[HeartStrongList] Executive Director Message for October

[heartstrong at heartstrong.org]

Dear Friends,
            As of October 10, we mark ten years of outreach work to GLBT
students from religious educational institutions. While there
aren’t resources for a party to mark this occasion, we are
looking on to what the next ten years of outreach work will
bring.
            It’s been ten years of doing everything we can with whatever
we have to try to make a difference in the lives of the people
we reach.
            It all started in my office at my last paying job in West Los
Angeles. I really wanted to find a way to make sure that other
GLBT people didn't have to go through what I went through
alone. I thought it would be easy to sign up with whatever
organization was doing this work already. Didn’t take long for
me to find out that in the entire world, there was no such
organization. That made me so uncomfortable that I decided
that I had a responsibility to do it.
            So, in October of 1996, I began developing outreach programs
to reach out to GLBT students from religious schools. In
January, 1998, those outreach programs were constructed into
the official educational non profit organization, HeartStrong.
In addition to outreach, we then began the educational part of
our mission.
            If you would have asked me ten years ago that I would turn
into a ten year full time volunteer doing this work, I would
have laughed you out of my office. Today, HeartStrong has 14
outreach programs in place and numerous educational programs.
           In ten years, we have directly assisted nearly 1000 students
(former and current) from these schools. Our HeartStrong
Network is fast approaching 500 members. In the past eight
years, our HeartStrong Outreach Team has driven just over
327,000 miles around the United States. Our outreach work
extends beyond the US as we assist students in Australia,
India, Canada, Scotland, Ireland, the UK and Indonesia. After
ten years of outreach work and eight years of educational work,
HeartStrong is still the only organization in the world with
this mission. In the eight years HeartStrong has been an
official non profit organization, we have not one time raised a
full year’s budget. We typically received about 1/3 of the
money needed to fulfill our budgeted outreach/educational
plans. That means we could do three times the work we do now if
we could just raise our annual budget.
            We need to change that for 2007. Our goal is to raise all of
the money needed to meet our budget through donations and
pledges prior to January 1, 2007. We have a long way to go.
            In fact, we still need to raise $4200.00 to cover the expenses
for the second portion of the 2006 Fall Outreach Trip which
begins on October 16.
            If you are not already a monthly donor of HeartStrong, will
you take a moment to consider how you can help us help more
students? Below are the details of our new gift giving
program. All gifts to HeartStrong are greatly appreciated and
if you are only able to give amounts smaller than what is part
of these programs, you are still VERY important to us. Every
dollar helps us in our work. So please consider what you can
do to help us make even more of a difference for the next ten
years of our work. http://www.heartstrong.org
            I look forward to hearing from all of you as well as seeing
some of you on our upcoming outreach trip. Thank you so much
for your support.

Marc Adams, Founder/Executive Director