Roger Doughty and Horizons Foundation have a vision for the LGBTQ community—and a plan to get there.
When he started volunteering for grassroots LGBTQ nonprofits years ago, Roger Doughty quickly noticed that every group struggled for funding. “Whether it was an advocacy group, a legal group, an HIV organization, or service agency, the story was always the same,” he remembers.
Doughty saw the same thing in LGBTQ organizations throughout the Bay Area once he became Horizons Foundation’s Executive Director in 2002. “So many nonprofits were doing heroic, critical, often life-and-death work—with not anything close to the resources they needed. And that meant LGBTQ people from every part of our community not getting access to help they really needed—our youth, elders, the transgender community, people with serious health issues, people needing mental health or substance use services. The list is endless.” He adds, “And that is just not acceptable. Our community can and must do better.”
While seemingly cool and collected behind his bright blue eyes, Doughty is a man with a fiery commitment to the LGBTQ community—and a deep practical streak. “A moral vision,” he says, “is essential, but it only takes Horizons and our community so far. Our movement, our community, needs a strategy that answers this chronic funding shortage for the whole community for the long term, not just for a single campaign or a single year or a single organization. To put it simply: we need a plan.”
Horizons’ Board Chair, long-time community leader Audrey Koh, explains more of the thinking behind the foundation’s plan this way: “Despite solid accomplishments on nearly every front—political, social, and legal—our movement simply doesn’t have a plan to build the financial resources we need to protect our hard-won gains, meet the still-immense needs of our community today, and prepare for whatever unknowable needs lie in our future.”
A Vision and a Plan
Along with Horizons’ board and his staff team, Doughty developed a plan to create just those financial resources by tapping into the LGBT community’s enormous potential in legacy giving. He points to major cultural institutions, mainstream community foundations, and universities as entities that have reaped billions of dollars from this strategy. “But there’s been little to no work in this area in the LGBT community,” he observes.
Doughty argues that today’s LGBTQ community, especially right here in the Bay Area, is “the single-best legacy giving demographic in human history.” These are bold words from a man not given to hyperbole.
He offers three factors as proof. Two-thirds of LGBT people don’t have kids, which is a major factor in whether someone is likely to include a charitable beneficiary in their estate plans. In addition, a significant percentage of people—though by no means everyone—has seen their wealth increase over the years, including anyone who owns Bay Area property. And lastly, many of the thousands of LGBTQ people in their 50s, 60s, and older—a group Doughty calls “the Stonewall generations”—have a very strong sense of LGBT identity and are now reaching the age when most legacy planning occurs.
Yet all but a very small number of LGBT organizations have never had the capacity to pursue legacy giving. “They’re rightly focused on meeting people’s needs today,” says Doughty, “and they can’t invest their scarce resources in a strategy where the pay-off lies years in the future.”
And that’s where Horizons comes in. As Board Chair Koh puts it, “As the LGBTQ community’s own foundation, it’s our role to help us all realize the fantastic promise in legacy giving. Our very mission lies in ensuring that our community has the funds it needs—and there’s no strategy with potential nearly as great as this one.”
Now and Forever Campaign
Two years ago, Horizons Foundation quietly undertook a campaign with an audacious goal: ensuring the future of the Bay Area’s LGBTQ community … forever. To play this role, however, Horizons itself needed to deepen its own capacity, and so began what became known as the Now and Forever Campaign.
The campaign has set two highly ambitious goals. The first goal: to raise $3.5 million for investment in the foundation’s capacity over a six-year period, particularly in increasing legacy giving for LGBTQ organizations and causes. The second goal aims even higher: to identify a minimum of $100 million in commitments in future legacy gifts to our community. Doughty says, “When that kind of money passes to Horizons and the community from the estates of hundreds or thousands of generous people, it will have profound impact on the lives of countless LGBTQ people.”
But a successful campaign needs more than a single person and attention-getting goals. Doughty knew he had a strong staff for the campaign—led by long-time Vice President of Development Deb Stallings—but there had to be powerful volunteer leadership as well.
“No campaign,” Doughty underscores, “can succeed without strong, respected, and passionate leadership.” And that’s just what Horizons found in Bill Glenn and Scott Hafner, a couple with decades of committed community leadership and wide-reaching connections. In turn, Glenn and Hafner recruited Susan Lowenberg and Joyce Newstat—two absolute powerhouses in fundraising—to be their co-chairs. Together, they put together a campaign cabinet and honorary committee to work alongside the foundation’s board of directors to reach the campaign’s big goals, and the Now and Forever Campaign was born.
“This campaign has audacity,” says co-chair Lowenberg. “It’s bold. It’s visionary. And it’s been an honor to be part of it. She adds, “Our community has worked so hard to just meet the needs of today—and there are still plenty of those—but this campaign lets us build towards a tomorrow when we’ll have the resources thanks to the work we are doing today.”
Glenn says, “I came here to live a life that I could not lead anywhere else. This campaign gives me, and all of us, a chance to ensure that when that next kid gets off the bus from Iowa or wherever and steps foot into this community—this beacon of freedom—the community has the resources to embrace him or her, just the way it embraced me nearly 40 years ago.”
Built by Gifts Large and Small
The most successful campaign in the foundation’s 36-year history has been built by gifts large and small from every corner of our community.
Since the campaign’s start, Horizons has raised over $3.3 million towards the initial goal of $3.5 million—with more than 100 gifts ranging from $100 to $100,000. The foundation has also already secured more than one-third of the legacy commitments towards that $100 million goal. Board chair Audrey Koh is thrilled by the response, saying: “I knew we had a powerful case. I mean, the logic is there, and the data backs it up. What’s been so affirming is the enthusiasm with which the community has participated—donors are very eager to build a brighter future for generations to come.”
As for Doughty, success has not created any hint of complacency, and he is excited that the campaign continues through the end of 2016. “Like Horizons itself, this campaign is by our community, for our community. Every single one of us has this very special opportunity to participate, and to leave a legacy of pride for all the generations to come.”
For more information about how you can participate in the Now and Forever Campaign, please contact Deb Stallings, Vice President of Development, at 415-398-2333×103.
Now and Forever Campaign Donor List
Total Commitments As of September 25, 2016
$3,335,000
Pillars ($100,000 or more)
Arcus Foundation
Al Baum & Robert Holgate
The California Wellness Foundation
Larry Colton & John McCoy
Chip Conley
Anne Sterling Dorman, CPA
William D. Glenn & Prescott W. Hafner
Michael Hulton
Joq Lasner
Lesbians for Good, a donor-advised fund at Horizons Foundation
Jeff Lewy & Ed Eishen
Susan Lowenberg & Joyce Newstat
Ferolyn Powell*
Emily Rosenberg & Darlene de Manincor
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Champions ($50,000–$99,999)
The A&P Lesbian Fund, a donor- advised fund at Horizons Fdn
Tom Burke & Axel Brunger
Robert J. Carr
Excelerate Foundation
Erin Flynn & Chloe Atkins
Steven F. Correll & James R. Shay
Margarita Gandia
Morris Stulsaft Foundation
Thomas Murphy & Tim Murray
Timothy Rodrigues & Alan Mason
Bob Sass
Barry L. Taylor, CFP, & John Inson
Visionaries ($25,000–$49,999)
David P. Black
Jay Cohen
Pamela David & Cheryl Lazar
Richard T. Davis-Lowell & William Lowell
Roger Doughty & Royce Lin
Faruq & ShuSheng
The William and Flora Hewlett Fdn
Charles Q. Forester
Jean Johnston & Katherine Morris
Dan Joraanstad & Bob Hermann
Lawrence R. Kolka & Ian J. MacWilliams
Lesbian Equity Fund—Kathy Levinson & Naomi Fine
Terry Micheau & Rob Evans
Jim Lauber & Tim Portwood
Mossier Foundation
Peter Eric Philipp & Rick Holden
Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund
Rachel J. Robasciotti
The San Francisco Foundation
A.J. Shepard & Anthony Chiu
William Snider & Brian Cameron
Bev Scott & Courtney
Peter Scott
Sam & Julia Thoron
Stanley Watson & Emanuel Anes
Léonie Walker & Kate O’Hanlan, MD
Diane B. Wilsey
Leaders ($10,000–$24,999)
Paul F. Albert
Adam D. Blum & Gary M. Lang
John L. Darby
David Gleba & George Beatty
Richard Gooch
Meggy Gotuaco & Dipti Ghosh
Richard & Mary Hafner
Ira Hirschfield & Tom Hansen
Katharine Holland, Zephyr Real Estate
Audrey Koh, MD & Gaeta Bell
Michael Kossman
Neil Lang & Joe Pessa
Hon. Mark Leno
Ash McNeely/Sand Hill Foundation
Barbara Noda & Mimi Liem
Kathleen Quenneville & Diane Allen
Dan C. Quigley & Eric Emanuel
Michael Rabanal & Alfredo Victorio
Dennis Rhodes
Vincent A. Sales
Susan Shain & Roberta Achtenberg
Sutanto Widjaja & Eric Congdon
Lia Shigemura & Helen Zia
Diane Tom & Karen Hart
Trip Weil
Ron Wong & Mike Tekulsky
Vance Yoshida & Dan Lettieri
Community (<$10,000)
Anonymous (3)
Rosío Alvarez & Juana María Rodríguez
Liza Boyer & Harry Engel
Diana Campoamor
David Chee
Mark Cloutier
Mario De Paoli, MD
Bill & Dee Doughty
David Fraze
Parke & Sarah Hafner
John Robert Hill & Sean Julian
John Clay Leonard
Jim Oakley
Ranjit Pradhan & Vishal Saluja
Randolph S. Quebec & Cal Long
Olga Talamante
Daniel Taylor & Owen Smith
Hoyt Zia & Leigh-Ann Miyasato
Jan Zivic
*In memoriam
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