Queer Dreams and Non-Profit Blues Conference

Conference website and online registration will be available here soon!

Dilemmas of the Nonprofit Tradition in LGBT Politics
Free and Open to All | Registration Requested

Over the last four decades, the formal, non-profit institutional structure has come to dominate social justice work in the US, replacing prior traditions of volunteer-led organizations, membership-based organizing and other more horizontal and participatory mechanisms of civic engagement. Nonprofit organizations have grown in part because of their designation by governments as sub-contractors for the delivery of a wide range of social services.

Today, formally constituted nonprofits perform the bulk of the work of advocacy, research, litigation, service delivery, and organizing on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity both in the US and around the world. But questions persist about the nature of the gains made, the agendas being promoted, whom they have benefited, and which populations they leave behind. This conference is interested in exploring the ways in which the nonprofit form and its attendant traditions of governance, financing, staffing, organizational performance, and goal setting affect the aspirations, organization, mobilization, and vision of US LGBT politics. Our goal is to explore the ways in which the nonprofit structure and its logics inform queer and LGBT politics, and to explore the dilemmas created within social movements run by nonprofit-based leaders and organizations.