Meet the 2026-2027 LGBTQ+ Alliance Fund Grant Recipient Cohort: Perspectives on Impact.

As a grassroots organization, we know the importance of showing up and meeting people exactly where they are. This grant allows us to deliver six pop-up Know Your Rights sessions across Pima County and Yuma County, serving 50 unduplicated individuals, providing community-based legal preparedness support designed to strengthen stability and autonomy for LGBTQ+ community members.

The Alliance Fund grant in 2008 was what helped to first start the archives. This year's grant is what pushes us into our stronger realm with paid staff, a community home, co-directors, an active and engaged board, a group of reliable and passionate volunteers and interns, and many more programs to connect to our many QTPOC / LGBTQI+ communities. We are ready for this next iteration of the AQA!

At BorderLinks, we have long dreamt of running an educational program specifically for QTBIPOC movement leaders rooted in the Tucson area, and this Alliance Fund grant makes it possible! We are so grateful for the opportunity to engage in cross-organizational learning and carve out the space to implement strategy together, addressing a need many community partners have named.

For the people we serve, this grant means access. It means being able to walk into a shop space and feel like you belong there. It means having the time, support, and resources to learn at your own pace, ask questions without judgment, and leave with both new skills and a sense of confidence, and a community where people feel safe relating to and learning with others.

We have a robust group of self-identifying Queer Teaching Artists who will now be compensated for showing up as mentors, teachers, and artists as they lead attendees through chosen art mediums and art activities, all while sharing their own experiential journey as an artist, here in the Tucson community. The importance of “seeing oneself” in a leader cannot be overstated, particularly with our older teens and young adults.

Receiving the Alliance Fund grant for our Name Change Clinic is incredibly meaningful. It directly supports transgender and nonbinary people in taking a critical step toward living authentically and safely. A legal name change is more than paperwork, it impacts access to employment, housing, healthcare, and everyday interactions. The process can be costly, confusing, and intimidating, and this grant allows us to remove those barriers.

This grant is a direct investment in the idea that LGBTQ+ communities in the Southwest deserve a newsroom that sees them — not as a topic to be covered, but as a public whose stories matter on their own terms. For a small newsroom punching far above its weight, $10,000 is the difference between sustaining our journalism and having to scale back the very coverage our community depends on.

Since 2017, MOCA has been serving the LGBTQ+ community through our Stay Gold program—an intergenerational art workshop series that brings together LGBTQ+ youth, adults, and elders to build community through collaborative art-making, dialogue, and shared learning. The program creates an inclusive, free space where participants connect across generations, exchange lived experiences, and explore creativity. This grant will significantly strengthen the program.

Receiving this grant means we can help provide safety, stability, and a future for LGBTQ+ young people experiencing homelessness in our community. Our Family Services is a proud ally of the LGBTQ+ community and strives to incorporate those voices at all levels of our organization. This funding will provide critical housing and supportive services. For the youth we serve, this means more than housing; it means affirmation, belonging, and the opportunity to build a stable, self-sufficient future.

For many people, receiving respectful and knowledgeable care is not only essential for their physical health but also deeply connected to their emotional well‑being, sense of safety, and ability to live authentically. That is why this award is truly meaningful to the gender affirming care Planned Parenthood Arizona continues to provide. We will continue to advocate for inclusive healthcare and work in solidarity with the transgender and nonbinary community.

For our organization, this funding strengthens our ability to continue offering high-quality programming while growing sustainably. For our members and audiences, it represents affirmation that who they are and what they bring to the community matters. Reveille is more than a performing ensemble. It is a place where individuals find acceptance, build relationships, and experience the power of being fully seen and celebrated.

This grant will allow us to bring together key service providers, advocates, community members, program participants, volunteers, and funders to help drive a needs assessment of LGBTQ+ services and support. It will begin a discussion focused on identifying priorities, available resources, potential partnerships and collaborations, and ideas for what LGBTQ+ services, support, and advocacy might look like in Southern Arizona in the future.

Receiving this grant is a lifeline for Southern Arizona Senior Pride and the LGBTQI+ older adults we serve. With this funding, we can deepen staff capacity, bolster operations, and extend services to more of the 8,000+ local LGBTQI+ elders who face compounded marginalization—including some who live in poverty and many who lack partners, spouses, friends, and/or family support.

Receiving this support from the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona strengthens our ability to be there for LGBTQ+ youth in moments when they need it most. This funding helps ensure that young people in Southern Arizona have access to compassionate, life-saving crisis support and a reminder that they are not alone.

These funds provide critical emergency support – helping students stay enrolled when facing financial holds, cover rent during moments of crisis, and remain on track toward graduation. LGBTQ+2S students face disproportionately high rates of poverty and housing instability, and this collaboration allows us to respond quickly and compassionately.