---

For News of the Coalition and Upcoming Events of Interest

click on the link above to access the current newsletter.

There are lots of interesting Announcements below on this page, please scroll down.

 

§§§

At the September 19 Annual General Meeting the Coalition voted to disband and pass our treasury and our mission of serving LGBTQ seniors  to Family ElderCare and Rainbow Connections ATX

Votes:

1. That the Austin LGBT Coalition disband with an effective date of 9/30.

              Unanimously approved

1. That remaining funds (approx. $8K) be given to Family Eldercare, where the Rainbow Connections ATX program resides.

Unanimously approved

1. Instruction to Family Eldercare governing use of the funds.

For support of LGBTQ seniors with a preference for the LGBTQ senior housing project and if not possible, then to support Rainbow Connections ATX.

Vote 6 to 1 in favor.

This website will remain active will the end of 2024 when our hosting contract runs out.

There will be no Steering Committee Meeting in October

§§§ 

 

 

The Monthly Newsletter, accessible from the top of this page, has the most up-to-date Announcements.

The Long-Term Care Equality Index (LEI) is the first national benchmarking tool for LGBTQ+ inclusion in senior housing and long-term care communities. The current LEI Survey opened July 2024 and the report releases May 2025. All communities that complete the survey will be nationally recognized in the May 2025 report and searchable database. With free resources, technical assistance, and a biennial survey, the LEI helps communities implement, strengthen, and innovate their LGBTQ+ inclusion efforts.  

With many LGBTQ+ older adults reporting abuse or fear of abuse in senior housing and long-term care communities, this is an important step to provide a safe environment for the aging LGBTQ+ population.

Interested senior housing communities can learn more at https://thelei.org/the-lei.

Facilities can take the pledge at https://thelei.org/commitment-to-caring-pledge. The pledge is the first step as an indication of their intention to adopt the LGBTQ+ inclusive policies and practices necessary to provide culturally competent and responsive care to LGBTQ+ older adults.

If you know someone living in senior housing or a long-term care community, please encourage them to have their facility take the pledge.

---

200 Senior Living Communities Commit to LGBTQ+ Inclusion, Participating in Inaugural Long Term Care Equality Index (LEI) by HRC Foundation and SAGE

---

Click here to access the report for 2023 and see the LGBTQ+ inclusive senior facilities around the US.

Here’s the map from the report. Click on the icons for info. Enlarge your browser window to make the map bigger.

---

---

The Kick the Bucket

Podcast Project

Welcome! On Kick the Bucket, we turn the mic to the often unheard voices of the aging and elderly. Hosted by Andee Kinzy and brought to life with insights from seniors and their caregivers, the podcast stitches together deeply personal interviews and real-world experiences with an audio fiction story (like an old-fashioned ‘radio play’). The series offers a fresh take on elder care, aging, and end-of-life autonomy through stories that tickle the funny bone and tug at the heart.

https://improvedarts.org/kickthebucketpodcast

AIDS Healthcare Foundation

provides free HIV and STI testing, as well as care to those who are reactive for HIV. They can go anywhere in Austin and the surrounding counties because they have a mobile testing unit, so they can come to you! If you are interested in our services, call 512-492-2204.

Their website is https://ahf.org/

---

Online Safety

Here’s an online safety guide that aims to empower LGBTQs and give them the tools to protect themselves online

 https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/lgbtq-guide-online-safety/

They give a few tips and practical suggestions for each situation!

Here’s a Guide to Current Usage of Gender-related Terms

A Nurse’s Comprehensive Guide to Gender-Affirming Care

                   SURVEYS                  

Here’s an opportunity to get your real life experiences recognized

Take PRIDE in Your Health

Health Equity for African Americans League (HEAAL)  

In 2023 HEAAL identified mental health problems as the most important health problem in Blacks/African/African American communities in Orange County. The African American Alliance Fund (AAAF) has commissioned CFHI to do more work towards understanding the top mental health problems confronting Blacks/Africans/African Americans. Our goal is to capture the top health and mental health priorities of Blacks/Africans/African Americans in your community. To make this work statistically significant, we want to hear from you. 

The survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete. The survey is completely anonymous and your responses will not be linked to you or your email (even if it shows your email). Please complete the entire form as soon as possible. If you have any questions, please reach out to us at [email protected] or [email protected].  

Click HERE to complete the survey. If this fails, please copy and paste the URL: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScRerXEB8Tybx_tvK6W1UKltKlikbeF3gMbqVG9RnJ-kpZSBQ/viewform?vc=0&c=0&w=1&flr=0&usp=mail_form_link to complete the survey.

www.TheRiseRegistry.org

                 Austin LGBTQ History               

 

The Watson Chateau – Austin’s Well-Kept Secret

Hiding on University of Texas at Austin campus, next to the School of Nursing, a peculiar building peeks out from behind old trees, tall fencing, thick vines, and overgrown bushes. Unlike all the other buildings on campus, no sign announces the university-owned Arthur P. Watson-Robert “Bob” Garrett House (a.k.a. The Chateau or Watson Chateau). It is a place filled with under-told history about women, African-Americans, and 50 years of importance to the LGBTQ community. If you visited The Chateau, have photos/videos, or simply heard stories, please contact Marta Stefaniuk at [email protected] to help her continue collecting its vital history. 

Read more about the Chateau and why this old building is of importance to Austin LGBTQ history

 

The ALGBTCOA sponsors The Memory Project: LGBTQ History in Austin. Please take a look at our page on this website. Please consider contributing your story.

The FTC has recently received a number of consumer reports about remote job scams targeting the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. We’ve posted an alert to make people aware of this scam trend. We’re asking LGBTQ+ partners like you to help us spread the word.

Please share this link and attached graphic: Looking for a remote job for a cause you care about? Here’s how to know if it’s a scam  with your networks.

---

QWELL is a sister organization to the Coalition on Aging; from the first Townhall Meeting that saw the creation of the ALGBTCOA, we were charged with participating in the development of an LGBTQ Community Center. QWELL, headed up by Clayton Gibson, has been a leader in that effort and in the recent community surveys.

Click here to make your donation to support MASSIVE PROGRESS for LGBTQIA+ people in Greater Austin

Qwell Update December 2023

QWELL and our developer, Pennrose, are in talks with Catellus about a parcel of land in Mueller on which to build one of our mixed-use developments that will each include:

• One of QWELL’s LGBTQIA+ community centers (on the top floor for security);
• Clinical spaces for our partners who offer critical services and want to co-locate with one or more of the Centers;
• LGBTQIA+ friendly affordable housing or senior housing; and,
• A vibrant street level of queer-friendly shops and restaurants to serve the whole neighborhood. 

We may publicly announce the first location at the fundraiser in December (optimistic but possible) and the second by the end of 2024. We should begin construction on the first building in 2025. 

If your organization wants to co-locate in our buildings, it’s time to start seriously talking about what you need in the space and how much money you need to fund this expansion. Let’s start planning to make it happen in the next 2-3 years.

QWELL’S APP: GREATER

QWELL’s forthcoming smartphone app, GREATER – launching by January – will hopefully bring in enough money to not only fund QWELL’s growth but also help fund yours as well. 

For it to work, all our local LGBTQIA+ leaders need to understand the app’s potential to make our community GREATER and get invested in making the app a huge success so that QWELL has the money to fund all our organizations’ expansion. 

Anonymous GREATER app users can recommend queer-friendly businesses and resources and be rewarded for frequenting them. Businesses will pay membership dues to support increased customer visits from GREATER users.

Income projections for the app are great – IF our whole local community gets excited about using this new resource to anonymously find, identify, and rate queer-friendly businesses while earning points and rewards. We also need your help to get local companies excited about using this LGBTQIA+ marketing and community empowerment tool!

In our qwellbeing.org study with UT, 92% of local LGBTQIA+ people tell us it’s important to them to spend their money at queer-friendly businesses but we also hear that finding those businesses is difficult. 

QWELL’s GREATER app will be the best way to find any LGBTQIA+ friendly business, healthcare, or resource you need. (We already have more than 6,000 listings and we haven’t even launched yet!)

The app’s success depends on queer people putting their money where their mouth is by showing up to buy from the LGBTQIA+ friendly businesses listed on GREATER. 

We’ve designed the app to encourage those behaviors, but it’s vital that all of us and our team members get active on the app right away and then use the invitation codes in the app to invite our local friends who have the freedom to visit and buy from the businesses that join GREATER. 

In case you find it helpful, here is a link to GREATER’s pre-launch sales webpage for businesses (draft).

Your organization will find QWELL’s GREATER app directly helpful in several ways:

1. GREATER is FREE to you. As one of QWELL’s nonprofit partners, you get full access to all the app’s features that businesses use to drive customers.
   
2. You will be able to access QWELL’s queer wellbeing data whenever you need it. Before our next qwellbeing.org survey opens in June 2024, we plan to add an interface for queer nonprofits to get local, anonymous queer wellbeing data generated from GREATER for grant writing and other purposes. The app will collect anonymous wellbeing data from anonymous users wherever the app is used; then the app website will allow queer nonprofits everywhere to access our data about the wellbeing of LGBTQIA+ people in their area. Eventually, you’ll even be able to add your own survey questions!
   
3. GREATER connects you with more business donors and helps you recognize their contributions. GREATER’s website (where you’ll manage your organization’s listing) will also include a donor-matching system that allows you to post your needs so registered businesses can meet them. Also, when you verify their donation in your GREATER dashboard, the business will get public credit for it on their business listing! These features should be live by June 2024.
   
4. You’ll attract more LGBTQIA+ people to your services and events. After 5 years of our qwellbeing.org survey, local queer people are still frustrated by how hard it is to find the resources they need, whether STI testing, counseling, primary care, an employer, or a plumber. GREATER makes it easy for anonymous users to find queer-friendly resources of all kinds around them, including your organization.
   
5. Your organization will be able to earn money by creating a Pride Scouts team of your supporters to register businesses for GREATER. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation gave us a seed grant to test this program with Austin-area college students. If the system works in Spring 2024, we’ll roll out this fundraising program to you shortly after! 

You should also know that, for security, our GREATER app will spread from trusted-person-to-trusted-person using invite codes. We don’t want any potential bad actors to be able to pinpoint all our community resources. 

Please help: Anonymous app users earn points toward rewards by engaging in health-promoting activities, identifying and rating businesses, and more. If you are connected with businesses that offer broadly available commodity products (e.g., Starbucks coffee, McDonald’s fries, etc.), we need your help sourcing rewards to give away through our GREATER app! The ideal rewards are free and available from multiple convenient locations in Greater Austin for users to access.

QUEER HEALTH EQUITY PROGRAM

QWELL formed the world’s first cohort of health systems to pursue the LGBTQIA+ Healthcare Equality Index (HEI) certification with Central Health, Integral Care, and CommUnityCare, representing more than 70 clinics in Greater Austin (and 300+ providers) getting certified this year. 

We are assembling the second cohort now and working with consultants to shrink the HEI process down to make it manageable for solo providers and small clinics that we identify and interact with on GREATER. 

I hope the upcoming fundraiser and community updates event will inspire more people to become monthly donors to QWELL!

Final bit of news, QWELL has applied for our own 501(c)3 and will be leaving Austin Community Foundation in 2024. If you have recommendations for nonprofit accounting firms or any advice about growth and operations, I’d appreciate your input!

Support Our Work When people believe in the place where they live, beautiful and amazing things can happen. (Theaster Gates) We are on the cusp of transforming Greater Austin into a much healthier environment for LGBTQIA+ people, and you can help. 2024 is a critical year:  Soon we’ll announce the location of our first LGBTQIA+ community center with affordable housing and clinical spaces for our partners. We plan to build 5, with at least one including LGBTQIA+ Senior housing! Austin will be the first in the world to have such centers.    In 2023, we helped more than 70 local health clinics – representing 300+ providers – get certified as LGBTQIA+ friendly. This was the world’s first cohort of health systems to do this together, and we are already assembling the second group.    Queer/Trans People of Color (QTPOC) make up about half our community and our COLORS OF PRIDE GATHERING will return for a third year in 2024, celebrating and connecting QTPOC with our partners at Austin Latinx Pride and Austin Queer Asians. (CORPORATE SPONSORS NEEDED!)   QWELL’s app, GREATER, will be in app stores soon, making it easier than ever before for LGBTQIA+ people to anonymously find the resources we need. You can sign up now to help us test it!   To bring these visions to life, we need your support. Our work is funded almost entirely by monthly donations from people like you who chip in what they can: $10, $25, $50, $100, or $1000. Your investment today will play a pivotal role in shaping our LGBTQIA+ community’s future: a happier, healthier, safer future that we have envisioned together over the last eight years.  I started QWELL because I saw so much pain in our community that could be relieved by information, guidance, and human connection. Together we can end loneliness, connect people with jobs, healthcare, and resources, and raise the bar on what it means to be a queer community.  Together, we can transform LGBTQIA+ life in Greater Austin.  Please join us in this historic endeavor. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Clayton Gibson (he/him) CEO, QWELL Community Foundation AustinOutpost.org

 

---

What the Coalition did last year:

Annual General Meeting 2023

At the October 2023 General Meeting, three new members were elected to the Steering Committee: Westley Swihart (of CarePatrol Austin), Jordyn Ames (of Mir Senior Care & Care Consultants, Inc.), and Maya Kern (of Humana). Evan Chiappinelli (of The Helper Bees) stepped down as co-chair but remains on the Steering Committee. Richard Bondi (of The Rainbow Connection ATX at Family Eldercare)  was elected Co-chair with Faith Lane (of The Alzheimer’s Association, Capital of Texas). Stephanie Braddock (of Mir Senior Care & Care Consultants, Inc.) continues as Secretary. Toby Johnson (at-large) continues as Treasurer and website manager. Also continuing on the Steering Committee are Fred Lugo (of engAGE Travis County) and Charles Curry (at-large).

   Annual dues continue at $0.00.

---

Email address is [email protected]

Our Tax-exempt EID is 87-0825532