Rapid Response Funding
Politically driven orders in Texas (2022) to ban lifesaving and affirming care for trans youth and the directives to pursue abuse charges for parents and families providing such care created severe, life-threatening consequences. Trans-supportive organizations across Texas saw increased demand for mental health services for trans kids and parents alike; skyrocketing requests of gender marker and name correction services; and financial burdens for legal defense and the cost of maintaining lifesaving care at significant distances from home. In response to these accelerating, political attacks on trans youth and their parents, TPIF’s 2022 Pride Month activities focused on honoring people of Transgender and Gender Diverse experience by fundraising under a campaign called QTCF 2022, a relaunch of the Queer Texas Crisis Fund campaign name, originally launched in 2020 with Equality Texas Foundation bringing funds to grassroots nonprofits impacted by the onset of the pandemic.
With generous support by the Laughing Gull Foundation (Durham, NC) and Equality Texas Foundation, TPIF awarded $68,245 through two rounds of funding in 2022. This Rapid Response funding brought desperately needed resources to non-profit organizations already working, with minimal resources, and now experiencing compounding duress due to the reckless, politically driven assaults.
Survey Insights
At the close of 2022 when we surveyed these sixteen organizations receiving our rapid response funding the overwhelming message we received was that transgender communities experienced exponential increases in anxiety, heightened barriers to life-saving resources, and a general feeling of peril - particularly among trans youth and trans communities of color. Survey responses clustered implications in three areas of increased results, needs and or changes in services.
