This year is a big one in LGBT history. In addition to June marking the 50th anniversary of the riots following a police raid at New York’s Stonewall Inn, which sparked the modern gay-rights movement, the month will also conclude the largest fundraising campaign to date by the nation’s oldest gay and lesbian community center.
The Los Angeles LGBT Center, founded in 1969, will have raised more than $57 million to build a new facility in Hollywood. The money will help pay for the $142 million Anita May Rosenstein Campus, which opened in early April. The campus will include the center’s administrative operations, plus 99 units of affordable housing for elderly people, 100 beds for homeless youths, senior and youth centers, and transitional housing with supportive services for young people in need of medical or mental-health services.
In addition to the $57 million in gifts, pledges, and grants, the campaign is topped off by $10 million in new-market tax credits for investment in low-income housing.
By the time we left that dinner, we were at $12 million. It was the most astonishing night of fundraising I had ever experienced in my life.
The campaign was led by Lorri Jean, chief executive of the center since 2003. It’s Jean’s second turn at the helm; she served as CEO for six years in the 1990s. Since she first took charge in 1993, the group’s annual budget has rocketed from $8 million to $121 million.
The drive was the center’s third, and the second under her watch. Its goal, she says, kept inching up from $20 million at the start of its quiet phase at the end of 2012, in part to keep up with construction costs and also in response to supporters’ generosity.
“Prior to this campaign, we had never had a living donor make a seven-figure pledge,” Jean says, although the organization had received bequests of that level, and some donors had reached millions in cumulative giving. A board member and his husband broke that barrier, giving $1.5 million; Rosenstein, heir of the founder of May Department Stores, later made gifts totaling $8 million. As the campaign winds up, Jean says, the organization has 15 gifts of $1 million or more from living individuals or families.
Jean spoke to the Chronicle about the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s campaign and what it tells us about the state of giving by gay and lesbian donors in the post-marriage-equality era. This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
Heather Joslyn: Were there specific turning points in the campaign?
Lorri Jean: Yes there were. In 2013 we were having our annual board retreat in Laguna Beach. One of our most generous donors has a beach house down there, and she hosted us for dinner on the Saturday night of the retreat.
I announced at that dinner that thanks to the early generosity of the board, we were close to $4 million in commitments, which was extraordinary. And what happened at that dinner, where a few other donors were invited as well, is the woman who became our lead donor [Rosenstein] said that she would match every dollar that had been raised. That inspired other people in the room to say, “Oh well, I’ll pledge a million if Anita will match it.” And by the time we left that dinner, we were at $12 million.
It was the most astonishing night of fundraising I had ever experienced in my life.
Now it’s been a lot of work since 2013. And a lot of years. But that early momentum just kept going.
We have about 350 donors or so. We have a few that made small gifts, but mostly those are people who gave $10,000 or more.
Joslyn: Are any of those 350 new donors to the organization?
Jean: Oh yes, there’s quite a few new donors there. We had a really interesting instance with the Eisner Foundation. The Eisner Foundation has never given to us, and they focus on intergenerational work. And so we were talking to them about a program grant because we wanted to ramp up our intergenerational programming in preparation for opening up this new intergenerational campus. And they switched gears and said, Well, hey, we want to donate to the capital campaign. The next thing we knew, they were donating $500,000 to the campaign.
And because construction cost skyrocketed, we had to cut a bunch of things. So we cut the second floor of our senior center. But when the [Harry and Jeanette] Weinberg Foundation found out, they basically said, “Well, we’ll give you $1 million if you’ll put it back in.” So we did.
Joslyn: That’s fantastic. What do you think was the reason you were able to get those first million-dollar pledges?
Jean: I think two things were really key. One was the years of cultivating; this is when I really saw the benefit of having a very long and successful tenure as CEO.
I’ve been back now for almost 16 years. And that really paid off. People have faith in me. They were willing to invest significantly in an organization that they had developed great confidence in.
But the biggest issue was that people got inspired by the vision of what this new campus was going to be. Having youth and seniors on the same campus, getting robust services, having housing, living together on the same two-acre campus.
I feel like the Los Angeles LGBT Center has done many inspiring things over the years. But nothing has ever moved people like the dream of this campus.
And we have a lot of straight folks who came forward in a way that had never quite happened before.
Joslyn: Why do you think you were able to have success in those areas? Was it the vision? Or the times?
Jean: Partly [the vision] and I think very significantly it’s the times. More straight allies are conscious of and desirous of being connected with an LGBT organization. And our biggest straight donors are people with LGBT kids. It’s the first time we’ve really seen that kind of thing come to fruition.
Joslyn: Have things changed since marriage equality has become the law of the land in terms of how you approach donors, in terms of the case you make to them for support?
Jean: No. But I think it did actually have an impact on a number of organizations that are predominantly policy oriented, political-advocacy oriented.
Before marriage became the law of the land, a lot of those organizations were putting it out there, “Look, our work isn’t done. Marriage isn’t the be-all and end-all.” All things that I completely agree with, and I had a lot of media saying to me, “Well, gosh, now that you’ve achieved equality, do you really need LGBT centers anymore?”
And so then my first response was to educate them on, well, we haven’t achieved equality. The freedom to marry doesn’t mean we have equality. There’s still no federal law that prohibits employment discrimination against us or discrimination a whole lot of other ways. It’s still legal to discriminate against us in a majority of states in the nation.
But we were always a little differently situated because we’re predominantly a social-services organization. We’re helping the poorest in our community. We’re helping the people in the greatest need. And so I have not seen any significant change as a result of marriage.
However, where the shift is happening is that more same-sex couples are starting families.
And you know the studies are pretty clear about the kinds of differences in charitable giving that exist in families with children and without children. It impacts the amount of disposable income that people have when they’re raising kids. And it certainly impacts their calculus when it comes to planned giving.
Joslyn: Can you elaborate on that?
Jean: Well, you know they’re thinking more about leaving their estate to their kids. And we get a lot of estate dollars every year because we started the very first planned-giving program in the LGBT world in the ’80s. And we have a lot of estate dollars from people who don’t have children and who leave either their entire estates to us or significant portions of their estates to us.
Sometimes they’ve got a niece or nephew or something like that. But generally speaking, they’re not leaving their money to their family. People with children are much more likely to leave a greater percentage of their estates to their children.
Joslyn: I guess that would change the calculus of bequests. But does it present other opportunities for a fundraiser?
Jean: I’m 62 years old. It’s so much different now than when I first came out at the age of 22.
I mean we’ve always had this interesting divide in our community where some people, almost all of their philanthropic pursuits are within the community. And others who were too afraid or too closeted or too self-hating to “give gay.” So they would be afraid to write a check to the center. But they would give to, you know, the Philharmonic or something like that.
That has changed pretty dramatically over the years that I’ve been associated with the organization.
A lot more people became comfortable with giving to the center. When I started, that was in the heyday of direct mail — you never sent a mailer out that had the “G” or the “L” or the “B” or the “T” words in your return address. I sent the first direct-mail piece probably in ’93 or ’94 that had our name on the return address, and we had a little bit of a kerfuffle about that. Some people were unhappy about that, unhappy that their mail carrier might see it.
That has obviously changed a lot. I mean, there’s still a lot of people in the closet. There’s still a lot of people who are nervous about being associated with an LGBT organization, but not like they used to be.
And by the same token, many openly gay people, openly LGBT people, are focusing on some mainstream charities as well.
Joslyn: What impact are LGBT donors having on how mainstream charities raise money?
Jean: In the last 10 years, the numbers of calls I’ve gotten from leading charitable institutions in Los Angeles who want to know how to raise money from gay people has been quite a significant number. And I’ve had a very mixed reaction to it.
On one hand, my reaction has been, well good. You ought to be thinking about how you can properly steward your LGBT donors. And then on the other hand, I’m like: Oh yeah, you want our money but you haven’t done a thing for us in any of your programming.
And so what I’ve always said to them is, Look, you need to develop programs and cultural competency for LGBT people, and then your ability to recruit us as donors is going to be a lot easier.
What I usually say to people is, What programs do you have that you think would be of particular interest to LGBT people? And that usually makes people step back a little bit. And they haven’t really thought about that. They’ve just read some of the false research that suggests that LGBT people are richer than the rest of folks, and [the fundraisers] are looking for money. But the more sophisticated ones are developing very nuanced and effective ways to involve LGBT people in their work.
Joslyn: What are some of the dos and don’ts you suggest to them, to cultivate LGBT donors?
Jean: Mostly it’s had to do with, you know, don’t try to develop a campaign to raise LGBT money if you don’t have your policies in order. Do you have nondiscrimination rules in place? Do you have equal benefits in place as an institution?
Second, think about the programs that you’re delivering. Are they being delivered in a culturally competent way. How do you know? Have your staff been trained? Do they know what they’re doing? I mean sometimes there is clear antipathy, but most times it’s just lack of education. And people can make a lot of mistakes, either presuming heterosexuality or whatever it might be.
And then there’s the focus on the program piece. Do you have a recognition that the needs of LGBT clients are most likely somewhat different than the needs of straight clients? Even if you’re dealing with something like cancer. Because you know cancer is an equal-opportunity affliction, but LGBT people who’ve been discriminated against for decades often don’t have many of the same support networks in place, or legal protections or other things like that. So their needs are going to be different.
And even the issue of clients. Your staff may be good, but your clients may be bigoted. And if all your clients are meeting in a similar space and somebody is LGBT and they come out about it and they face a backlash? These are things that the people need to think about.
Joslyn: What about giving people an opportunity to donate as a couple? Do you have advice about that?
Jean: You have to do your research on your prospect just like you do for anybody else. And that can be a little harder on LGBT people than it is on straight folks, although social media is changing all of that, too — because oftentimes our relationships have not been recognized or people in long-term relationships didn’t get married for a host of reasons. So you need to proceed carefully and respectfully because a lot of partners get upset if they get discounted, as one can completely understand.
So the focus should not be on ‘Are you legally married?’ as much as on whether the partner gets listed on your donor list. That lead should be taken completely from the donors themselves. Of course, this is second nature for LGBT organizations. We’ve been doing it forever because we respected those relationships when they had zero recognition under the law. But these might be some things that people in mainstream organizations don’t think about.
Also there are more openly gay people, openly LGBT people, working at more organizations than ever before in history. So development departments all over the nation are filled with LGBT people.
They know a lot of these things more naturally. And so that’s helping non-LGBT organizations move ahead more quickly.
