Thank Q!!! A note of gratitude from our Development Team
Dear community of supporters and allies,
It has been a pleasure celebrating our 5th birthday with you all and sharing with you our new mission and vision. Every gift and every share of our Target Registry campaign and our Birthday Fundraiser was welcomed with our deepest gratitude. A huge round of applause to our Development Associate, Randy Ford, for running her first campaign, too! We are so happy to have her passion and skill on our side as we begin to re-introduce LRP to the world!
A huge THANK YOU to our Executive Director, Jaelynn Scott, for driving this organization in the direction of supporting the most marginalized members of our community: Black and Indigenous gender diverse populations. She is a constant inspiration for what it means to be a leader by identifying everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, carefully examining how best to support each staff member, challenging us to think bigger, and allowing for new perspectives and leaders to shine. Because of Jaelynn, Randy was able to step into a Development role, alongside Development Director Natasha Lane, with her previous work as a grant writer and artist to take her fundraising skills to the next level. This campaign wouldn’t have turned out the way it did without Jaelynn’s belief and trust in this organization, and for that we thank her deeply.
We also have to give a big THANK YOU to our Director of Housing Services, Ebo Barton. Since joining LRP, they have been instrumental in managing our Housing Initiative for Black gender diverse communities. Our future House is coming into fruition in ways we couldn’t have dreamed of on our own. Ebo’s leadership, perspective, drive, and dedication is felt throughout the organization and we wouldn’t be where we are in terms of acquiring our building without them. The Target Registry was an incredible way to get the community directly involved in the this dream for a safe home for Black Transgender women and femmes. Thank you again Ebo for working alongside BTTF and helping to inspire the world.
Our Drop-off site locations at Gay City: Seattle’s LGBTQ Center and Starbucks on East Olive Way (“Gaybucks”) played a huge roll in helping receive donations for our future House. We were able to make the Target Registry campaign more accessible and we appreciate the relationships that we’ve cultivated over the last month. To our neighbors near our Tacoma office, Marconi Chiropractic and Wellness, we appreciate them so much for helping hold our packages that got delivered while we were out of the office! They kept our gifts safe and didn’t complain once about the overload. These are the types of relationships we wish to further build with the surrounding Tacoma community and the greater Seattle area. A community that looks out for one another is stronger than ever!
Our corporate sponsors at evo and Beneficial State Bank offered a generous matching grant to help impact our birthday fundraiser and we cannot thank them enough for this! We made new friends at evo and look forward to future partnerships and collaborations. Beneficial State Bank has been our partner for some time now and, as always, we appreciate their continued support of our work.
To the writers and photographers, Renee Raketty at Seattle Gay News, Marcus Green, Jasmine Pulido, and Chloe Collyer at South Seattle Emerald, and Naomi Ishisaka at The Seattle Times: THANK YOU for sharing our stories and journey with the community! We were able to reach so many people and share our new mission and vision because of them amplifying our stories. The Target Registry and the Birthday Campaign is now written and archived in history and we couldn’t thank y’all enough for taking the time to interview us, ask us questions, and affirm our work in this community.
A message from Randy:
Natasha, Amy, Ebo, Jaelynn, and Katelyn held it down for me in ways that only they would understand. At first, I was nervous to run a campaign for an entire organization as part of my final onboarding. From the proposals, to the launch, to me getting sick with COVID towards the end of the fundraiser, this process was challenging in all the ways but also very rewarding and eye opening for me as an individual. I cherish all of you and my co-working staff with all of my being. Thank you for believing in me, challenging me, brainstorming with me, and affirming my strengths. I’ve learned so much about Development and myself and I hope to continue to make y’all proud and serve this community with my all.