Horizons Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Horizons Foundation is a premiere LGBTQ funder in the San Francisco Bay Area that supports the LGBTQ community through a wide array of funding categories, including advocacy, civil rights, global LGBTQI rights, arts & culture, reproductive justice, and health & human services. Horizons also hosts giving circles, donor-advised funds, donor engagement opportunities, and scholarships.
IP TAKE: The Horizons Foundation, a GUTC signatory, has been described as “the longest-standing LGBTQ+ community foundation” in the nation. While its grantmaking budget is relatively modest, Horizons is a formidable ally in this funding space, with ambitious donor engagement efforts, programming, and extensive support for grantees beyond funding. The foundation offers mutual support, individual coaching, and skills building for LGBTQ nonprofit leaders across the Bay Area through its Strategic Partners Program. Across its programs, Horizons prioritizes “innovative, grassroots solutions to our community’s emerging needs, especially those of the most under-resourced segments of our community.” In an Inside Philanthropy interview, Horizons’ long-time president, Roger Doughty, said that Horizons is one of a “very small number of” foundations working on building “middle- and long-term funding strategies” for LGBTQI nonprofits, particularly strategies to harness legacy giving by the Stonewall Generation.
This Bay Area funder is accessible and transparent, with a grants directory and detailed financials available online. Horizons typically offers modest unrestricted general or operating grants, with occasional open calls for grant applications. Grantmaking is mostly active in the nine-county SF Bay Area, but limited grantmaking goes to national and global nonprofits, as detailed below.
PROFILE: Considering itself the “first community foundation of, by, and for LGBTQ people,” the Horizons Foundation was established in 1980 in San Franciso, envisioning a “world where all LGBTQ people live freely and fully.” According to its mission statement, the foundation “invests in LGBTQ nonprofits, strengthens a culture of LGBTQ giving, and builds a permanent endowment to secure our community’s future for generations to come.” This funder was initially founded as the philanthropic arm of the Golden Gate Business Association, and renamed “Horizons” in 1988. A GUTC signatory, it soon became one of the top ten funders of the LGBTQ movement, according to the advocacy group Funders for LGBTQ Issues.
The Horizons Foundation has evolved greatly since it first started making grants. In addition to being a major player in LGBTQ+ funding, it is widely considered to be a thought leader in the space through its Lesbian and Gay Philanthropy Project, which advocates for more mainstream funders to support and invest in the LGBTQ community and movement. It conducted the first major needs assessment of the San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ community in 2019.
The Horizons Foundation’s ambitious 5-year Strategic Plan aims to double its community grantmaking and prioritize LGBTQ refugees and asylees, LGBTQ youth, LGBTQ elders, LGBTQ people of color and transgender people. Check this funder’s site often because big things — and funding — are evolving quickly.
Grants for LGBTQ
While all of Horizons’ funding programs focus on uplifting and investing in the LGBTQ community, it also believes that “LGBTQ liberation cannot be unwound from the liberation of all oppressed people.” Horizons makes grants for the LGBTQ community, housing, human services, higher education, the global LGBTQ community, and various Bay Area LGBTQ issues.
Grants for the Bay Area LGBTQ Community
The Community Issues program, Horizon’s flagship grantmaking program, provides support to “small and mid-sized LGBTQ nonprofit organizations and programs (annual budgets of $1 million or less) based in the nine counties of the SF Bay Area. To help achieve a greater impact for the LGBTQ community, Horizons has refined its grantmaking strategy in this area, reaffirming its commitment as a community foundation to an “Open Door” policy in our community grantmaking, intentionally offering a wide range of LGBTQ nonprofits opportunities to seek funding.”
This program offers general support with a maximum award of $15,000, though increasing the number of multi-year grants awarded over the years here.
The Community Issues program has an “Open Door” policy that suggests it is “open to all nonprofits and fiscally sponsored programs that meet eligibility criteria and whose work falls within” its areas of focus.
Community Issues funding areas include:
Advocacy and Civil Rights
Arts and Culture
Community Building and Leadership
Health and Human Services
To be eligible for a Community Issues Grant, your organization must:
Be a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization, or provide documentation that the organization is fiscally sponsored by an organization that has 501(c)(3) status.
Be an LGBTQ- primary organization or non-LGBTQ-primary organization with a budget $1M or less.
Limit requests for support for a program/project based within one or more of these SF Bay Area counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma.
The LGBTQ Donor Engagement Program funds larger LGBTQ-primary organizations with annual budgets over $1 million. Funding here is limited to organizations based within the nine counties of the SF Bay Area.
LGBTQ Donor Engagement Grants offer a maximum award of $5,000 to support annual fundraising events. However, if an organization does not have an annual fundraising event, it may be eligible for “efforts that engage donors through alternative events (e.g., house parties, annual donor thank-you events, etc.).” Those events must take place in one of 9 SF counties.
These are not multi-year grants and must be used within the calendar year in which they were received.
Spring LGBTQ Donor Engagement Program applications open in January for events that will take place from February through June. Fall applications open in July for events that will take place from August through December.
To win support here, events must:
Offer inclusive, inspiring, engaging programming for and about the LGBTQ community
Incorporate strategies to build new relationships and increase giving, especially from individuals
State clear goals for what a successful event looks like and a plan on how event success will be measured
Grants for Global LGBTQ Rights, Faith and Reproductive Rights
The Global Faith and Equality Fund focuses on investing in “efforts to secure and expand LGBTI rights and reproductive justice in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The fund also resources work to amplify progressive faith voices that are LGBTI-welcoming and accepting and support comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights.”
Grants through the Fund are by invitation only at this time.
Funded projects occur at the intersection between LGBTI Rights, Reproductive Justice, and progressive faith voices.
If you have questions about the Fund, write Horizons at grants@horizonsfoundation.org.
Grants for LGBTQ in Higher Education
Horizons also offers LGBTQ Scholarships and Fellowships, each with their own award ranges and details, to support LGBTQ students. Current opportunities can be further read about by clicking below:
Asian & Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community (APIQWTC) Scholarship
Tom Steel Post-Graduate Fellowship
Grants for LGBTQ Nonprofits
Through its Fundraising Resources for LGBTQ Nonprofits program, Horizons works to invest in “LGBTQ organizations beyond making grants” by offering “resources and research for LGBTQ nonprofits” serving to “build capacity and power them to raise more funds” that help to advance the LGBTQ movement. Resources here are extensive and advance Horizons’ efforts as a thought leader on LGBTQ funding. Its resources have also helped organizations raise millions of dollars for the LGBTQ community.
While a separate program, the Programs for Leaders of LGBTQ Nonprofits offers several programs that support the “leaders of LGBTQ nonprofits in the SF Bay Area working to create a world where all LGBTQ people live freely and fully.”
The Horizons Foundation also provides extensive research reports that speak to LGBTQ giving trends, as well as gaps in giving.
Other funding opportunities:
The Horizons Foundation also organizes several LGBTQ donor-advised funds, several LGBTQ Giving Circles and other related, evolving opportunities. Note that proposals to the Foundation’s donor advisors are accepted by invitation only.
Lastly, the foundation runs Programs for Leaders of LGBTQ Nonprofits in the San Francisco area. Upcoming events and convenings are posted on the program page. Past programs include a Board Leadership Program to help board members of LGBTQ nonprofits network and develop “board skills” and a Strategic Partnership Program that “served to provide mutual support, individual coaching, and skills building for LGBTQ leaders in the SF Bay Area.”
Important Grant Details:
Grants range from about $5,000 to $500,000, but most grants are more modest, ranging from $5,000 to $25,000. Horizon’s grants database is searchable online.
Given the repeated use of the term “LGBTQ-primary” across its site, it is important to know that this term refers to an “organization whose mission includes the LGBTQ population as the primary focus of the work; whose staff and board predominantly reflect the LGBTQ community; and which primarily serves LGBTQ people.”
To discuss potential grant proposals, write to Horizons’ staff at grants@horizonsfoundation.org. For more general inquiries, write to them at info@horizonsfoundation.org or call: (415) 398-2333.
PEOPLE:
LINKS:
