Stories

State Equality Fund

Fighting for LGBT rights, State Equality Fund is an outcome-based philanthropic partnership that includes the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, the Gill Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, and anonymous donors.      

Focused on achieving equality for all Americans through state-wide policy change, the Fund is primarily focused on supporting statewide policy-changes within three years in the areas of nondiscrimination, relationship recognition, parenting rights, and safe schools.  As a secondary objective, the Fund also considers local or incremental policy-changes within three years that help pave the way for later, broader statewide gains. 

Administered by Tides, the State Equality Fund has granted almost $8 million to advance LGBT equality on the state level.  Toward this goal, grant recipients have included organizations seeking to promote and support news media outlets that serve the Black, Asian, and Hispanic markets in efforts to raise the visibility of LBGT people in communities dominated by immigrants and people of color, to promote safe schools through the adoption of LGBT-inclusive anti-bullying policies, and for the state to recognize same-sex marriages as legal, granting the same rights to all spouses under the law.