By Karen Ocamb

While protests, political campaigns, and legal battles are most often in the media spotlight, another significant effort to advance the LGBT rights movement is gathering momentum without much fanfare. More and more donors, large and small, are learning how to fund the movement's infrastructure and long-term objectives, rather than solely fund an individual or organization. In many ways, the LGBT checkbook activists are taking a page out of the right wing's playbook.

Such thought-provoking skills building is the subject of workshops and seminars at the day-long OutGiving Conference on Oct. 7-8 at the Bel Age Hotel. The conference, sponsored for the first time in L.A. by the Liberty Hill Foundation and the Gill Foundation, is "solicitation-free" but open to all "who are interested in increasing the amount and effectiveness of their giving."

Checkbook activism is nothing new to the LGBT and HIV/AIDS communities. After Stonewall, in the early 1970s, businessmen and lawyers such as Sheldon Andelson often paid utility bills and threw roasts to raise money for the new Gay Community Services Center. Meanwhile such groups as the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles (MECLA) and the Human Rights Campaign Fund used gay wealth to gain access to mainstream politicians. Many of these same contributors subsequently funded HIV/AIDS organizations denied funding by local, state and federal governments.

The Internet boom of the 1990s prompted gays like Tim Gill and David Bohnett to start their own socially conscious foundations, as music mogul David Geffen had done, generally responsive to broad themes or specific, favorite organizations. Smaller donors have also targeted their giving, usually by going to fund-raising events, with no real connection to how their donations are actually spent.

But in the past few years, there has been a paradigm shift from "reactive" giving in responsive to crisis and right-wing attacks to thinking about long-term movement development. New models of philanthropy have been developed, such as that created by philanthropist and business management consultant Weston Milliken.

Wanting to strategically increase his personal giving to the LGBT community, Milliken attended a national OutGiving conference to network and learn about others' successes and mistakes. Upon his return, Milliken created a donor circle with three friends to do "intelligent giving." Instead of setting up a new foundation, they selected existing nonprofits to act as collaborative, funding intermediaries, essentially housing their money. They then expanded their circle to include knowledgeable grassroots activists and experienced nonprofit staff to help select local groups to fund.

At Liberty Hill, they set up the Queer Youth Fund. "We chose youth because if we give money to organizations that provide youth with leadership training and a safe space, you are providing for the long term. Political change starts with younger people -- that's the basic idea," Milliken told IN.

Contributions are made to Liberty Hill, which then administers the request for grants proposals. But the donor circle is hands-on, doing the work of choosing the grant recipients, including site visits, with the advice of staff and the activists.

"It's work," said Milliken, who watched his father Roger Milliken finance right-wing organizations. "But as Andrew Carnegie said: 'It is more difficult to give money away intelligently than it is to earn it in the first place.' It's important to do a good job."

The importance of the OutGiving Conference, where he will be conducting a seminar, Milliken said, "is to bring together like-minded people to think carefully and strategically about how best to place their money. The right wing has done an amazing job of creating organizations and think tanks to push their agenda. Our side needs to do a better job."

Torie Osborn, the outgoing executive director at Liberty Hill, said that her organization and the Gill Foundation are "in synch" with the idea of "funding the movement by thinking in terms of long term grants and building institutions that can survive. We're about real change, not just social service. It's a black hole choice if you're just trying to prop up a safety net, saving one organization at a time," Osborn told IN.

"The right wing has taught us a lot and we've been really forced by their victories to take a page from their playbook. What they've done with their philanthropy is the most strategic of any force in history. What the Gill Foundation is doing is calling on LGBT donors to do a similar kind of strategic investing, especially to defeat the anti-gay initiatives next year."

Osborn hopes the OutGiving Conference will attract "serious" checkbook activists who wish to learn how to contribute at least $5,000 or more a year to nonprofit organizations. Openly gay Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson will be the special guest speaker.

The conference costs $75 per individual or $125 per couple and the registrants will receive a $100 match from the Gill Foundation for a grant to a registered charity. To register, go to www.libertyhill.org/donor/donorevents.html, or contact Michael Lopez at mlopez@libertyhill.org or (310) 453-3611, ext. 116.