Update: Thank You for Helping QEJ Through Its Crisis

Dear Friend,

Last week we reached out to our supporters because we needed your help. QEJ faced a major cash flow crisis due to political fighting in Albany which stalled $40,000 in funding we were awarded in late summer of 2009.

Thanks to the generosity of supporters like you, we raised $18,000, also meeting the matching gift of $11,000 created by friends of QEJ . Because of this support, we did not have to furlough staff and shut down operations. This funding will help us continue to our unique work organizing and advocating for the thousands of those in our community who are homeless, poor, working class, and largely people of color marginalized from the mainstream LGBT community.

We at QEJ are so deeply humbled and overwhelmed by this outpouring support. To our friends and communities, THANK YOU for standing with us and supporting QEJ’s work for justice. This support will help QEJ continue our essential operations in the weeks ahead. To show you our appreciation, QEJ staff made a short video to thank all of you for helping us in this critical time. Click here to see our message.

You should know that QEJs efforts to expedite the release of the grant also paid off, as we finally received the contract this week from Albany to receive our long-awaited funding. This will set us back on track in the next month when we should receive the money.

A compounding factor for with the cash flow crisis was the fact that QEJ was also told that we had move by the end of this month. Our landlords did not renew their lease with the building and we were in a position of looking for a new home for QEJ while dealing with the immediate crisis, facing the real possibility of being without a home in addition to furloughing our staff.  Thankfully this worst case scenario did not come to pass! We found a new space that will help us to further serve our constituencies better.  Details about our move will be coming next week.

Again, THANK YOU so much for your generosity, good-will and support. QEJ is lucky to have you as our ally in our fight for a more socially just world. We could not be more grateful to have you as our supporter.

With much appreciation,

Kenyon Farrow

Executive Director

P.S. – You know it took us more than one take to make this video. And just for you, we prepared another video of our outtakes. Click here to see our case of the giggles.