When COVID first began to close down businesses and send everyone into lockdown in the U.S., GLAAD was a week away from its biggest fundraising and media event of the year, the GLAAD Media Awards. After canceling the awards, which added up to about a $2 million hit for the organization, GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis went to work trying to make up the shortfall. Collaborating with foundations and new corporate partners, Ellis was able to make up the funding gap and maintain GLAAD’s position in the LGBTQ advocacy space, which has been at war with the Trump administration for the last four years.
Ellis recently spoke with Blue Tent about the trials of running a nonprofit as a parent during the pandemic, the media’s shortcomings during the 2020 elections, GLAAD’s big priorities under a Biden administration and more.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length
BT: I think a lot of people aren’t really aware of the fact that COVID has really impacted the LGBTQ population in different ways than everyone else. Could you maybe give me a description of what kinds of issues and what kind of impact COVID has had on the LGBTQ+ community?
SKE: I think that one of the challenges for our community is that we are often invisible as a community. So we’re not measured through COVID or through the tracking of COVID. But what we do know is that historically marginalized communities like ourselves, we get hit on two fronts.
One is obviously on the health front, where, because we’re marginalized, we tend to have more health risks, lower-paying jobs, are more susceptible to being in situations to contract COVID-19, and have less access to medical facilities and doctors and things needed to fight COVID. So there’s that aspect of it, and then traditionally, LGBTQ people have held a lot of positions within the service industry. So when you look at the unemployment rates of what’s happening in terms of who’s being unemployed, a lot of those people tend to be LGBTQ people. So we are disproportionately affected in restaurants and retail and education, those kinds of industries that are heavily impacted by COVID-19.
On the flip side of that, the social health and economic disparities disproportionately affect our community when it comes to COVID, not to mention the added pressure of so many LGBTQ people who are sheltering in place in hostile environments, whether that be their home, their parent’s home, or not being able to find housing because they’re being turned away by government-funded housing.
BT: When COVID hit, GLAAD, like a lot of nonprofits, was suddenly facing this big crisis. What were the immediate challenges that you were up against as an organization?
SKE: When we started to realize that significant changes were going to have to be made in order to contain the spread of the virus, we were a week out from our largest fundraiser. We have the GLAAD media awards that take place in New York and Los Angeles, and our New York media words were scheduled for that March 19th — we closed our office on March 11th and announced the cancellation of our New York media awards, which is about a million dollars to our bottom line, immediate loss.
And then we further had to postpone our Los Angeles ones, it was not clear where this was all headed and what we were to expect. We said we were going to postpone it, and hopefully find a day in the fall to do it, but it ended up, as you know, not being able to happen. And so we ended up canceling our biggest fundraising events, which is about a $2 million loss to the organization not to mention the impact loss to the organization because those events are an opportunity for us to talk about the issues that affect the LGBTQ community. With that, if you will, “amplifier” gone, along with the media’s attention all focused on COVID, all the things that affect the LGBTQ community were not getting attention.
So it was more or less a double whammy. In terms of the staff and as an organization, we’re based in New York, our headquarters is here in New York, and then we have an LA office as well — and within 24 hours we moved out of our offices and into our homes. And so far, not returning back to the offices. And for the not for profit world, that was an enormous undertaking. We’re not resourced the same way that for-profit organizations are. And I have to say that our operations team and our staff did a phenomenal job. We didn’t miss a beat on our work, so I was really proud of that.
BT: So along with organizations facing difficulties, individuals were, as well. You personally are the mother of two children, in addition to having a full-time job. I mean, I imagine because of your job, you’re constantly reading headlines and seeing stories about how women, how parents, how LGBTQ+ people are being really severely impacted by COVID. Do you feel like you faced a lot of personal and emotional hurdles this last year?
SKE: It’s hard to be a parent — I have twin 11-year-olds. I closed our offices on March 11th, their school closed on March 13th. We all lived through it together, you know, not knowing, being quite scared, and I have older parents, so I think I experienced it like a lot of parents did. It was a lot of juggling. It still is a tremendous amount of juggling — I, fortunately, have an amazing wife, and we’ve dealt with it together as a team.
I have the privilege of being able to do my work from home, which I think about often for those people who have to leave their kids in the middle of a global pandemic to go do a front-line job. So I feel really fortunate that I was able to do my job from the safety of my home, and that my kids get schooled from home and had access to computers and WiFi. So I feel really fortunate in that, from that perspective.
BT: Pivoting toward the future, a lot of progressive groups are preparing for some serious cleanup duty when the Trump Administration ends in January. What is on GLAAD’s agenda for the next few years?
SKE: We have been tracking the attacks by this current administration, and there are over 175 attacks, both in policy rollbacks and in rhetoric, so there is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done, and we are putting together a 100-day plan around what needs to now be fixed.
But the day after the election, a case is going in front of the Supreme Court on whether or not gay couples can adopt. And we saw back in June, it went in front of the Supreme Court whether or not LGBTQ people could be fired from their job, and a couple of years before that, we saw in front of the Supreme Court can you deny serving LGBTQ people in a restaurant or a bakery—this specific case was around serving a cake. So our rights have been in jeopardy and are being rolled back. And we have a plan for hopefully what will be a pro-equality administration.
BT: How would you grade the media’s handling and discussion of LGBTQ issues during the 2020 elections? I feel like it’s something that, in much of the mainstream press, you don’t really read about all that much.
SKE: You would be correct, and I think that the media needs to do much better. We released a poll two weeks ago about the LGBTQ voting block, which is estimated at over 9 million people in states that are up for grabs — that is, it can be the deciding factor whether or not LGBTQ people show up and vote in an election. And so I think that not addressing the challenges for that community is a huge disservice to our community. There are opportunities all over from the town halls to the debate to bring up LGBTQ people and the fact that our rights are under attack and our lives are under attack. I mean, there’s over 31 trans women who have been murdered this year. So I think I would give the media at this moment in time a D in covering our issues.
BT: Are there any publications that you think did a particularly good job of covering LGBTQ issues during the election?
Well, I never underestimate. LGBTQ media itself, our own media that raises the issues that keep the conversations going, is doing a phenomenal job, and things like The Advocate, Out…
But, you know, with the changing media, we’re seeing it’s harder and harder for them to survive, and that is worrisome for me. In terms of the mainstream media, I would say, I think across social justice, they haven’t been doing a very good job.
BT: Across social justice they have not been doing a very good job?
Yeah, and you know, in all fairness to them, I mean every day for them is like drinking from a fire hose. And so I get that, but it doesn’t let them off the hook. This is the community that’s been under siege. And we need their help in communicating what’s going on with our community.
BT: Over the last few years, progressive groups have seen pretty big fundraising bumps thanks to Trump. But with the economy shrinking, fundraising has been harder to come by, and with Trump leaving office, do you expect to see a drop in funds?
SKE: There was “wave giving” when Trump was first elected, and I think what’s really interesting about this whole perspective is that when you are a social justice organization, typically during a Republican administration, you see bigger donations and more donations, and then they will taper off a bit if a Democratic administration comes into play. That being said, we’ve never seen the amount of rollbacks and the attacks on our community, and our donor base; our community knows that there’s a lot of repair that has to be done. So it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.
The other piece that’s been pretty amazing over the past several years is watching the corporate community step up in a way that I haven’t seen before. And I think a lot of that has to do with, they realize from a business perspective that in order to take care of their bottom line, they need to take care of their employees and their customers, and their customers are demanding LGBTQ inclusion. They’re demanding that Black lives matter. They’re demanding that they take these social justice issues very seriously as an organization, that they just can’t profit off of people, but they have to come out and put a stake in the ground. And we’ve seen extraordinary leadership in the corporate community and I don’t think that will go away. I think that is a change and a shift that has happened fundamentally in how businesses do business.
And a lot of that has to do with this next generation, right? Like this next generation, whether you look at Gen Z or millennials, their expectations, you have employee activists. I don’t have to get into all of that, But it’s a different world, and they have a different consumer they have to attract, and a different employee they have to attract and retain. And that takes a different approach.
BT: A lot of people have kind of seen this as what they describe as pinkwashing, that they’re basically trying to use more superficial social justice campaigns as a kind of a marketing technique, or as a way to sort of shield themselves from criticism of other kinds of business practices. How do you distinguish between what you think is really worthwhile corporate change or corporate activism, versus more superficial campaigns or pinkwashing?
SKE: It definitely comes back to a 360 approach, and I always say you have to get your own house in order before you go out publicly. So you have to look at what is the construct of your board? What is the construct of your executive team? Where are you going yourself as a CEO? Where’s the board going? And then how is that trickling throughout the organization? What does that look like in human resources? Have you looked at your policies and procedures?
So you have to do a true assessment internally and be committed internally to taking care of your employees and making sure that you are not only talking the talk but walking the walk. And then you can go out in a marketing capacity or in a public capacity in support. Now, this isn’t a Stepford life, you don’t have to have a perfect internal to go external. But you have to be true and authentic, and that is real, and people can smell that a mile away, especially the LGBTQ community. And you will get called out on it, and that will be more damaging to your brand than not coming out on an issue in the first place.
BT: Has there been a lot of internal discussion at GLAAD about issues that have come to the fore in recent months, like racial equality?
SKE: So our job is advocacy for the LGBTQ community. The LGBTQ community consists of women, consists of people of color, it consists of people with disabilities, it consists of immigrants. Every type of person who is out there, there are LGBTQ people. And so we have consistently been working on making sure that all voices are heard within our organization and making sure that when we do have the mic — because that’s what we are, an amplifier — we’re making sure that we are raising up stories and the voices of the most marginalized within our community.
BT: Something I like to close with when talking to nonprofit leaders is that there’s been a pretty significant uptick recently in union organizing among the staffs of nonprofits, especially progressive groups. Does GLAAD have an employee union?
SKE: No, we don’t — we’re little! You know how little we are? (Laughs) We have an outsized perception. We’re about a 40- to 50-person organization. But I guess that’s not a determining factor. My drive has always been to work with our team to make sure that we are doing the best we can for our community, both internally and externally.
BT: If the staff were to come to you and say that they wanted to organize a union, would you support them?
You know, I honestly don’t know enough about it. It’s not something that I’m versed in to answer a question like that.
