Resourcing LGBTIQ+ Futures
Churchill Fellowship Report
LGBTIQ+ communities in Australia and globally continue to face stigma, discrimination, and unequal rights.
The LGBTIQ+ community sector—led by and embedded within these communities—is best placed to address these systemic challenges, yet remains chronically underfunded.
Through a Churchill Fellowship, Rainbow Giving Australia CEO, Em Scott, explored what Australia could learn from the US and UK about increasing philanthropic funding for LGBTIQ+ communities.
Major findings & recommendations
Finding 1: LGBTIQ+ rights are precarious, and hard-won progress can be reversed faster than we expect.
Finding 2: Institutional funding is no longer dependable on its own; diversification is more important than ever.
Finding 3: Institutional funders who have stayed the course did so because they had clarity of purpose, strong peer connections, and practical plans for risk and safety.
Finding 4: The next phase of LGBTIQ+ equality depends on stronger positioning and shared solutions within the polycrisis.
Finding 5: Building individual giving, especially legacy giving, is one of the most resilient and scalable ways to resource LGBTIQ+ communities for the long term.
Finding 6: LGBTIQ+ community-led funders and other backbone organisations are essential stabilisers.
Finding 7: Grantmaking that works best is trust-based, centres community, and funds the transition from dependency to resilient, diversified resourcing.
Finding 8: Network leadership in the LGBTIQ+ sector is the pathway from competitive silos to shared abundance.
Finding 9: LGBTIQ+ progress requires investing across multiple levers of change.