Since March 2012, The L-Fund has offered financial and other assistance to local lesbians in need.
This time next year, the structure of The L-Fund may be different—but its leaders promise that its mission will remain the same.
Current L-Fund board members, led by co-chairs Robbin Burr and Mei Ling Tom, have been taking a hard look at the challenges the organization is facing in terms of growing membership and maintaining its services as local needs grow. As a result, the organization is looking into a possible merger with the LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert.
“Some of the things that we do well are building and continuing relationships with a loyal group of founders and supporters (who) have been so generous to the L-Fund since the very beginning,” said L-Fund co-chair Mei Ling Tom during a virtual town hall meeting on Oct. 1.
The organization currently operates four programs: the Lesbians in Need (LIN) fund; the L-Fund Education Assistance Program (LEAP); a health and wellness fund; and the Debra I. Moore Grant for the Arts program.
“With growth comes new challenges,” Tom said during the town hall. “We have been growing ever since the beginning, and continue to grow—and it’s just so much work. … We don’t really have as many volunteer resources that we need to help us … and additional concerns are ahead of us due to the new political environment, as we do not have resources to weather a heavy storm. Everyone is very well aware of all that’s happening, and we don’t have the infrastructure or the support for our small board.”
While The L-Fund has made a huge impact, it’s done so without a paid staff. That means the work falls on the seven-person, all-volunteer board.
“I want everyone to understand how hard we have tried to take this board to a larger number, and also to recruit diversity in age, in thought and in ethnicity,” said co-chair Robbin Burr during the town hall. “We have worked almost to the point of exhaustion, frankly, to try to find people who can come to the board bringing the skill sets a little more current, and also (ensuring) that we have the bandwidth to do what we need to do as an organization.”
Burr has a long history with LGBTQ+ nonprofits. She was the executive director of a Chicago gay and lesbian center called the Center on Halsted, and the board chair of CenterLink, a coalition of LGBTQ community centers. During those years, she met Mike Thompson, the current CEO of the LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert, known as The Center.
“I started talking to Mei Ling, (and) I said, ‘We need The Center,” Burr said during the town hall. “… And we began to talk about what would it look like if we merged The L-Fund with The Center. And there’s a bigger dream for us there, to be honest with you. Centers across the country … struggle with how to engage lesbians. … The dream is that we figure out how to do it here, and we can take it everywhere to centers across the country.”
Thompson said he shares Burr and Tom’s optimistic outlook on the benefits and strategic wisdom of bringing The L-Fund into The Center.
“What has been created in this (L-Fund) organization is unlike anything else that is happening across the country,” Thompson said during town hall. “In this time that we are living in, and as a community center that has responsibility for serving LGBTQ+ people along their way, our interest is in doing what is best for lesbians in need in our community. … There is no way that we could replicate what the founders and everyone since has created in … The L-Fund. Now that we are the size that we are, having The L-Fund at The Center is an absolute complement to our work. … Like Robbin said, this is not a unique situation to the desert (of) centers not having vibrant and meaningful programs for lesbians in the community. So this gives us a greater stake in the ground, and … we share that vision of creating a model that can be replicated, so lesbians in communities across the country can have a greater resource in their community center.”
‘Both Coming Into This With Strength’
While many LGBTQ community centers across the country are struggling, the LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert is thriving. Since 1998, through numerous name and organizational transitions, The Center has grown in size and scope. The organization currently owns its McDonald/Wright Building in Palm Springs, and is planning an expansion. In 2021, the organization opened The Center Coachella, and recently moved its Community Food Bank into a much larger location.
At its launch, The L-Fund board consisted of six board members who, the website says, “once a month (and sometimes twice a month) … enjoyed homemade brunches and get-togethers. Each woman placed $20 into a basket for assisting lesbians. They soon had enough money to respond to the first L-Fund request to assist a lesbian with $120 for critical life-saving medicine.” Today, according Burr, The L-Fund has roughly $500,000 in its accounts to cover its all-volunteer operations, including fundraising, event staging and disbursement of grants and awards.
“The needs are becoming tremendous, as you might imagine,” Burr said at the town hall. “Just to give you a sense, we’ve given away $30,000 more this year at this (point in) time than we did last year.”
These are needs with which The Center—with a full-time staff of 35 people—can assist.
“We had our all-staff meeting at The Center Coachella yesterday,” Thompson told the town hall audience. “They had a map up of 20 different community points (where) we are currently doing programming across the east valley. … Our community has stepped up with very generous support of The Center, allowing us now to be a $5 million organization. … By nonprofit standards, with (an annual) budget of $5 million, an organization should have anywhere between $1.4 million and $1.7 million in reserve, to indicate the strength of the organization. Our reserve fund today stands at $1.6 million. If times get a little bit challenging, we’ve got a reserve now. We don’t want to touch that, but it also gives us some security that we’re going to be OK.”
Thompson continued: “Given this financial strength of The L-Fund, it just makes sense (to merge), because neither of us would be entering this partnership crippled. We’re both coming into this with strength financially, but also with the strength of community support behind us. I think the community is going to respond in a very generous way, seeing the collaboration, because now L-Fund volunteers can truly be L-Fund volunteers, and our staff picks up a lot of the work that L-Fund board members had been doing. We’ve got a communications team; we’ve got a social media team; we’ve got a development team; and we’ve got a strong programs infrastructure. So we can preserve the integrity of The L-Fund structure, and then just provide all the other support around that, so it can really thrive and likely launch to a new level of growth.”
The plan, should the merger proceed, is for The L-Fund board to act as a search committee for a director to head their embedded operations. The Center will expand its board to include two new seats, which will be filled by L-Fund representatives.
“The L-Fund would dissolve its own 501(c)(3) and become The L-Fund at The Center,” Burr explained to town hall attendees. “The L-Fund would have a dedicated director that will report directly to Mike. Currently, the funds that we bring over to The Center from The L-Fund will stay in a restricted account that will be used only for The L-Fund. Our donors, our supporters, will be able to dedicate their giving to The L-Fund. … If you’re giving us restricted funds for LEAP, or you’re giving us restricted funds for health and wellness, or you’re just giving funds to The L-Fund, that’s how it will come, and that’s how it will stay.”
Burr and Tom repeated several times during the town hall that the merger-study process will not be rushed.
“We want to take our time and be sure this is done really well and appropriately,” Burr said. “And The Center doesn’t want to do anything until they start their next fiscal year, which begins in July 2026. We believe that’s the right time, anyway, so that we have time to really map this out, (and) figure out the direction.”
A Model to Help, Both Locally and Beyond
After a second, in-person town hall on Oct. 8, the Independent went back to each of the three leaders to ask what they took away from those two exploratory discussions.
Tom expressed gratitude to everyone who has, and continues to, support The L-Fund.
“We are forever grateful, because that (generosity) helps us continue to do what we do,” Tom said. “… We look forward to keeping everyone abreast … as we move along. We’ll definitely keep everyone updated along the way.”
Burr emphasized the positive aspects of the proposed merger.
“The L-Fund could not be more excited and thrilled that we are in such a good space that we need to do this,” Burr said. “We want the community to understand that we are coming at this as a very, very positive, exciting thing for us, because it is. … I know engaging the “L” in LGBTQ+ is a challenge everywhere … and the L-Fund has a chance to influence helping, and reaching and engaging the “L” in centers across the country, once we get the model built here. So I’m super excited about that part.”
Thompson said The L-Fund leadership will ultimately make the decisions regarding what’s best for The L-Fund’s long-term sustainability.
“What The Center (has) always been interested in, and what we will continue to be interested in, is that members of our community of LGBTQ-identifying people across the Coachella Valley have their needs met by someone,” Thompson said. “That is what’s of primary importance. Where we have the capacity and the resources and the programming to address those needs, we want to do that. Where need to partner with other organizations, we want to do that. So whatever the outcome of this exploration is, we want to make sure that lesbians in need in our community have a resource to go to in The L-Fund. … We’re thrilled that The L-Fund has looked to us as a possible partner, and we would be honored if they chose to partner with us in this meaningful way, because our interest then would become maintaining the integrity of the program to ensure those in need who come to The L-Fund will continue to get what they’ve always gotten from The L-Fund.”