Impacts of Statewide Advocacy

To understand the impact of our statewide advocacy, capacity-building support, and data justice work, please consider the following:

From Rural- and Remote-based LGBTQIA2S+ Community Based Organizations:

• “It feels like y’all are really thinking about this in a holistic way and being as inclusive of all different parts of our state, from what I've heard and seen and understood it seems comprehensive and moving slow!! Which is a real big green flag when something is taking forever it means its really considering community voice and being responsive in that way. [I] love when shit like this takes a long time, [it] ends up being reflected”. 

• “You are being a hero for us connecting our ideas and visions to actual funding and partners to make these ideas and visions happen!”

• “Without Equi, this literally would not have happened.”

• “Thank you! You brought us to this grant and really helped us put our thoughts and visions on paper in the best way possible. Thank you for your guidance! And brightness! And amazingness!!”

• “Within this short time, y’all connected our group with numerous individuals and organizations doing similar work in our region. In addition, you helped to bring funding opportunities to our coalition, assisted us through the grant application and proposal process, and helped us secure a $20K grant that will help us to build capacity and sustainability.”

• “[The Outreach and Capacity-Building Manager] has helped to increase the capacity of our coalition significantly, attending bi-monthly meetings, developing materials to secure additional funding (boilerplate language document), assisting with agenda development and note-taking, identifying resources/data, supporting the development of trainings, etc.”

• “[This team] has built an extraordinary set of connections with LGBTQIA2S+ leaders and organizations throughout the state. I’ve been doing statewide coalition/network building in Oregon for over a decade and can attest to the sheer volume of day-in day-out (largely unglamorous) work it takes to build and maintain that level of connection and rapport across our large state. Simply put, without all of [their] work in that area, transformative efforts would either have been impossible or taken much longer and required many more (scarce) resources.” 

• “They are constantly providing support and have so many resources. They listen so well and hear feedback from community and implement changes based off that feedback. They were fantastic with the Community Guidance Council [for the survey project] work and finding organizations and Facebook groups where queer rural folks reside. I'm impressed by their thorough dedication. “

• “[This team] has done an exhaustive amount of research and put so much effort into the very important task of community building and networking with organizations in Oregon. They have also provided needed support to organizations to support them in furthering their work.” 

• After assisting a CBO with grant-writing to secure funding for a trans youth leadership development program, we heard, “everything you wrote takes what I hoped to convey and just gets it there!”

From Public Health Professionals:

• "Your advocacy has sparked conversations and lit a fire under our team. . .you raised the bar and keep raising awareness of how important community based participatory research methods are. . . qualitative data tell a whole different story beyond just the numbers."

• “Your advocacy work has sparked conversations about developing of a Community of Practice focused on qualitative data in public health. . .Folks are wanting to lean more into [this] and consider how we can do this in a way that puts it back in the hands of community so community is making the decisions and owns it”  

• “Your work specifically around informed consent processes has gotten a lot of internal conversations going”

• "This is community engagement at its finest!"

From Private Funders:

• “Thank you so much for your initial presentation to our team. I found the information fascinating, directly applicable to our work, and thoughtful. Your presentation style was intelligent and approachable. Many of us continued the conversation that day around how we might shift our practices, and I’m excited to see what continues to bubble up for our team”

• “I really appreciated walking through from start to finish, I felt like the pace of review was perfect. The data sets were interesting and the anecdotes were a great touch. I also appreciated hearing how this was applicable to our sector.”

• “A lot of valuable information was shared, and the opportunity to ask questions was very much appreciated”