PFundonline

A Week in the Life

2011-10-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

We’ve noticed that one of the questions we get quite often at PFund is some version of, “OK, so what exactly do you do? I mean, I know you give out money and you ask people for money, but how much time does that really take?”

It’s a good question. If you’ve never worked at a community foundation, it can feel a bit like smoke and mirrors: all of those people, all of that staff time, and what exactly fills up their time? We thought we would describe a few of the highlights from this week.

Monday: In addition to the regular things like finance check-ins and planning for our year end ask (watch for it in your mail!), we also met with a group of six LGBT people under the age of 35 to begin thinking together about young LGBT donors, a queer youth giving circle and the power of young people in making change.

Tuesday: Well, as the song goes, if it’s Tuesday we must be in St. Cloud. PFund joined grantee partner OutFront Minnesota and the Minnesotans United for all Families campaign in attending a Community Action Training for people interested in defeating the marriage amendment in 2012. This was an opportunity for PFund to learn more about OutFront and MN United’s grassroots organizing and leadership development work and to meet some of our community members in St. Cloud.

Wednesday: Did you know that more than 100 LGBT people of color will be gathering in Minneapolis and St. Paul this December to share stories, learn strategies for community change and begin long term thinking about building capacity among LGBT people of color in the US? And did you know that PFund, along with the Astraea Foundation in New York, is hosting this gathering? It’s called BOLD (www.boldgathering.org) and it’s already happening. There are teleconferences for participants and other learning opportunities leading up to the December gathering. For staff at PFund, it means ongoing telephone calls and planning. We are hosting the opening events and helping to make sure that all of our guests are comfortable and ready to work together. This is part of what it means for a community foundation to support community infrastructure, making sure that our local LGBT people of color organizations have what they need to continue their work. On Wednesday, there were phone calls, phone conferences and staff debriefs.

Thursday: You probably already know about the two reports PFund put out on LGBT seniors: Equality as We Age and Ready to Serve? You might also know that PFund was honored with the Excellence in Aging Award from SAGE. But you might not have known that PFund’s work on aging continues. On Thursday we will be meeting with an advisory group that has focused on creating a new request for proposals that will direct grant dollars towards advocacy work on behalf of LGBT seniors.

Friday: At the end of the work day, we cap off the week with a taping at Bi Cities, the online cable access show. On BiCities Kate and Susan will talk about the jobshare, PFund's work and their vision for our impact. We’ll make sure you know when it’s being aired.

Here’s what we didn’t cover in our highlights: the piles of grant proposals on the table in Kayva’s office, planning grant reviewer orientation this Saturday, who we had coffee with and learned from, how much money came in to PFund this week as well as the ways we are planning to send it back out and more. All of that, well, you’ll see it summarized in the annual report. Watch for that in another month or so.

Welcome New Board Members

2011-09-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

PFund is proud to welcome six new members to our board. PFund is lucky that each of these leaders, with their wisdom, strong relationships across PFund’s community, and dedication, are joining our board of directors:

Curtis Brock brings more than 30 years of financial management and executive leadership experience to PFund. Over a long career at Alliant Techsystems, he served in numerous leadership roles, including vice president of enterprise operations, vice president of employee benefit solutions, vice president of internal audit, and director of finance. Since retiring, Curtis has become a certified financial planner. He has experience as a donor for multiple organizations and as a board member, most recently with the African-American AIDS Task Force.

Lois Carlson has been a friend of PFund since 1995. She has served as a board member, as co-chair for the PFund Cabaret fundraiser, as a long term donor, and as a volunteer, in multiple capacities. Currently serving as the vice president of investments at UBS Financial Services, Lois has also been a volunteer with the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus and other nonprofit organizations.

Max Gries has a long history with PFund, from serving on grants and scholarship committees, participating in the executive director search committee, and being honored as PFund’s 2010 Power of One award winner. Max's leadership roles and volunteer experience have touched almost every major initiative, project, or organization in the Twin Cities transgender community. A musician, Max teaches private piano lessons and serves as house manager at the University of Minnesota’s Ted Mann Concert Hall. Max's skill sets include event planning and production, project management, and community building.

Jennifer Houston is experienced in nonprofit management, program development, and community outreach. Currently serving as a new program associate with the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, Jennifer has also worked at West Side Community Health Services and the Minnesota Asian American Health Coalition. Bilingual in English and Spanish, her work experience includes broad community development work in Minnesota, New York, and El Salvador.

Alex Iantaffi’s doctorate work focused on the intersection of disability and gender in higher education. Alex is also a licensed family therapist; his professional experience and published work focus on human sexuality, transgender communities and LGBTQ family networks. Trilingual in Italian, English, and British Sign Language, Alex is an immigrant to the United States from Italy. He is currently Project Coordinator with the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota. His volunteer and work experience includes many years of youth work, particularly with LGBTQ youth, and activism on issues of human sexuality and HIV/AIDS.

Lindsay Kruh is a long-time member of the PFund community, as a donor for both general operating funds and grants and as a volunteer serving on the communications committee. Currently a community volunteer, Lindsay retired in 2008 from Macy’s department store (previously Dayton’s/Marshall Field’s), where he spent the majority of his career in merchandising as a buyer, merchandise planner, and logistics manager. His most recent experience has been working with Project for Pride in Living (PPL), supporting its employment training effort. A longtime resident of the Powderhorn Park neighborhood in Minneapolis, Lindsay enjoys flower gardening, theater, and working out at the downtown YMCA.

Our First Glimpse Into PFund’s Grantmaking Process

2011-08-31T11:27:00.000-07:00

Reflection by Kate and Susan

How many cooks does it take to finish the perfect dish? No, this isn’t the start of a joke. It’s more of an intro to reflecting on PFund’s letter of inquiry process. In August PFund kicked off our annual grant round. We received more than 80 letters of inquiry from LGBT nonprofits and programs seeking funding for the work they are doing across the Upper Midwest.

The reason for the whole cooking question in the first sentence is this: there were seven people – a mix of staff and community members – who spent four hours talking through the letters. Having never been a part of this process before, we were more than impressed by the thoroughness of the process. There were at least three times when “the majority” voted no on a particular project, not seeing the connection between the project description and PFund’s grant guidelines. On each of these occasions, one of the reviewers made a passionate and detailed pitch, asking the rest of us to reflect for a moment longer on the potential impact PFund funding could have. They pointed out elements we had missed, provided context we had overlooked, and generally made sure that some very viable projects got through that might otherwise have been overlooked.

This is why the community part of a community foundation is key: not a single one of us has enough information or insight to fully appreciate the breadth of our community. The only thing we can each agree to do is this: keep listening and be open to learning. PFund is grateful for every organization, project and individual leader working hard to make our lives more joyful. In the end we invited 35 groups to submit full proposals. From GSA development to theater productions, from lobbying to leadership development, this year’s set of applicants are responding to urgent and critical needs across the region and building powerful LGBT communities for the longhaul.

While we can’t yet fund everything that deserves to be funded, we are going to continue working hard to get closer to funding every single one of them. Go ahead, go online and make a donation towards that glorious future.

http://givemn.razoo.com/story/P-Fund-Foundation

Matthew Antonio's Ode to PFund

2011-08-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

Ode to PFund – Performed August 3, 2011 by Matthew Antonio Bosch (PFund Volunteer & REI Graduate)
at PFund’s SummerCAMP to raise funding & awareness for the Racial Equity Initiative

I only got 5 minutes, 5 minutes is all I got

To tell you about PFund, so I gotta make this hot

First off, who am I, a bunch of y’all don’t know

A queer Latino from New York named Matthew Antonio

I started out with PFund as a community volunteer

Reviewing scholarships for queer students, just finished my 4^th year

Reading these amazing stories, from so very many queers

I realized at Age 16, I was nowhere near this fierce

Underground queer activism in rural communities & the church

Or academic excellence through active grad research

So after a few years of that, I learned about a group

Where you could connect with others & enter the queers of color loop

Alfonso said it’s REI, we’re a few years strong & countin’


(c) Anna Min

I said REI’s a camping store, I’m not rappellin’ off no mountain!

He said no, it’s an initiative devoted to racial equity

We’ll be promoting collaboration, leadership, & integrity

You’ll get to meet new people, Black Latino Asian

Native & Middle Eastern, look it’s a POC celebration

During my time with REI, we had some monthly meetings

To talk about our conferences, our workshops, & some readings

We shared our daily struggles & success with solidarity

Across unlikely allies with surprising levels of clarity.

They sent me to a conference for queer POCs

I wish that would happen here, but San Diego sure did please

REI brought in some speakers, I actually use their stuff at work

Plus they fed us pizza & salad, chomp chomp mmm…what a perk!

I got to visit places I’d never been before

Like the office for Shades of Yellow, so awesome to explore.

So you see you get connected, as a result of REI

Increasing your knowledge base & your POC network on the fly

You might think “Ok so that’s done, well what happens when you finish?”

Well the doors swing out wide open, the opportunities don’t diminish

They asked if I’d join PFund’s committee to find the next Executive Director

Since I’m a volunteer, a donor, they called me a ‘community connector’

So then I met the staff, the Board, & some amazing committee members

And we hired Susan & Kate, it was unanimous I remember

Now look at this place, people of every ethnicity, faith, & age

What were you ever thinking, giving me a microphone and a stage?

But now you know about PFund, our initiatives are ever raging,

And I hope you found this format very informative and engaging.

Thank you

Cathy Perry - 2011 Power of One Award Recipient

2011-08-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

One after the other, as people who knew Cathy Perry found out she was the recipient of this year’s Power of One award, they paused and smiled, nodding their heads, and said, “yes, yes, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly who should receive it.” Cathy has that effect on people.

In 2006, Cathy moved to Bemidji, Minn. from San Francisco and immediately began to put down roots and build her new home. In working with Servant Hearts, Cathy was one of the founders of the Hospitality Initiative, a program which works to increase awareness, services and support for marginalized LGBTI2SQA youth and adults in Greater Minnesota. Its vision and its efforts focus on creating inclusive, safe, welcoming and bias-free communities within the northern Minnesota rural region.

Cathy founded the Human Connection Foundation, advocating for ESL students and their families. Since settling in Bemidji, she has done extensive community volunteer work, and event coordination for Evergreen House, Inc. and the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Cathy's immense experience with cultural diversity training, working with volunteers, community organizations, leadership and being a world traveler compliments her passion in dispelling the disparities within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer communities. In addition to Servant Hearts, Cathy serves on the Board of Directors for Rural AIDS Action Network (RAAN).

And that’s only the beginning. Cathy is one of those people who, when she sees a need or an opportunity, immediately joins in with others to create solutions that help make their shared community stronger. Cathy has been instrumental in the formation of a GSA at Bemidji High School. She has been a speaker at a variety of educational and community programs. Among them are Bemidji State University's GLBTA group, The Phoenix. She has spoken at Evergreen Services, the Beltrami, Cass and Hubbard Counties Sexual Assault Program.Cathy has been a guest speaker at several classes at Bemidji State University addressing gender equality. Cathy hosted Esera Tuaolo when he spoke at BSU for National coming Out Day. She has participated in conversations with Bemidji Middle School, Headwaters Allliance for Suicide Prevention.

One of the three people who nominated Cathy, Jini Lawless (a PFund scholar), had this to say about Cathy: “Cathy is a diligent, thorough, hard-working, committed woman who's forethought and dedication have made a profound impact in this community. Cathy has brought light, information, and hope to a town where previously there had been little talk of LGBT issues or resources for LGBT people.”

It’s not only program development that takes Cathy’s time. She is someone who shows up for the biggest and the smallest jobs. From designing brochures to printing and distributing handouts to staying late to clean, she makes sure that every level of work is taken care of.

Cathy has been the momentum behind RAP (Respect Awareness Project)-a week long community educational event which will include a seminar with presentations by a physician, mental health provider, theologian, 3 presentations by Jamie Nabozny and daily empowerment drumming activities as well as opportunities for an open mic. With each activity, Cathy has arranged venues, co-ordinated availibility of CEU's with Bemidji State University, provided "creature comforts", handouts, arranged for breaks and meals and generally provided hospitality to all attenedees.

Says Tandy Bowman, one of her other nominators, “Cathy’s activism, love for people and passion to make a difference is changing our northern community. Cathy is a very strong leader and motivated, challenges the norm and expresses the need to improve, grow and build unified communities. Her leadership is beyond words and those who work with her, around her or listen when she gives presentations, know that Cathy's passion for bias-free, inclusive and welcoming communities is what needs to be present continually. She judges no one and her heart is always ready to accept the challenge to make changes.”

This is work of love for Cathy and her partner, Tandy Bowman. Just stop by their house on a regular Saturday afternoon. There will be young people in the kitchen making posters for a social event in the coming month, neighbors stopping by to talk about the news, and others coming in and out to drop off newsletters or something they’ve just finished baking. This is Cathy’s work and why PFund is honored to award her with the 2011 Power of One Award.

summerCAMP, racial equity and PFund’s legacy

2011-08-11T13:37:00.000-07:00

In 2005, a group of Board members and community members of color – with a few white allies - successfully created the first ever endowment for LGBT people of color in the US. That’s right – until six years ago, no such endowment existed. Shortly after that, the Funders for LGBTQ Issues began their Racial Equity Initiative (REI). REI directed dollars to community foundations, including PFund, to be used as grants for organizations run by and for LGBT people of color. These national dollars were to be matched by local dollars, the idea being that each local community would then build its capacity to fundraise for LGBT people of color organizations.

And so last week we partied precisely for that reason. PFund’s third ever summerCAMP event was also our largest yet. Over 80 people came together to deepen and build relationships, listen to powerful speakers including Kaoz, and to put some money into the REI bucket.
The REI initiative, a national initiative, ends this year. In December, Minneapolis will host a national convening as part of the ending note of a four-year project. BOLD: A Queer and Trans People of Color Gathering to Support our Liberation and Self Determination is a historic gathering that will be taking place from December 2-4 2011 in downtown Minneapolis. This gathering, which is being hosted by the Astraea Foundation and PFund Foundation, will convene over 80 queer and trans people of color organizations funded by eight foundations across the country.

This gathering is historic because it’s the first national gathering of queer and trans people of color in the United States. The opportunity will provide attendees with an opportunity to build organizing skills, sharpen thinking, strengthen collective voice and create a vision for the future that speaks directly to histories of resilience, creativity, desire, passion and vision. Ten of the eighty people gathering will be coming from the Twin Cities metro area. Locally, we are excited to watch as they bring what they learn at the convening into their everyday work and lives.

This convening is the “closing note” of the Racial Equity Initiative work that has strongly informed PFund’s activities for the last three years. But the ending isn’t an ending. Instead, it’s a “closing forward.” PFund will “end” REI as part of an opening to the next chapter of PFund’s racial equity and racial justice work. PFund’s commitment to communities of color across the region predates REI. It continues long after the grant reports have been written and the REI evaluation has been completed. summerCAMP in 2011 was focused on raising dollars for the REI match. summerCAMP 2012 will still raise dollars to be passed on to LGBT organizations in the upper Midwest working towards racial equity and racial justice. The party will continue to grow, as will the resources that PFund can provide. We hope you want to be a part of it.

In the short term, you can do a whole host of things to support PFund’s racial equity and racial justice work:
•    Give towards the REI match through to the end of 2011
•    Consider making a legacy gift to go towards the Communities of Color endowment
•    Spread the word about this work, making sure that at PFund we know about emerging LGBT organizations or projects that center racial equity and racial justice

And keep watching this page! We will make sure you stay in the loop about the ending of REI and the vision for moving forward.

Phew… that’s about all we can say

2011-07-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

Well, we were warned but we refused to believe. We were warned that at the six month mark of this new position, we would need to stop for a minute, look around, clear our heads and then look around once more. In other words, we would wake up from that place of being a brand new Executive Director to being the ongoing Executive Director. It’s like that moment where you begin to see enough pieces of a puzzle to get a sense of how the whole thing fits together. And the “ah-ha” moments that go along with that are part of why we have been silent in the PFund blogosphere for the last month. But while we have been quiet, we have also been active:

Cheering a lot as we welcomed Kayva Yang as the new PFund Program Officer. Kayva’s incredible skills and insight in the area of grant programming and community capacity building has already begun to build on PFund’s past work. It’s truly been amazing.
Cheering a lot more as we welcomed a range of new members to our Board of Directors. We are lucky to begin working with Lois Carlson, Max Gries, Jennifer Houston, Alex Iantaffi, Curtis Brock and Lindsay Kruh.
Talking with a range of community members and fellow funders about the proposed anti-gay marriage amendment in 2012 and continuing to think about our role in this work and, in particular, how we can continue to work in partnership to build the strength of the LGBT community for the long term.
Listening to grantee partners share stories of how the state shutdown impacted them and their communities and sharing these stories with our peers in philanthropy
Finishing our fiscal year 2011 in a strong place, ending on budget and exceeding our expectations for our end-of-year June fundraising campaign thanks to our generous PFund donor community!
Continuing through our strategic planning which includes looking more deeply at our history as well as our projected future. We have been busy gathering data and crafting questions, and now we are entering the time of interviewing stakeholders and crafting the nuts and bolts of our plan.

Among staff, we’ve talked about coming to the end of a year of transition; a period that began when the outgoing ED, Greg Grinley, left PFund a little less than a year ago. Kayva’s hire represents the last part of this period of transition. It has been fabulous to welcome Board members and strategic planning steering committee members who reflect PFund’s 25 years of history even as we are in the process of forming a brand new staff team. Our guesstimate is that we have about six more months before this “newness” feels like old hat – and we are excited to launch into our new fiscal year with a strong and complete Board and staff team.

As we launch forward into fiscal year 2012, you are going to be the best reflection on how well we are putting together the pieces of the puzzle. As we continue to check in with our founders, with people who have been involved with PFund across our almost-25 year span, and with people who are brand new to the PFund community, we continue to look for ways to bring the future and the past together. So consider this a standing invitation to pick up the phone and let us know how we’re doing, ok?

After last weekend at the Capitol: resourcing community

2011-05-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

As most of you reading this already know and despite extraordinary organizing efforts to stop it, the 2012 election will be including a vote on an amendment to ban marriage equality in Minnesota.

At moments like this, being involved with a community foundation is a funny thing. It’s different from being involved in any other kind of community organization. Here’s what we mean: Our role is to create the space for conversation across community to take place, conversation that will support our communities to make the changes needed to become stronger. This means stating our organizational opinions is much less important than how we listen, and the moments when we can create the opportunity for all of us to listen to each other. And to then respond from that listening.

Our community has a variety of opinions about the struggle for marriage equality. For many of us, the right to same-sex marriage is a fierce point of liberation. The lack of this legal right is a constant reminder that same-sex relationships are seen as less equal than different-sex relationships. For others among us, marriage is not a priority. Instead, other issues are seen as more urgent, more demanding of our community’s resources.

As a community foundation, PFund’s role is not to decide which community priority is the most important, but to instead support the forums where dialogues about our shared agenda can take place. And sometimes, parts of the agenda are decided for us.

The fight at the Capitol is a fight about resources: the resources of time, of money, and of hope. Because of this potential amendment, thousands of Minnesotans who might otherwise be putting their time, talent and tenacity towards building a state that cares for all of us will be putting their energy towards defeating someone else’s agenda.

Currently Minnesota is facing budget cuts that will significantly affect the quality of life for Minnesotans: from eliminating affordable health care to closing multiple state parks and recreation areas. Cuts to prevention and intervention services place vulnerable children at greater risk of peril and cuts to employment support will push some families with children deeper into poverty. These cuts will impact those of us who are aging, those of us with ongoing healthcare needs, and those of us already living some distance from necessary services, such as individuals in rural communities. These are our families. Our children. Our community.

As Senator Scott Dibble and others have voiced so clearly, our time is better spent in coming together to make sure our state has the resources needed to build safety and the space for celebration for each one of us. As your community foundation, our role is also to maximize the resources that are available to our LGBT community to make the changes we need so that all of us can be celebrated and live free from discrimination, violence, invisibility and isolation. Thank you to all of those who spent time at the Capitol, demanding that our focus remain on figuring our how we can best share the wealth that is Minnesota rather than having to defend ourselves against a campaign we didn’t choose.

- Kate and Susan

Anatomical Leadership

2011-05-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

A key element of PFund’s mission is to develop leaders. Among the staff and Board, we ask a lot of questions about what it means to develop leaders and, related to that, what exactly individual leadership means. How can organizations be community leaders? What is the role of listening in leadership and when does listening lead to action? What should be expected of an individual leader in relationship to broader communities?

We’ve recently had the opportunity to dive deeply into these questions again while going through the scholarship review process. Like all review processes, scholarships are selected by groups of community members. Diverse in their LGBT identities, in their life experiences and in their understandings of leadership, this group gets together to go over all of the applications and match up individuals with scholarships.

As showcased in the press release, these scholars represent a powerful group of leaders. They are as diverse as the group who selected them and that diversity includes their understanding of their own leadership. Again, what exactly is individual leadership?

To reflect on that question, we went to thinking about anatomy, wondering what 800,000 years of evolution might teach us about leadership and making change.

Free radicals are a unique kind of atom in the body: they can change their electronic signature from negative to positive or they can carry zero charge. Free radicals move throughout the body, attaching and repelling atoms from one organ to the next, sometimes causing problems and sometimes supporting important change. Free radicals are an important part of the immune system. They help determine which cells or tissues are harmful to the body and need to be broken down or built up. They are free-moving, hence their name, and their independence, literally, helps them to identify problems that other aspects of the body can’t easily “see.”

This same skill set, this independent and free movement, can be a problem. Free radicals can destroy cell membranes, disrupt crucial processes in the body, reprogram DNA, form mutant cells and generally cause significant cellular degeneration or, as many believe, out of control cell reproduction, otherwise known as cancer.

Free radicals are an incredibly important part of our system when they work along with the body as a whole, identifying what is dangerous to the system and supporting the body to shift what is dangerous. Free radicals work against the system when they choose their own direction, working away from the body’s needs and wellness.

And this is a blog about individual leadership. The metaphor is hopefully obvious at this point. What is the role of an individual leader and how are they accountable to the larger community? Go ahead, let all of the tongue-in-cheek moments take up some time – hey, I know a free radical! You should see the number of bumperstickers on their car, hardy har har. But very seriously, sometimes it takes the unique perspective of an individual to give voice to something that needs to change. This is individual leadership – being able to speak against the tide, to draw our attention to something we have been missing, and to then work with us to make the necessary change.

When individual leaders work outside of the community context, meaning they are separate from systems of accountability and transparency, they have the potential of causing more damage than good.

PFund is so excited to present to you the list of scholarship recipients for 2011. We are honored to be in community with this group of individuals who have taught us, yet again, the strength of an individual voice. We also want to acknowledge that while we could not provide scholarships for all those who applied, we still recognize the breadth of individual leadership demonstrated by each applicant. Please celebrate them with us, knowing that who they are and what they do only helps to make us all of us stronger.

On the Road Again...

2011-05-10T08:17:00.000-07:00

Periodically, different staff and Board members will be writing blog entries. Over the summer, we are going to begin inviting community members to also submit. This is the first entry for this blog written by Alfonso Wenker, currently Director of Programs and soon to be Director of Development & Communications.

Early on Friday, April 29, Kate and I got in a car and headed northwest. We spent two days listening and learning with LGBT and allied leaders in St. Cloud, Fargo and Grand Forks. Our travels were part of PFund’s QNet Roadshow – community listening sessions we hold in cities and towns across the greater Upper Midwest. We began this tradition last summer and will continue it into the coming year.

These community visits are our words in action. We’ve been writing here on our blog and speaking publicly about regular regional travel, community listening sessions and regional outreach. This is part of our commitment to be more accountable to our region as a whole.

In St. Cloud we met folks from St. Cloud Pride, Winning Marriage Equality and St. Cloud State University LGBT Center. Everyone in the room shared that they were battling the reputation of an unwelcoming St. Cloud. Much of their work is aimed at creating a welcoming and affirming climate for LGBT people living in and visiting St. Cloud. The organizations we met with are working to mobilize their communities and to provide St. Cloud and the surrounding communities with the skills needed to develop allies.

Following our visit to St. Cloud, we headed out to Fargo. There we were inspired by the work the Pride Collective and Community Center and Dakota LGBTQ Campus Alliance had done to organize a counter protest during a local production of The Laramie Project. When followers of Fred Phelps came to town to condemn the theatrical production, local groups organized more than 2,000 community members in a counter-demonstration that focused on building community within and among LGBT people. The local organizers also used this opportunity to focus on creating opportunities for developing a common agenda for LGBT communities in Fargo.

On Saturday, April 29, the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks was host to the first annual North Dakota GLBTQA Conference. PFund scholar, Tanner Schuh, was one of the primary organizers of the conference. During a feedback session he encouraged participants to consider making a gift to PFund. He shared, “I wouldn’t be in school if it weren’t for PFund’s recognition and support of my activism.” It was so exciting to see one of our scholars in action and organizing in his community.

National bisexual activist, Robyn Ochs, keynoted the conference. Robyn spoke of the importance of local organizing efforts and supporting one another in our work for the long haul. “We’ve made a lot of progress in our movement’s short history,” Robyn remarked. “But we have a long way to go until each and every one of us experiences the world as a just and fair place.”

As the first segment of our 2011 QNet Roadshow, Kate and I were moved by the breadth of commitment and brilliance across our region. We are excited to continue learning from community members as we begin to plan our next trip.

- - Alfonso

The Power of Listening

2011-04-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

This coming weekend, Alfonso and Kate will be traveling to St. Cloud, Minn. and then to Fargo and Grand Forks in North Dakota. This trip was planned before the two of us joined PFund, but it’s also a launching point for a series of listening sessions we will begin holding on a monthly basis. These listening sessions are part of a broader convening that began following the Creating Change conference in February. The focus of these sessions is to listen to how individuals and organizations on the ground are working to advance LGBT equality each and every day and to then build networks and strategy that supports that work across the entire region.

As a community foundation, our role is to build the power of LGBT communities in the Upper Midwest through funding, developing leaders, inspiring giving, and convening and reporting on issues of importance within our communities. This means working to change attitudes, change systems and break down barriers at the intersection of our identities- sexual orientation, gender, race, and culture- to advance equality. We’ll be asking what that means specifically in multiple communities across the region, starting with this trip on April 29 through 30.

Every other month, PFund will be traveling out of the Cities to a different part of the five-state region to ask these questions and listen to the answer. At the same time, we’ll be holding regular listening sessions in the metro area. These will be organized by zip code and the first, at 55407, is set for Monday, May 16 . Metro area listening sessions will be asking the same questions: what work is already taking place, what needs still exist, and what is PFund’s role in meeting those needs. But for the sake of conversation, let’s break that down a bit further.

During the metro listening sessions, we are interested in hearing about what it’s like where you live. What are the issues that seem most relevant in your neighborhood? How does that impact you? We’re talking in a general way initially, in a kind of day to day basic living kind of way. This means that you might talk about your LGBT experiences but you might not. Don’t worry, though, we’ll be layering questions specific to being LGBT: What is it like to be LGBT where you live? What are the issues that most concern you? What do you love about being LGBT and want to celebrate? What do you wish that others knew?

PFund is a community foundation. What that means is that our role is to provide spaces for community to identify its own needs, visions and strategies while we provide the resources to help make it all possible. So every listening session is going to spend some time talking about resources. And like good listeners, we’re going to be asking questions about all resources including money, of course, but also time, attention, information, infrastructure and so on. What would help to address the issues that have been raised? What kinds of resources already exist in your community and what resources are still needed? And then following on from that, how can PFund help?

In all of these sessions, whether in Fargo, Des Moines or St. Paul, we will make sure there is time for building relationships because, after all, that’s the strongest resource we have. As much as we want to listen to you, we are also excited by what happens when we are all listening to each other. And those conversations are the kinds that build movements for social change.

- Kate and Susan

Talkin' 'bout my generation...

2011-04-19T10:59:00.001-07:00

In a conversation with a community member about PFund’s origin, we reflected that we are both interested in learning more about how people stepped up to help each other when the AIDS crisis was at its most terrible. In particular, we mentioned wanting to learn more about how community members supported each other before organizations were established: with healthcare, money, information and so on. The community member, involved with PFund since the early days, remarked that those stories weren’t interesting, everyone already knew those things. Kate leaned across the table and said, “I don’t know those things. I was six years old then. This is my history and I want to know about it.”

Sitting in a staff conversation where three of us were reflecting on a local organization, on how it has changed over the years and what those changes mean. Susan kept referring to the vision and mission of the organization, telling stories of its early days and how those stories were really the heart of that organization. One of the staff members, sitting quietly during this storytelling, interrupted at one point to say, “For some of us, that history isn’t what’s real. What’s real is what we’ve experienced over the past three or four years. This is all we know so it’s what we respond to. Just because we weren’t around for the early days doesn’t mean our experience is invalid.”

One of PFund’s strengths is that its staff and Board run in age from 24 to 65. There are significant differences in the coming out experiences of our oldest and youngest members. Some things are better and some things are harder, depending on the moment we’re talking about. But what is key is this: each of us carries a critical piece of understanding PFund’s role as a community foundation in supporting community.

There is seventeen years in age between the two of us. When Kate was born, Susan was already finished with high school. Susan’s memory includes the ending of the Vietnam War, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and the moment when Ronald Reagan was elected. Susan remembers walking down the streets in Bristol, England, having a conversation with a friend about this strange “gay disease” that was cropping up in the States. She remembers lesbian feminism and the March on Washington in 1987. One of Kate’s earliest political memories is the falling of the Berlin Wall when she was 8 years old. She came out as queer in the context of debates about trans exclusion at the Michigan Womyn’s Festival and read “This Bridge Called My Back” as a historical text, twenty years after it was published. The election of George W. Bush and the aftermath of 9/11 are what she remembers as the events that shaped her political coming-of-age.

The historical moment when we first begin to name our sexual orientation or our gender identity is key to how we understand ourselves. It’s the foundation we build from. And for a lot of us, it’s a fierce foundation. Naming yourself when everyone around you tells you that you are wrong or different is an act of personal reclamation. It’s an act of defiance. And it takes a significant amount of will to speak your truth into a large chorus that tells you there is something wrong with you. For this reason, when we do name ourselves, we tend to be very strongly marked by the moment we speak out. This is the moment of our story, our history, and it can often feel sacred.

This is why intergenerational work in the LGBT community can be so challenging, and yet so worthwhile. Words like “queer” hurt the ears of some of us and soothe the ears of others. Who we think about when we say “our community” varies based on when we came out and who was around us. It also affects what kind of work we feel still needs to happen in order for all LGBT people to live safe and celebrated lives.

As a community foundation, one of our greatest strengths is the differences in ages among our staff and Board. We can’t tell you how often it happens, that one of us will make a statement as though it were the truth, and someone else will say, well, that’s not quite the way I see it. This is a tremendous strength because it helps us remember that no single one of us has the whole story for what it means to be lesbian or gay, bisexual or transgender, or queer. PFund’s role is to keep listening, keep asking questions, and find the points in common. And along the way, to connect all of the dollars we can put together into a great big pot with the organizations and initiatives that are doing the work of making the world a better place for LGBT people, our families and friends.

Jobsharing – a little deeper in

2011-04-13T13:57:00.000-07:00

We’ve received some interesting questions – or reflections – about our jobshare. A few people have told us that it will never work: “Two people can’t share a position. At one point, you are going to disagree over something and this partnership will break up. Then what’s going to happen to PFund?” Another question we’ve heard multiple times, “No, really, who’s the main ED?” When we reply that there isn’t one, the follow-up has sometimes been, “Yes, I understand that symbolically, but seriously, which one of you is mostly in charge?”

There have been other flavors of reflection as well including the most common: “How come no one told me I could jobshare?” And the second most common, “You are going to write this up, aren’t you? It’s a great idea. I want to know how to do it.”

Jobsharing is just another form of collaboration. And collaboration is something that we ask our children to do (share that toy!) as well as our grantees (organizational partnerships are very good things). Collaboration is not at all hard, when it’s really truly something we want to do. Our experience is that the challenges arise when we’re not completely invested in collaborating.

Almost weekly, the two of us look at each other and marvel: sure, it was our idea to jobshare but even we weren’t prepared for exactly how awesome it would be. A good example: we were talking about a challenging phone call we had just received and trying to determine what to do. In the way of reactions, we each had responses to the phone call that came from past experiences and patterned ways of thinking. Our responses to this phone call were not the same, and as we sat there going back and forth, listening to each other and then asking questions, we ended up at a conclusion that made us both wiggle with glee. “Oh my goodness,’ said Kate,” that is so much smarter than either of us could have figured out by ourselves.”

And that, more than any other sentence, reflects jobsharing. A few things help make that happen: we have shared values about how the world works, how change happens, and how a foundation is part of that change. We also deeply respect and truly like each other. And our commitment is to the work – to an LGBT community that is celebrated and is free from discrimination and violence – rather than to our individual careers.

This blog posting is not intended to be a back-slapping aren’t we great kind of moment. On the contrary, this is a blog about collaboration and some reflection about what makes collaborations function well.

No single individual or aspect of our community has the answer for how to support all LGBT individuals, families and communities in living full and unchallenged lives. If anything, what’s going to help us get to that point is the same thing that helps the two of us jobshare: an understanding that our different experiences form different perspectives and that those perspectives are both valid. And in every situation, some perspectives have more airtime than others. It’s hard to listen with fresh mind but it’s a skill to always build. Collaborations, like jobsharing, are about practicing the skill of actually liking each other and constantly feeding a deep grounded respect. And then it’s about being willing to engage in the back and forth sometimes struggle of wrestling across our different ideas and commitments.

Really, collaboration is just about showing up with heart, with love and care for the community, rather than an assertion of our individual egos. On some days, we do that really well. On other days, well, it’s a bit harder. But that’s the fun of it, isn’t it? It’s this place of creative tension that we call learning.

- Kate and Susan

Change, change, change….

2011-04-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

You know what they say, most major changes come in threes. Well, that’s as true for PFund as for anything else.

The first change was the start date of the two of us as Executive Director in January of this year. The second change was the wonderful Susan Cogger deciding to leave PFund for new horizons. And now we are on change number three: the promotion of Alfonso Wenker and Ryan Kroening to new positions within PFund and the announcement of an open position, Program Officer.

There’s a lovely logic to this shifting and rearranging. While organizations are not technically living things, they are living systems. What that means is that the people who work there, the visions they share, and the ongoing culture they create is part of a system that, over time, establishes habits and routine expectations just like any other system. Any change affects the whole thing, not just a single part.

With this in mind, staff have spent the last two months looking at the whole thing, otherwise known as the organization, and asking the question: what is the best way to operate PFund? In order to answer this, we put big pieces of paper up on lots of walls, wrote words and ideas on post-it notes, and then moved and rearranged those post-it notes from one meeting to the next. We read some articles about how other community foundations are run. And we listened to our Board and past staff talk about what works and what could still be improved. And then we arrived someplace, pretty much exactly where we began.

In other words, we ended up with what we already know: that PFund operates really well. It’s not broken so there’s no need to fix it. And yes, we knew that as we began the conversations, but just like spring cleaning, sometimes it’s good to just shake out all of the sheets and see how they want to be folded back into place.

Any changes we made were minor: all staff positions now include some community and relationship responsibilities, as well as some fundraising goals. How those are met will be based on the person and the flavor of the job they are doing. As a community foundation, our role is to listen as broadly as possible to how you reflect on the conditions affecting your lives and the lives of your families. It only expands our capacity if more of us are listening.

You might be wondering, what is so interesting about a blog posting on job changes at PFund? Well, the specific details depend on how enamored you are of organizational development. But the bigger part of it is this: accountability. We take seriously the role of stewarding community dollars to meet community needs. At moments of transition or change, we want to take a minute to explain what’s going on and why. It feels like the responsible thing to do. After all, how else can we be worthy of your ongoing trust?

And by the way, if you are interested in learning more about the Program Officer position, the job description is at www.PFundOnline.org. The deadline is April 22. Pass the news along to your friends. And you can tell them we sent you.

- Kate and Susan

The community in the foundation - part two

2011-03-29T11:23:00.000-07:00

Community foundations are exactly what they say they are: a way for communities to gather together their money and other resources in a central location and then send it back out into the community. Within that basic frame, there are a lot of ways to be a community foundation. Most of what varies from one foundation to another is this: who decides where the money goes.

About a month ago, we sat down with one of the first Board members from PFund, Tom Borrup. Tom told us about those early meetings when the Board was figuring out how it wanted to be a foundation. At the end, they wanted to use a community review process. This, they decided, gave PFund the most flexibility to grow by providing a model that could meet the changing needs of the LGBT community.

PFund still operates by a community review process. Imagine an hourglass with the foundation itself being that skinny part in the middle. The foundation is just the connection, the point which pulls together the inflow and the outflow. Our role is to provide the infrastructure, the space for all of it to come together.

Some may not realize that staff do not actually make the funding decisions at PFund, they simply facilitate the process.. A community panel representing the breadth of PFund’s community comes together for both the grant and scholarship review. The grants review committee goes through a combination of training and relationship-building designed to support them in assessing the proposals. This means making sure that all review committee members have shared understanding about the members of our community – the meaning behind the L, the G, the B and the T, as well as an understanding of racial equity and budgets and nonprofit organizations, to name a few. Scholarships are only slightly different in that each scholarship is set up to meet specific needs. Reviewers are given directives, such as scholarships connected to specific communities or academic subjects or kinds of colleges – and then they meet together to match applicants with scholarships and define awards.

There is a lot of generosity laced through this story. There is the generosity of each individual who makes a gift to PFund and, in so doing, trusts their gifts to a community process. There are scholarship donors who name the specific area of their gift and then let the community process determine the right match, To donors who give to support our grantmaking, the beauty is that, you, our donors care about a specific aspect of PFund and yet also know that it’s a group of people you maybe have never met who will be deciding where those funds will have the greatest impact.

Many of you have volunteered for the community review process – either for grants or for scholarships – over the last 23 years. Some of you have volunteered two or three times, taking a break for five or ten years before coming back to serve again. It has been your brilliance and commitment that has guaranteed that as the grant and scholarship funds pass through PFund’s doors, it truly does so as part of a community process.

The metaphor for an hourglass isn’t really the best metaphor. To be completely accurate, we have to bend that hourglass into a circle. Because here’s part of what’s amazing: many of the students who have received scholarships and staff from organizations who have received grants also show up at PFund as part of the community review process. And many more than that are donors themselves. Our hourglass is more like a circle, or overlapping circles, of individuals and organizations who give, who direct where the giving goes, and who also receive.

This is a huge thank you to each and every one of you who is part of this process: every one of you who gives dollars in the broad arrays of ways that you give and every one of you who gives your time by sitting down to figure out where to direct our collective community resources.

This is the community in the foundation.

- Kate and Susan

The community in the foundation: a bit of history…or, why being a community foundation is important to PFund (part one)

2011-03-22T18:32:00.000-07:00

The two of us were grantwriters long before we were grantmakers. We knew how to differentiate between general operations, capacity building and project-focused grant proposals. What we didn’t pay as much attention to was the various kinds of foundations. We knew them generally as “likely to fund us,” or “not meeting their guidelines.” It’s kind of how most grantwriters think about the funding world.

We weren’t completely naïve, we were aware of the basic differences between community and family and corporate foundations. But being aware of the basic differences didn’t mean that we really appreciated what a community foundation does. At least, not until we came to PFund.

While all foundations are vital avenues for sending dollars into communities, we are both particularly proud to work for a community foundation. A “community foundation” is just what it says it is: a foundation that takes seriously the voices, the vision and direction of the members of a community, raises money from that community, and then directs those resources back into community in way that is responsive to our current needs and issues. In other words, the foundation only provides the infrastructure for the work, the real excitement circulates throughout the members of the community.

There is a Midwest tradition to community giving that it’s worth taking a moment to be proud of.

The first community foundation was set up in 1914 in Cleveland, Ohio (which, by the way, is where Susan was born and raised so she wanted to include that factoid). It’s now the Cleveland Foundation, a model for urban-based community foundations across the country. Here’s another fascinating factoid: the majority of community foundations in the early part of their development were found in the Midwest. And still, in 2011, there is a greater percentage of community foundations here than in almost any other region except the Northeast.

So, 1914 and the first community foundation – the legacy that eventually led to the establishment of PFund. What was happening in 1914 in the Midwest that would enable the birth of this new form of giving?

Woodrow Wilson is President of the United States and this country is in the middle of what is called “The Progressive Era.” In 1913, the 16^th Amendment is ratified and the first income tax is put into place – marking a decisive moment in our national debate about the role of government and taxation in redistributing resources and providing a social safety net. There’s another historical tidbit to add to this picture: the early 20^th century, the period we are talking about, is the first time that the United States had seen a sizable middle class. And the Midwest, with its combination of industrial and agricultural resources, was the leader in this national economic change.

In the context of these national conversations about how best to provide for the common good and in this moment where more community members than ever before have enough to live comfortably with a little left over - that’s when the model of the community foundation was born.

There are a lot of responses that a community can have when it finds itself in the midst of abundance. One is to just stick the cash under the mattress, hoard the gold, make sure that my own savings account is full and let my neighbors worry about themselves. The other thing is to look at what is extra and then to dream about sharing it. To ask where that extra can be spent so that it does the most good.

This legacy of sharing for the common good is the legacy of the Upper Midwest. This is part of the legacy that PFund draws from. A funny thing about legacies: they inform you even when you are largely unaware of their details. The more we understand about the region we are part of, the more we understand where we come from, the more it makes sense that when PFund’s founders met together to consider how they would leave their legacy, they decided to create a community foundation. One can’t help but wonder if this propensity to sharing, to paying attention to the broader community, is in the water. Wherever it comes from, it’s a good legacy to continue passing along.

-Kate and Susan

PS – We’ve been talking a lot about this thing we call “community” in the office lately, and why the way that PFund connects to our community is so important. Stay tuned next week for an update on our community-driven scholarship process and how PFund is unusual even among other community foundations…

Speaking of the Upper Midwest

2011-03-15T08:48:00.001-07:00

We’re all a bit bleary-eyed in the office today. Springing back from Daylight Savings Time is always hardest on that first Monday after the weekend. Our bodies, like yours, are much smarter than the clock. They know that 7am is a big lie and that 6am is the honest truth.

Daylight Savings Time is one of those things we have in common. And across our region, we share a particular relationship to this shifting of time: it means that spring is just ahead. And for the Upper Midwest in March, spring is something we long for, fierce in our eagerness and completely without shame.

Our region: the Upper Midwest. When PFund’s founders defined the foundation’s reach as “Minnesota and the Upper Midwest,” there was no clear definition of what that meant. When you hear “the Upper Midwest,” what do you think?

This is a vast landmass, including the once-prairie-now-farmland of Iowa, the pine and oak forests of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, the badlands of the Dakotas, and the western edge of the Great Lakes. You could define us as the headwaters of the Mississippi River watershed, but that extends much further than the upper five states. What exactly makes us a region? And why just these five states?

We’re going to be asking that question a lot over the next few years. Because if PFund is to be a foundation serving the Upper Midwest, we have to understand what the Upper Midwest means. The easiest thing we can do is make sure that we’re in community with the variety of LGBT communities and organizations found in this region. And we’ll certainly do that. But we would like to go deeper. Why does it matter to build our strength in this region? What other local issues impact our lives as LGBT people? And what does it mean to truly, truly “build 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”?

We’ll be asking versions of this question wherever we go. And as PFund continues to travel across the region, learning more about LGBT lives in a variety of communities, we’ll also be asking how a foundation can support those communities to define their own visions and strategies. After all, what needs to be done today in Waterloo, Iowa isn’t the same as what wants to happen in International Falls, MN or Minot, ND, let alone in the Twin Cities.

We’re ending many of these blog postings in the same way, but each is equally true: we are excited to learn with you.

-Kate and Susan

Going back to where we started: from Kate and Susan

2011-03-07T20:51:00.001-08:00

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

So what is this "jobshare" thing?

2011-02-28T11:17:00.000-08:00

Even before we started this new job, the question we keep hearing again and again is this: so what about that jobshare thing? This blog posting is a kind of “frequently asked questions” response based on exactly that, the questions we most often hear. And no, the questions don’t feel old yet. We are both much too excited by what we are learning.

First, whose idea was this? Did PFund “match-make” you two?

No, PFund didn’t pair us up. We applied that way. We were both individually sent copies of the job description by a number of friends and colleagues. Neither of us wanted to apply for the job by ourselves so we kept saying “thanks, but it’s not quite right.” The two of us were already friends and we have worked on a number of different collaborative projects together, including a project that focuses on finding resources for community-based organizations. Kate was sitting in Susan’s kitchen one night and that was when the idea came to us. We wrote a joint cover letter and sent in our separate resumes.

How are you going to share the work?

Susan has already jobshared an Interim Executive Director position. When we applied, the two of us talked with a lot of different people around the country who had also been jobsharing. Based on what we learned, we’ve set up a system. After the first few months where we are working more hours in order to more quickly learn our new position, we will each be working three days a week. One of those days will be an overlap day for staff meetings, shared projects and other shared meetings. We each hold different parts of the job but we both work to know about all of the parts of the job. Our goal is that when any one of you runs into either one of us in the community, you’ll be able to ask us each anything at all about PFund and we will have some of the information you need. This means we check in daily, making sure that each knows what the other is doing.

Do you have two desks?

If you were to come into the office on our shared day, you would see the both of us sitting at one desk and working on one computer. We share an office, an email address and a phone number. And we figure it out every day: who is going to use the computer right now, who is going to make phone calls and who is going to be working on something else. It’s not hard. After all, we figure that PFund is always asking our grantees to be thoughtful about resources and to expand their collaborations. We’re just doing the same thing.

Got other questions we haven't answered yet? Call us! We'd love to talk jobshare with you.

-Kate and Susan.

You made our day!

2011-02-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

It was 2:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, the fifth and final day of the National Gay and Lesbain Task Force’s 23^rd Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, and almost exactly a month into our new role as Executive Director at PFund. The first four days of the conference were an incredible mix of attending and facilitating workshops, getting to know grantees better, reconnecting with local and national peers, and meeting many new PFund friends - donors, former Board members, past grantees, Folio readers and volunteers. We were both running on too much caffeine and too little sleep. It was amazing.

So when we tell you that the last three hours of Sunday afternoon were some of the most exciting time either of us has spent at a conference, you’ll understand the impact of that statement. From 2:00-5:00 p.m. on Sunday, February 6, more than 60 PFund grantee partners and LGBT leaders from our region gathered together in a large room at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Minneapolis to talk about their work, about what they learned at the conference, and to begin thinking about how their work connects with each other across the region.

We believe that, as a community foundation, PFund’s role is not to create the vision or strategy for LGBT communities in the Upper Midwest. Instead, our role is to provide the resources that support communities and organizations to create that vision and strategy. Resources mean dollars but they also mean creating the opportunity to learn from each other. PFund (with help from the Otto Bremer Foundation) paid for registration costs and/or travel expenses for 40 of our Midwestern LGBT and allied leaders to attend Creating Change; to meet other people doing similar work and to learn from their experiences. This is part of what your gifts to PFund supports.

Thank you to Alfonso for having the idea of gathering grantees together to support building relationships and sharing information. Thank you to all of you for believing in the work that PFund does. As the new Executive Director, we are thrilled and excited to continue learning with you about the needs and interests of LGBT communities in the upper Midwest. This blog is one of the places where we will share what we learn – and where we hope you will share your thoughts and learnings with us. We’re looking forward to creating shared vision and building justice and equality for LGBT communities together with you!

-Kate and Susan