Since 2010, Give A Damn has served to educate and engage the public on the different issues facing the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Over these past seven years, we’ve together witnessed history, created opportunities for LGBT youth, and changed hearts and minds across the world. The True Colors Fund is sorry to announce that we’ve decided to phase out Give A Damn.
Since our founding, the True Colors Fund has been committed to preventing and ending LGBT youth homelessness in America through training and education, youth collaboration, and advocacy in government and media. Give A Damn supported the “media advocacy” segment of our mission – acting as a judgement-free place of learning for folks interested in expanding their knowledge of LGBT issues. As the True Colors Fund grew, we began to encounter a lot of confusion around whether Give A Damn was a separate organization. We knew we had to make a change.
In 2016, we gave Give A Damn a total visual makeover, while also reimagining its focus as: “All the things we need to give a damn about in order to end LGBT youth homelessness.” The outcome was a success! Our website was more beautiful than ever and the content was fun and timely. It was a big project – one that a lot of time and love went into. However, the Give A Damn brand was still competing with the True Colors Fund brand. It had its own website, social media channels, and community of followers – effectively splitting the reach of the True Colors Fund in two. Thus, in the wee hours of 2017, the decision was made to phase out Give A Damn.
While Give A Damn may be gone, its spirit is more alive than ever before – and we plan to keep it that way. Give A Damn’s message of intersectionality, pop-culture spin, and down-to-earth voice will live on… it’ll just come from the True Colors Fund instead. There are many intersecting factors at play in our world which cause LGBT folks to experience homelessness. To create a world in which LGBT youth can be their true selves, we need to explore all these factors. We need to keep giving a damn – now more than ever.