Hey BQLQ Community,

Joy as Resistance has released an organizational statement around the challenges we’re facing. Please read our statement here.

Additionally, we have some news - Doen will be transitioning out of Joy as Resistance on August 8th, after almost four years of supporting BQLQ. Elliott will be stepping away from his role as BQLQ Coordinator and beginning a contracting position with the organization after August 15th , with a focus on communications, grants, and administrative work for Joy as Resistance. We’re hoping that we’re able to raise enough funding in a few months to bring Elliott back to manage the program. 

In the meantime, we hope to provide current matches the resources to continue their mentoring relationships in fruitful ways outside of program supervision, if they would like to continue. In the coming weeks, please plan to meet with Doen or Elliott to confirm your continuation or to close out of the program. If you want to talk more or have questions about what this means for your match, please reach out. 

If you'd like one-on-one processing support with our clinical team, please reach out to Raven at raven@joyasresistance.org. Our clinical team will be offering 1 - 2 sessions for BQLQ mentees or matched pairs between August 15th and September 30th.

If you are able to contribute, we would appreciate your support in these ways:

  • Step up to lead parts of BQLQ and maintain the community connections and program impact. Reach out to Elliott as soon as possible to discuss more about what this would entail!

  • Stay on the lookout for how to sign up to be a monthly donor! We’ll be launching a monthly donor campaign in the next couple of weeks, which will give us a steady stream of regular donations to go towards our programming and help us transition in the most ethical, non-harmful way for individual staff and community impacted by Joy and Joy’s services 

  • Donate to us now! You can give us a one-time donation while we’re finalizing our monthly campaign, in order to take action now and stay in the loop for later actions.

  • Help us fundraise! Please connect our Board Treasurer Halah at halah@joyasresistance.org with folks who can potentially support through this tough moment

  • Send grant opportunities to our Co-Executive Director Janei at janei@joyasresistance.org

  • Volunteer! Our increased efforts to close this funding gap will require increased capacity for things like phone banking, grant writing, and more


We will also be hosting a Program Processing + Send-Off Space on Wednesday, August 6th at our Quince Office. We know that this is all happening quite quickly, and we would love to gather one more time before the BQLQ team transitions. Please be on the lookout for this invite with more details.

Thank you so much for being a part of this journey and the BQLQ community. We are eternally grateful. 

Much love, 

Doen & Elliott