The two of us have been drinking a lot of coffee and eating a lot of lunches during these first two months with PFund. There are so many of you we want to meet. We are eager to hear your stories about PFund and to listen to your vision for LGBT communities in the Upper Midwest. We anticipate a lot more cups of coffee before the first six months are through.
Some of the first coffee dates we set were with two of PFund’s founders. Why, we wanted to know, did they start this foundation? What were they hoping for?
Origin stories are powerful things. They are a kind of measuring stick, useful for understanding how far we have come but also useful for reflecting on how the broader context around us has changed. We remembered this as we sat with Jim Quinn and then Gregg White over coffee.
PFund, or Philanthrofund as it was then called, was started by four gay men, four friends, in 1987 as a response to the emerging AIDS crisis and its effect on the gay male community. As one of the founders explained, “Remember, in 1987 we assumed that everyone who was HIV positive was going to die. We didn’t understand any other possible future.” They saw the legacy that many of their friends had already established. They knew that many of their friends, rejected by their families of origin, had made the gay community their family and home. The founders’ concern was how to make sure that if these men were dying, their money would somehow go back into the community that had cared about them.
The four men approached one of the local foundations to see if they would be willing to house a fund where gay people could leave their bequests. They were told by this foundation that their money was welcome as long as the name of the new fund didn’t include anything related to homosexuality.
Instead, with the $2,000 they pooled together, the friends established Philanthrofund. Their vision: we are strong enough to take care of our own. This meant many different things: it meant that the foundation could be a place where community money could be collected in order to go back into the community. It also meant that the foundation could be a voice, a place of power that could then be used to influence other foundations and other organizations to be responsive to the needs of the gay community. They wanted this legacy to go towards improving the community for all of them, building its capacity to take care of its own.
As the two of us sat down with Jim and Gregg almost 25 years later, we noticed how things have changed and, at the same time, how they remain the same. What’s different: PFund now works with and for the broader LGBT communities, having shifted almost immediately into broadening beyond the gay community alone. There are more organizations, more businesses, and more general knowledge about LGBT people than there was when PFund began.
But some things haven’t changed at all. PFund continues to believe that every community and every organization has the right to determine its own vision and strategy for the changes it wants to make possible. Our vision continues to be as a catalyst in building communities in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are celebrated and live free from discrimination, violence, invisibility and isolation.
Origin stories are powerful things. They tell us how far we’ve come and how much the world around us has changed. As PFund enters a new period of strategic planning with a range of new staff, we are proud of the ways we continue to be guided by our own origin story.
-Kate and Susan
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