News LGBT Center Update
posted by on January 14 at 15:39 PM
As I wrote last Friday, the Seattle LGBT Center is moving out of their facility at 11th and Pike. It appears funding problems may have been a big factor in the Center’s abrupt relocation.
“All non profits are struggling in this economy,” says LGBT Center Co-President Jerry Stewart. “We’ve never been as fully funded as we’d like to be.” According to Stewart, the Center’s annual budget is about $250,000, a figure he hopes to increase.
The Center will move into Equal Rights Washington’s (ERW) offices for “a couple of months” and the Center’s library and meeting spaces will be temporarily unavailable.
With the move, Stewart says the Center will be restructuring to provide services for the elderly and other “under served members of the community.”
Stewart expects to announce a new, permanent location as early as next week.
Whateva' - I'm sure it has NOTHING to do with the new quarter million dollar condos going up next door and property values. Someone should look into the previous donors and why they suddenly changed their minds to stop funding or if the funding problems have been going on for awhile now... the paranoid in me thinks the former is the better possibility.
Maybe they wouldn't be having funding problems if they'd hire competent staff, stop running competing Pride parades and festivals, and not act like they speak for the entire community without, you know, speaking to much of the community.
As a pro fundraiser, I'm surprised that they can't find $250k a year, especially with all the money and gays in this town. Blaming the economy is a bullshit excuse - its a problem with the board of directors, the executive director and the development director.
#3 Part of the problem is, they've never had a very strong or capable board and until September, they had an ED who was allowed to do whatever she wanted, which was spend money and antagonize the community. They hired a GOOD ED in Sept but coulnd't pay him so they lost him. And they've never had a Dev Director, which is a big part of the problem. the place has been open for over 5 years and they have the same damn budget they had at the beginning because no one was out there trying very hard to raise money or write grants. Its popular to blame the community, but ultimately, its the Board thats to blame and not just the current board, all of them since the beginning. their hearts may have been in the right place but their heads were up their ass.
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