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Former YouthPride Executive Director Edward Gray has created the Atlanta Gay & Lesbian Community Foundation to raise money for other gay non-profits. (File photo)
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Seed money for AGLC Foundation comes from estate of bar owner, leather enthusiast
Lloyd E. Russell, who owned the former gay bar The Cove, was a colorful gay activist who in 1998 unsuccessfully ran for governor of Georgia as a Libertarian. He died in March 2006.
“Several years before he died, he established a [foundation] with the intention, because he had no family, that all of this money will go into that [foundation] to be distributed to various causes,” said Pamm Liss-Burdett, a heterosexual friend of Russell’s whom he appointed as director of the Lloyd E. Russell Foundation.
According to its website, the foundation provides “the GBLTQ and leather communities with funding for programs and activities which enhance mental and physical heath, provide social support and to foster in Atlanta and the southeast an awareness of past and present contributions of the GBLTQ and leather communities.”
The foundation also distributes up to $500 grants to gay men and lesbians in financial emergencies, or who desire to attend gay-related conferences, Liss-Burdett says.
P.O. Box 450746
Atlanta, GA 31145-0746
www.lerfoundation.org
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HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: RYAN LEE
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A new organization called the Atlanta Gay & Lesbian Community Foundation is forming to raise money for other local gay and lesbian non-profits, and to help donors know which of those non-profits are using funds effectively and fulfilling their missions.
The AGLC Foundation is a “successor” to the Atlanta Gay & Lesbian Center, which stalled four years ago after being plagued by leadership quarrels, a series of misfortunate moves and a lawsuit from its former executive director. In January, former YouthPride Executive Director Edward Gray met with “the membership” of the Gay Center — whose names he declined to disclose — and resurrected the Center’s dormant 501(c)3 non-profit status.
The group also changed the Center’s name to the AGLC Foundation, elected a new board of directors, and shifted its purpose to “[operate] as the development, fundraising, research, public relations, and quality control departments of the sexual minority community,” according to the foundation website.
“I’m pretty convinced capacity-building is a critical need in our community,” said Gray, who added that the foundation would primarily empower donors by letting them know which gay organizations are producing results.
“Community foundations represent the donors — they don’t represent causes, they don’t represent the client organizations,” Gray said. “We want to create a process that isn’t a burden for organizations, but what would serve kind of like a little self-assessment or self-audit.”
Gray envisions the AGLC Foundation as enforcing “widely accepted best practices” for determining which non-profits are effective. But his refusal to disclose who participated in the January meeting establishing the foundation, or everyone who currently sits on its board of directors, is not in keeping with industry best practices, said Bob Ottenhoff, president of GuideStar, a national group that monitors non-profits.
“Usually, the more transparent you are, the more support you’re going to have from your community,” Ottenhoff said. “You have to establish trust, and one of the most important aspects of developing trust is being transparent about your board, and staff, and finances, and goals, and activities.”
Ottenhoff also called it “not very common” for a new non-profit to recycle the 501(c)3 status of a defunct organization.
The AGLC Foundation considered the former Gay Center’s 501(c)3 status “a valuable community asset,” and resurrecting it “allows for the speediest and most efficient way I could see of getting launched,” Gray said.
One of Gray’s main partners in the AGLC Foundation, Pamm Liss-Burdett — who provided a $75,000 seed grant on behalf of the Lloyd E. Russell Foundation — participated in the January meeting and said she suggested using the Gay Center’s 501(c)3 status to avoid the IRS’s cumbersome process for new non-profits.
“Currently the government is not being as free and easy with granting tax-exempt status because of 9/11,” Liss-Burdett said. “And you know the current political climate as far as anything gay and lesbian-related.”
Ottenhoff said he was unfamiliar with the IRS tightening its policies for new non-profits post-Sept. 11, 2001, and said the federal agency is “remarkably good” at approving new applications.
Gray stepped down from YouthPride Nov. 28 and has declined comment on why he left the organization. YouthPride officials have refused to say whether Gray resigned or was fired, but board president Frances-Ann Moran said at the time that the separation was “an amicable and mutual agreement.”
The idea for the AGLC Foundation came from a survey and discussions Gray had with executive directors, board members and staffers of local gay non-profits, although Gray declined to disclose names of people with whom he talked. The AGLC Foundation website, which has been operating and soliciting donations since January, includes a list of gay organizations that would be eligible for foundation grants.
Leaders from some of those organizations contacted by Southern Voice said they were not familiar with the foundation.
“I don’t know if it’s something we would support or not,” said Patrick Kelly, community relations manager for National AIDS Education & Services for Minorities. “We would really have to talk with them about what are their goals and objectives, and how does our organization fit into that?”
Having a gay community foundation in Atlanta may be useful, but it “certainly does not need to become our development department,” said Tracy Elliott, executive director of AID Atlanta.
“It’s an intriguing idea, and I need to think about whether it’s necessary to have [a community foundation] specifically geared toward the LGBT community,” ...
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