Chicago's Lesbian Community Cancer Project, which faced a financial crisis earlier this year, has worked miracles in fundraising, collecting more than $80,000 in individual donor support to make sure they would make it through another fiscal year. In addition, they just received their largest private grant ever, helping the agency continue the training and education portion of its mission.
One decision made was to refocus fundraising efforts on events that can bring in a higher return. While their popular annual Coming Out Against Cancer (COAC) gala is still on (and set for Feb. 7), the annual fall cruise on Lake Michigan has been replaced by a concert and brunch at Speakeasy Supperclub featuring singer Ann Hampton Callaway, Sunday, Oct. 19.
To better understand how the agency has come through the dark days of the past few months, and to discover some of LCCP's goals, we sat down with the organization's young, dynamic executive director, Jessica Halem.
Tracy Baim: Can we get an update about what has happened since the April Town Hall public meeting?
Jessica Halem: April was our time to really ask for the community's support. We were facing the financial issues immediately after COAC last year. So we really spent February and March working every other plan and resource before we went to the huge 'far and wide' [for support]. Knowing that is a difficult thing to say to the community. To put it out there, 'we really need your help.' So by the time we had the meeting in April ... we knew it was exactly what we needed, that it was our last hope. No one else—private foundations, corporations—was in a position to 'swoop in' with the funding we needed. It was a hard time for everybody in February and March. We had the meeting in April, we sent a letter at the same time to our entire mailing list of 5,000 people. The board and staff hit the pavement. April was also the time we had to lay off two staff members. ...
So we asked for help. People came through amazingly. The gifts ranged ... $10 was coming in the mail. Lots of people stretching to $100. Everybody was stretching in their own way. For the first time LCCP got major individual support. Individuals came through with major gifts, to say 'I believe in you. I want you to survive. And, I want to see you get through this.'
In April, we said we needed to get funding to get through the next six months, so that we can continue making plans. To get to the fall, to the winter, get back on our [pared down] fundraising schedule. So we can make plans for the longevity of the organization. We needed to literally buy time. And we needed a minimum $50,000 just to squeak by; $80,000 was what we ended up with. Which allowed us to continue all programming. My fear was we were going to be in a position where we were going to have to choose between programming and 'keeping the doors open.' ... The dollars allowed us to keep programming completely going. We didn't get to grow certain programs, but we got to keep the basic support services, referral sources ... that was done single-handedly with Program Director Mona Grimes.
TB: How were services impacted?
JH: With the publicity LCCP was facing ... it was almost bittersweet. [With all the publicity because of the funding crisis], the calls for services continued. With the amount of women who were calling, who were just diagnosed or who were looking for services. They were saying 'I know you guys are going through a hard time, but I have just been diagnosed ... .' It helps you keep a good perspective. ... The clients were the first people I went to, to let them know what we're going through. Telling them 'I'm going to protect you, protect our support groups. You're not going to be affected by this.' They stepped up and said 'We want to help, we want to talk to people, we want to help you raise money.' To have somebody who is going through something that is harder than you can imagine, say 'I have time and I have energy ...' So that was also a huge help. ... Our support group members came to the Town Hall meeting, to put a face on what we do.
What we did have to put on hold was the bigger new work we were taking on. Which are conversations with big institutions to do our provider training.
TB: So the staff that was let go was in fundraising?
JH: Yes, in fundraising and administration. That, for a social-service agency, ends up being the icing on the cake. A lot of people don't fund you to have an office manager.
TB: Having fewer staff played a role in deciding about having the cruise?
JH: Yes. [Also], the price of boat fuel has continued to go up. The boat is an incredibly expensive place to have an event. And we wanted to keep the base ticket event at $100. Even though it's our high-ticket event, it's still a huge stretch for our supporters. I knew we also needed to net more money from it. Michael Leppen stepped forward and said 'I want to underwrite your expenses for your fall event.' Because of his support and Speakeasy's support, we're able to have a 300-person event where we're going to net the majority of the funds, versus half of every ticket price, which is ridiculous. ...
The fear is when you go public and say we really are in an incredibly tight spot right now, it's make or break it for us, the fear is that people are going to say, 'I'm not going to jump onto something that's in this difficult of a spot.' But people were willing to do it.
TB: Was this happening from the board level?
JH: Yes, the board and I went forward ... . This was the direction we were going in anyway, but we stepped it up [getting major donors]. Where we said, we want to continue being a community-based organization that allows everyone to access services for free, and to continue to be an advocacy organization, but we need major donors, as well as $10 donors. And they were there. Nan Schaffer [co-owner of Windy City Media Group] was actually the first major donor to step forward at that crisis period. It was very meaningful for us to have a lesbian step forward as a major donor. It just helped everything fall into place. ... It was lots of snowballing. Lots of random stories—a $1,000 check from a mother in New York City, whose lesbian daughter lives here in Chicago, whose lesbian daughter said, 'Mom, we need your help ...' This check arrives, 'My daughter goes to your event every year, and loves you. And my daughter is important to me, and so you are, too.'
Everything from that to a lot of straight people stepping up and saying 'Yes, you need to exist.' A lot of gay men stepping up for the first time in a big way. Saying 'You were there for us and now we need to be there for you.'
I felt like we were asking a lot of people. The board single-handedly was raising $50,000 from individuals, friends and family, LCCP's constituent base. But then things like Greg Dell's Methodist Church, the Unity Church, without me even knowing it, asked their folks to make a donation. ... It really affirmed that people are there when you ask.
TB: A board of directors change happened during this?
JH: Yes. We were in the midst of a strategic planning process during this, and the good news is that we stayed on the path. It would have been very easy to let go of big changes. But the board decided that, no matter what, moving forward was important. One of the biggest changes was that we adopted a new mission that articulated transgender women. While LCCP always served all women—straight, trans, bi, most folks identify in multiple ways ... it was important that the board wanted to articulate with a new mission 'transgender.' It was also important for the board, with the new mission [to say] how important advocacy was to the organization. That we're an advocate on behalf of women, and we're an advocate to institutions to become more accessible to all women.
At the same time the board for the first time brought on a gay man, in April. ... We have a large turnover right now. A lot of board members who served their full six years are just cycling off. With the adoption of the new mission and the board transitioning to a governance board, which is fundamentally about saying the work of the organization happens by professional staff and volunteers ... but the board's role is in governance and fundraising. ... They brought on Paul Fairchild, they said we need the best fundraisers in town, and we need everyone's support. ... Lesbians can't be the only ones who help lesbians. I think it was an incredible statement to bring on Paul.
At the same time we brought on professionals—Mary York joined, she has years of being an attorney and small business owner in Chicago. We have an architect, Deborah Burkhart, who is also a professional, corporate lesbian. It allows us to have a full range of folks on the board that can now tap into multiple places to raise the funds to support the work.
Marsha East is still the board chair. The new Vice President is Laura Stemple. Our Treasurer is Mark York, and Secretary is Pam Babler, who is also a cancer survivor.
The board also voted to pursue a merger or strategic partnership of some kind. Knowing this could take awhile—it's not something we want to rush in to. But the idea is we adopted a mission, and the work is so important and so big, that we want to find the right kind of partner that lets us make a bigger impact.
TB: 'Partner' can mean a lot of things—sharing overhead, or merging fully to become an agency within a larger agency.
JH: We are open to a 'parent' partnership in which we are literally a project, programs inside a larger institution. We're interested in bringing together multiple like-minded agencies and potentially forming a new partnership, in which we all have a stake in it. ... Or just an infrastructure ... which is a huge part of every [organization]. We've always been around two people. That's the part of LCCP that I love the most—people compare us to huge organizations, when we're a $250,000-a-year agency. The largest was when we were $500,000 a year and five staff. The majority of the time we have been two or three staff. You still have to have infrastructure, no matter how small you are, if you are your own entity. So part of our conversations are with folks who might just want to share administrative resources, share overhead, share IT support. ... I love being the executive director, but I'm also the IT trouble-shooter, the office manager ... it'd be nice to find like-minded folks and some arrangement.
TB: There is no timeframe on this?
JH: No. Our goal is to have the next fiscal year, which is July of 2004—to have the plan in place then. At least by then to know the answer.
TB: Grants were obviously an area impacted by the last couple of years, for most agencies. What grants are in process for LCCP now?
JH: Some of the first calls I made were to elected officials who have been supportive of us in the past. ... [State Rep.] Harry Osterman and [State Sen.] Carol Ronen have been working day and night to try to find support for the work we do. We're an agency that is not duplicating services—this is a unique offering. They have been working very hard with other elected officials to get some funding. For us, it's never a lot of money ... .
With the new mission and new direction of the organization, we just got awarded our largest and our first grant from the Chicago Community Trust—$25,000 for our Removing the Barriers training, which trains healthcare providers. It's the largest private foundation grant we're ever gotten. For most organizations, that's a small grant, for us that's a huge amount. ... That grant is over this next fiscal year. We're looking to find a major institutional healthcare provider in Chicago that wants to institutionalize cultural competency work around LBT folks. This is a training that embraces and talks about all sexual orientations as well as gender identity when it comes to women.
The goal would be to mirror what we did for the Chicago Department of Public Health. The CDPH, we have Lora Branch inside CDPH, along with her we were able to train all their public health clinics. Our goal is to find another large network within the city of Chicago with multiple sites, including the West Side, the South Side, the North Side, to reach lesbians everywhere, not just at Lawrence and Broadway [where LCCP's offices are located].
TB: That was a big topic at the April Town Meeting. You can reach a few dozen people at a time through existing services, or you can train institutions and impact thousands of women. But that's obviously a huge, long road, and many lesbians might not trust it anyway. How is that all being juggled—with only two staff? The merger issues, the training vs. services ...
JH: ... And continuing to meet unmet needs. I do have to say it is a hard juggling act, but as lesbians, I wouldn't expect anything less than taking on everything all at the same time. So we do continue to meet unmet needs, which is lesbian-identified cancer support services, including referrals to lesbian-sensitive providers. ... At the same time, we have to demand more from the institutions that are supposed to be serving us. ... I have a program director who works with women who call us, as well as providers who need training, at the same time I can wear my advocacy hat and push for larger institutional change, more funding, policy initiatives. I work at a national level with coalitions around issues like tobacco and the LGBT community, we're bringing the National Lesbian Health Conference to Chicago. ... But we have to stay working with clients, because we need to be able to talk to providers about what real women are facing every day. ...
TB: The lesbian conference is when?
JH: It will be in May 2004. It has been in Washington, D.C., and University of Illinois-Chicago is hosting it [with the help of lesbian health researcher Tonda Hughes]. We've been working on making sure that not only are there a lot of researchers and public health officials there, but also the consumer advocacy part of it as well. And we also have on-the-ground experience that people just need to know about. People are going to come from all over, from major medical institutions and lesbian cancer groups. It's called the National Lesbian Health Conference: Working Together to Create Healthy Lives.
It is a partnership among large medical institutions, community-based organizations, doctors, activists. It's grown. When it started, there wasn't a lot going on in the world of lesbian health. Bringing it to Chicago is an important way for us to show, lesbian health matters. That's part of our biggest thing with doctors and providers, who say 'what's the big deal about lesbians, you're women, right?' So it's important to have the research, and to have policy makers say that lesbians are a special population that needs attention.
TB: At the Town Hall meeting, the social role of LCCP was also a big conversation topic. The events are also a high visibility point for the agency.
JH: The No. 1 thing we knew through all of this was that the Coming Out Against Cancer ball was of the foremost importance. It is true, that events are an important way to raise money, but we also know that visibility, that coming out, is just as important as anything else. We're just trying to find a balance, of how much resources we can devote to public events, versus programming. ... Moving away from the cruise, a 600-person event ... allowed us to start [planning earlier] for COAC 2004. What we heard loud and clear was ... COAC was incredibly important and that's why so much attention is going to be paid to it. And find ways to leverage that even more. How that can be even more of a testament to the importance of the lesbian community.
It's also on the South Side of Chicago, it's important it stays at the South Shore Cultural Center. This is an incredibly large city, and we can't just have our huge events or visibility on the North Side. ... So it has so many other meanings.
The other thing about these events is our clients go to them for free. The tickets are underwritten. Hearing not only at the Town Hall meeting that this is a wonderful time for lesbians in general, this is also a time I see amongst our clients, that this is their event more than anyone else's. It's like we're all just visiting their party. When you're in the midst of a cancer diagnosis, it's nice to have some gatherings that are fun and carefree and everybody is there to support you. ... You can have your bald head in public, and it's a good thing.
So COAC is a major priority. It's also one of the things we bring to the table with a potential [merger] partner. ... We know how to do events, to bring together an incredibly diverse group of folks, and raise money from $10 and up.
We are also incredibly lucky to have corporate sponsors who recognize the impact we make. You can't look at the size of my budget and judge the impact we make. The Subarus, the IBMs, and the American Airlines of the world get that this event is huge for them. It's the best way to reach 2,000 lesbians.
TB: When you talk about a merger, the internal community organizations that come to mind are Horizons/Center on Halsted or Howard Brown Health Center, or outside of the community with Y-Me or Gilda's Club. What is it that will drive this? Howard Brown has a women's health project, they have health services ... what are the barriers to this?
JH: All the people you named are definitely on the table. It's a matter of mission fit, activity fit. We're looking to create a continuum of care for lesbian health. Any one you just named can make sure that we're a piece of that continuum of care. Obviously it's a lot of conversations, we're all so busy, and there's a lot of history amongst all of us. So it's how can we manage our personal history, our organizational history, as well as what's the right thing to do. What are our future goals? What's the internal future direction of the agency, and are those going to fit? There are many potential partners that have the ability to leverage all of us, to take us to the next level, as well as them. We want a partner to know and to feel as much of an impact from us as we will from them. Our expertise ... we're looking for the right people to embrace that. Outside the community, not everyone gets that lesbians need to have a separate project.
TB: This fundraising success can be viewed many ways. One is that the community does want its own free-standing lesbian agency, and not a merger.
JH: That's a lot of what I heard, 'If I give you this $100 does that mean you can remain autonomous, does it mean you're saved?' I completely understand why it is important to have a strong lesbian identity out front, a voice that can be heard loud and clear. That voice is never going to change. The visibility is never going to change. With a partnership, an infrastructure combination, with more programming, it allows us to have a stronger voice. Because I not only want to have the visibility and the voice, but I want real programming, I want to serve more clients, and I'm only going to be able to do that if we can work with somebody else. I think people are going to be very, very excited when they see that we're going to do this in a way that's going to work. I know that people have done this before and it hasn't gone well. People have merged ... that's what we heard: 'So and so went inside there and you never heard from them again.' If you've met me or anyone associated with LCCP, there's no way our voices could ever be silenced inside a huge institution. There's no way we could lose sight that lesbians still don't receive their fair share of the dollars across the board. ...
We don't do anything else like anyone else has done it, so a merger is going to be done our way as well.
We were founded by lesbian separatists. We've come a long way in 12 years. We still have all of that ... I don't know if you know our founders, but you'd get your ass kicked if you'd try to silence us [laughs].
TB: Now that you surpassed the fundraising goal, now what?
JH: For the next six months, it's a mix of planning for the Oct. 19 and Feb. 7 fundraisers. We have a huge number of volunteers working on that. The Oct. 19 event, I am working with the sponsors. Because of Ann Hampton Callaway performing, it's going to sell itself. The Feb. 7 event is really a huge volunteer-driven effort, with me trying not to micromanage, but managing the process as much as possible. Two long-time volunteers are co-chairs Sandy Dyer and Julie Kata, they have been working on the committee for years. They brought together a committee of chairs, of people ... to make sure we have the largest attendance ever. We are also working on a really big-name entertainer. ... Now there are tons of fabulous events for lesbians around town, so we do need to make sure this event is at the cutting edge and the biggest lesbian event.
[We are also] building up the Removing the Barriers training and also building up the board. We've gone through a huge [board] transition ... there are a lot of folks who now realize serving on a board is an incredible opportunity and are giving back.
We just lost [long-time board members] Evette Cardona and Christie Dailey last night—Christie was the last board member who had been in place with an overlap in a significant way with the founders. We are now a third-generation board away from the founders. Now we're a seven-person board [the goal is 12]. A lot of new folks. With the advocacy work we want to do, the board takes on more fundraising. ... In addition to Paul, Marsha, Laura, Deborah, Mary and Pam, there is Sue Baker, who has been on a long time. We are recruiting more.
TB: Who is in charge of grant writing?
JH: That's me. I think our constituents have learned ... I know we make it look easy to be a lesbian organization. But the reality is, it is still an uphill battle fighting homophobia and discrimination within the foundation and corporate world. There are a lot of folks who get how important this population is, but there are a plenty of folks who still do not support a lesbian-identified organization, who still do not support lesbian health.
TB: In general, or as an organization with 'lesbian' in its name?
JH: Exactly. It was on the table, should we change our name? But we all felt it was an important advocacy piece, making people say 'lesbian, lesbian, lesbian' over and over again. ... It's a long process, getting new foundation support. We have tried and true support of some foundations and corporations, obviously some elected officials ... but consistently I face homophobia within those funding circles. It's hard, people see a lot of success, but they still don't realize how many walls we still face. The dollars are still a struggle. There are very few organizations in the United States with the word 'lesbian' in the title.
