessness. Y2Y guests have opportunities to collaborate with service providers, other youth experiencing homelessness, and student volunteers to create sustainable pathways out of homelessness and develop skills for long-term success.