Can the strategies that turned the U.S. LGBT movement into a money machine work when the fight goes abroad? Melissa Etheridge headlined a celebrity fundraiser for a new coalition that hopes to make that true.
Melissa Etheridge
John Minchillo / AP Images for Arcus Foundation
When Julie Dorf started trying to raise money for international LGBT rights work more than two decades ago, she said, people looked at her like she was nuts.
"When we started [the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission] in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, people would look at me and say, 'I have people dying in my backyard; I don't have time to think about gay people in Russia.'"
And while U.S. support for LGBT advocacy abroad has grown over the years since IGLHRC came into being as the first international gay rights organization in 1990, it has claimed a tiny sliver of the dollars going to LGBT advocacy. Major grassroots fundraising efforts with the celebrity glitter that the domestic movement became so adept at were not a part of the equation.
But a fundraiser headlined by Melissa Etheridge on Monday night in Manhattan showed how much times have changed. Etheridge has partnered with Dustin Lance Black and other entertainment industry figures to form a coalition to raise funds for Russian LGBT activists, which they're calling Uprising of Love. That's also the title of the anthem Etheridge penned for the movement resisting Russia's "homosexual propaganda" law. It will go on sale in January with proceeds going to LGBT activists.
By the time the Uprising of Love coalition launched, the Human Rights Campaign had already made waves by diving into international work with a $3 million investment from Republican financiers. Its first initiative was also a fundraising campaign for Russian activists, under the banner "Love Conquers Hate." It uses the classic retail strategy that HRC perfected to support its domestic work: selling campaign-branded t-shirts advertised with photos of celebrities in campaign gear.
In remarks before performing the new song, Etheridge gave voice to the mood among Americans that seem to make them ready for international LGBT fundraising pitches.
"It seemed to be just weeks after we had just had this incredible high of that decision of the Supreme Court knocking down DOMA" that she learned about the anti-gay crackdown in Russia, she said. "We've been pushing this boulder for 20, 30 years up this hill [in the U.S.]. And we made it, and we can breath…. All of us who have gone that journey, when we see what's happening in Russia, [we say] "No no no no. We are never ever ever going back."
Etheridge previews "Uprising of Love" on CNN on Monday.
Etheridge speaks for many Americans who've been active in the LGBT rights movement — or at least that's the hope of the organizations who are now trying to expand their fundraising for international work. If they're successful, it will be a fundamental change in the ecosystem of LGBT fundraising, which has kept international efforts as a small niche working in the shadow of domestic advocates and organizations working from Europe.
The money raised by Uprising of Love will go to the Russia Freedom Fund, which is a partnership between the Arcus Foundation, the Council for Global Equality, and the Open Society Institute. If the average politically aware American has ever heard of any of these groups, the last one is the most likely to be familiar — Open Society is the pro-democracy organization established by financier George Soros.
Open Society has been giving grants to LGBT organizations for about a decade, but only established a specific LGBT rights initiative in 2008. By that time it had already established itself as one of the major donors working on LGBT issues abroad. That's not only a reflection of Open Society's commitment to the issue, but also how small the international LGBT sector was in the world of philanthropy.
A 2010 review of international LGBT grant-making found that the four U.S.-based organizations that gave the most support gave a combined total of around $10 million. To put that in perspective, that same year another survey of U.S. LGBT organizations brought in a total of more than $161 million.
Only two American LGBT-specific organizations placed within the top 10 global givers to LGBT rights abroad that year. (The others were the Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Atlantic Philanthropies; other top givers included European organizations and governments.) One was the Aestraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, which was started as an all-volunteer organization in 1977, and today has an operating budget of $7 million. It has always raised a substantial portion of its grants, but its international program — launched in 1996 — was heavily spurred by gifts from the German philanthropist Ise Bosch, heir to the Bosch appliance fortune.
The other was Arcus Foundation, which is taking the lead in organizing the Russia Freedom Fund. It was established by Jon Stryker, an architect who is heir to a Kalamazoo, Michigan based medical-technology fortune. This year, said Arcus's Executive Director Kevin Jennings, Arcus will spend $18 million on LGBT rights causes, and $10 million on its second area of focus — protecting great apes.
But because of its endowment, Arcus has never needed to try to raise money before, said Jennings. The Russian Freedom Fund is the first time the organization has tried to find widespread support for any of its initiatives.
"We've never done anything like this before, so I don't know what to expect," Jennings told BuzzFeed. The foundation has seeded the fund with $150,000 and has lined up commitments from major donors and other organizations, but these have not yet been made public. This includes the Human Rights Campaign, although spokesman Fred Sainz declined to provide how large its contribution would be.