Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

I am very pleased that I now share my birthday of October 22 with a brand new project, Pittsburgh LGBTQ Charities (PLC) which was registered with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania today.

The mission is to raise community awareness and promote grassroots engagement for neighborhood quality of life, animal welfare, anti-poverty and LGBTQ+ issues in Western Pennsylvania.

PLC is a modest non-profit organization that will be independent of this blog (and not responsible for content.) When appropriate, we will partner on projects that meet both of our missions. When I say “we” – I am one of five board members so I do not have carte blanche over anything. I control the blog, the board controls the 501c3.

I have always said that I would never start or run my ow 501c3 because I know how much work is involved. But I’ve spent years chasing down 501c3 fiscal sponsors so I could do my work and I just grew tired of that chase. So I spent most of 2021 recruiting founding board members, drafting by-laws and the mission statement, and starting the formal paperwork process. We’ve put a lot of work into this and although I am not going to list their names until I have their permission, there are a lot of people to thank.

So we aren’t all the way “there” yet. We are completing the IRS paperwork. Once postmarked, we can begin accepting financial donations that will be retroactively deductible.

I like to think of it this way – today is our birthdate, the IRS ruling will be our baptism (by fire) and both are occasions for gifts.

We are not going to launch entire new programs or claim to solve all the problems. We have some modest start up projects. For example, we will be administering the Pgh Pet Food Drive and the Dr. John P. Ruffing DVM Pet Food Projects. We will administer the Pittsburgh Northside Cat Folx and Friends projects. We will be partnering with a local political consulting firm to develop an artist-in-residence around progressive political blogging (non-partisan.) We will explore a guest blogging project with stipends

Sponsorship requests that are typically directed to my blog (me) will be redirected to PLC. We’ll have our donations tools available soon. And I’ll ask everyone who finds value in the work we do at this blog to consider helping us with a founding gift in any amount. But not yet.

We selected the name Pittsburgh LGBTQ Charities in part for the alliteration with Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents, but also to stay grounded in simple grassroots projects. The non-profit handles the charitable work of the blog. The non-profit does not control any content at all.

It is really exciting in my 16th year of blogging (wow!) and my 51st year of being alive to have this significant new opportunity to serve my communities.

This is a soft launch because we honestly did not expect the Commonwealth to approve everything so quickly. More details will be coming. Nothing splashy, just more of the good work you’ve come to expect from us.

Our website is: pghlgbtq.org 

Our email is: folx@pghlgbtq.org

Our twitter is @PghCharities

Stay tuned for more on our impact ….