In 1980, a San Francisco-area LGBTQ business association ended the year with some extra money and decided to split the total into two separate grants of $500 each. That act ultimately led to the founding of Horizons Foundation, the country’s oldest community funder “of, by and for” LGBTQ communities.
Today, at age 42 and counting, Horizons punches far above the weight class suggested by its relatively small $40.5 million in net assets. Nor is Horizons’ influence solely due to its stature as an iconic LGBTQ grantmaker. Instead, it is actively growing its reach and impact by providing a leg up to nascent programs and nonprofits and exhibiting an ambitious flexibility that allows it to take on opportunities that would, at first glance, seem far beyond its scope.
In the beginning, there was an extra $1,000
Horizons’ longevity and reach are particularly impressive given its humble beginnings. The funder exists today because, in 1980, the Golden Gate Business Association (GGBA), which considers itself the “world’s first LGBTQ chamber of commerce,” ended its year with an extra $1,000. The association ultimately launched Horizons as GGBA’s charitable arm.
“The association said, ‘we have $1,000, so we’ll give two $500 grants.’ And since then, it’s grown into this amazing, small to medium-sized community foundation,” said Francisco Buchting, Horizons’ vice president of grants, programs and communications. In addition to its own granting budget, Horizons also manages over 150 donor-advised funds.
The founders chose the name “Horizons,” Buchting said, because it was the ‘80s and LGBTQ people and causes didn’t enjoy the same widespread, mainstream acceptance they do today. “A lot of people could write a check that said ‘Horizons’ on it,” he said.
National and international impact
As one example of how this modest-sized community funder is working on a larger stage, consider National Give OUT Day, a month-long online fundraising event that has raised more than $11.5 million for over 600 organizations across all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico since 2013. Eight years ago, when the organization that originally founded the event folded, Horizons adopted and ran it with just 10 weeks’ notice.
Since Horizons took the helm, National Give OUT Day’s bottom line has increased by roughly a quarter-million dollars every year — until last June, when it was effectively sidelined by the uproar over the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision ending federal protection for abortion care.
This kind of nationwide footprint is pretty impressive for a small, often locally focused funder. But Horizons hasn’t stopped there. The foundation is also fighting efforts by religious extremists to export anti-LGBTQ and anti-women’s rights policies to other countries through its Global Faith and Equality Fund (GFEF), a 17-year, $7 million initiative started in 2014 that has awarded over $7.5 million to 25 organizations working at the intersection of faith, LGBTQ rights and reproductive justice in parts of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. The initiative, which was seeded by a single donor, has made Horizons one of the top 20 foundations supporting international LGBTQ work, according to the Global Philanthropy Project’s 2019–2020 Global Resources Report.
Buchting, who sits on the Global Philanthropy Project’s board, said that during the study’s time frame, Horizons moved $800,000 of the roughly $8 million spent specifically to support international faith-based organizations promoting LGBTQ acceptance. And while Horizons came in at 19 out of 20 in terms of total dollars moved internationally for LGBTQ rights, it held the top spot for sheer number of grants awarded, with more than 1,000 individual commitments.
No less a heavyweight than the Arcus Foundation, the second largest international LGBTQ funder listed in the Global Philanthropy Project report, recognizes Horizons as a “significant partner” in its own work funding progressive faith groups and individuals combating attacks on LGBTQ rights. “Because of the breadth of its work and its ‘of, by and for’ approach, Horizons plays an important role in LGBTQ philanthropy,” said Arcus’ Vice President of Communications Bryan Simmons.
Playing the long game
Long before “horizons” became a watchword for LGBTQ philanthropy, though, the organization pursued a strategy it still follows today — giving a financial leg up to nascent and grassroots groups and programs for which even a small investment can make a pivotal difference. One of those first $500 checks, for example, went to what was then the Lesbian Rights Project and is now the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Today, NCLR is a powerful, nationwide voice in the fight for the community’s rights through court cases, advocacy and public education, and it reported net assets of over $2.4 million in 2020.
In 1982, Horizons supported the first Gay Games, which then consisted of “a handful of out gay athletes” who competed in a public park. Today, the Gay Games website says the organization hosts thousands of athletes from more than 100 countries. Horizons was also on the ground early in the fight against AIDS, moving money to research and community support projects.
A more recent example of Horizons’ commitment to helping small LGBTQ nonprofits grow is its early grant to the Transgender, Gender Variant & Intersex Justice Project, founded in 2004 by Alexander Lee, who is now deputy director of Funders for LGBTQ Issues. Not only does the TGI Project still exist, the organization reported net assets of just over $2 million in 2020.
“The TGI Justice Project has grown by leaps and bounds, but frankly, we wouldn’t have been able to get there without Horizons’ support,” Lee said. Horizons “was one of those sources of funding you could consistently count on, which, when you’re small and growing, is extremely important. Horizons has just been really great at finding those new cutting-edge projects and just being there.”
The foundation also hasn’t shirked from funding nonprofits serving diverse populations within the wider LGBTQ umbrella, making its first grant to a POC-led organization when it supported Gay American Indians in 1985. The Transgender Law Center and groups serving LGBTQ Latinos, African-Americans and Asian-Americans are among the recipients of Horizons’ support.
Smaller grassroots organizations are “the bread and butter of what we do,” Buchting said. “When we think of community-building, it’s the grassroots. It’s people sitting around a table, thinking up an idea of how to do something. Then they get fiscally sponsored, and then they become their own 501(c)(3). Horizons is there to provide the first grant to take a chance on somebody,” he said, and then to support those organizations over the long haul as they grow — including connecting grantees with donors who have DAFs at Horizons as well as larger funders that Horizons partners with.
“I tell my orgs that we’re going to invest as you’re a small grassroots group; but at some point, as you grow, I’m going to introduce you to private foundations, because you want access to their resources,” Buchting said. “Their grants are much larger.”
In addition to backing new and small grassroots LGBTQ groups, Horizons also supports LGBTQ-serving programs within larger organizations that aren’t themselves dedicated solely to LGBTQ people. One example is long-time grantee partner Swords to Plowshares, which Horizons has supported since 1999. Horizons recently profiled the group’s efforts to help secure VA benefits for LGBTQ veterans discharged under former President Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
According to Buchting, one reason Horizons supports such programs is simply the need to support the work wherever it may currently be housed. The other reflects Horizons’ dedication to the future. “Our experience is that we invest, we seed, we grow those programs that are housed in non-LGBTQ organizations, and at some point, they become their own 501(c)(3),” he said.
A quick pivot for COVID
As it marked its 40th anniversary year, Horizons announced a new, five-year strategic plan just two weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic turned virtually everyone’s plans upside down. Horizons responded by awarding more than $1 million in emergency grants to 71 Bay Area LGBTQ nonprofits and programs through its LGBTQ COVID-19 Response Emergency Fund. The foundation followed that up in 2021 by launching the LGBTQ Resilience and Recovery Fund, which has awarded a quarter-million in grants to 18 Bay area LGBTQ nonprofits.
While the funder was able to move forward on parts of its strategic plan during the pandemic, Buchting said, Horizons was also able to “turn on a dime” to do emergency grantmaking because “we have 40 years of building an amazing ecosystem of LGBTQ orgs that we know very well.”
Horizons isn’t currently accepting applications for COVID-related funding, but it is back at work on its strategic plan, which calls for “sharpening” the foundation’s focus on specific populations, including transgender people and LGBTQ people of color, youth, elders and refugees. Other goals include growing Give OUT Day receipts by 250%, doubling Horizons’ DAF program, and deepening the foundation’s leadership within the wider LGBTQ movement.
“We view our endowment as securing our community’s future,” Buchting said. “The organizations that that are grassroots today, they hopefully will become the next Transgender Law Center, the next National Center for Lesbian Rights, at the forefront of change in this country.”