Pride Foundation has awarded more than $7.5 million this year to expand opportunities and advance full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people and families throughout the Northwest, including a 23 percent increase in its community grant awards.

The foundation uses a variety of strategies to inspire giving and affect change, including community grants, educational scholarships and donor-advised funds. The community grants program awarded $373,500 to 66 organizations striving to increase opportunities for LGBTQ people and communities in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. Forty percent of this year’s grantees are focused on supporting LGBTQ youth, and 15 percent of funding was awarded to HIV and AIDS prevention and direct services. The recipients include:

• Flathead Reservation Human Rights Coalition (St. Ignatius, Montana): For a joint community organizing training with local youth and the National Coalition Building Institute, with the goal of helping build a stronger GSA network in area schools.
•  Identity, Inc. (Anchorage, Alaska): For the first-ever LGBTQ statewide health assessment in Alaska. The project is a collaboration of Identity, Inc., the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and a coalition of partner organizations and stakeholders.
• Inland Oasis (Moscow, Idaho): For HIV/AIDS-related testing services at Inland Oasis, which provides a community center, HIV and Hepatitis C screening, and other social and health programming for LGBTQ people and allies in Southeastern Washington and North Central Idaho.
• Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC)—Puget Sound Chapter (Tacoma, Washington): For the Oral Herstories Project, which includes live dramatic readings of oral Herstories, the production of a Herstories video and companion guide, and the distribution of lesbian anthologies to senior centers across the Puget Sound area.
• PFLAG Portland Black Chapter (Portland, Oregon): For expansion of its current peer educational leadership program serving LGBTQ youth of color in the Portland metro area.

Full list of Pride Foundation’s community grant partners.

“2015 represented another important milestone for our community,” said Kris Hermanns, Pride Foundation executive director. “Despite the setbacks and losses we faced locally and nationally, we continue to make progress so that one day all LGBTQ people are able to be who they are, where they are. Our recent investments give me hope that when we join together, we can chart a future filled with opportunity and promise for each of us.”