Grants

TEN:TACLES Initiative | Relocation, Digital Infrastructure Rebranding Planning

Mellon Foundation

2024-2025

The Society received two major grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support key work in 2024. A $1.5 Million grant will support the Transgender Educational Network: Theory in Action for Creativity, Liberation, Empowerment, and Service (TEN:TACLES) Initiative, directed by Susan Stryker. A $150,000 grant will support vital planning projects, including preparations for a future archival move, upgrades to our digital collection infrastructure, and planning for a rebranding project.

Lavender Godzilla: Processing and Digitizing LGBTQ Asian American and Pacific Islander Collections

National Archives’ National Historical Publications and Records Commission

2024-2025

This $122,725 grant from the National Archives' National Historical Publications and Records Commission supports the processing of seven archival collections related to LGBTQ AAPI people. It also supports the digitization of material from these seven collections and three additional, previously processed collections. In total, we will digitize 1,000 items from these ten collections and make material freely and publicly available online.

Closet Ball Beta Tape Collection Digitization Project

Al Larvick Conservation Fund

2023

This grant funds the digitization of several betamax videotapes from the Closet Ball Beta Tape Collection. The Closet Ball was a long-running drag event hosted in San Francisco, California. These tapes include rare scenes of 1980s Closet Ball events and they help document queer life and the drag scene in San Francisco. More information is available at www.allarvickfund.org/closet-ball-beta-tape-collection.

Processing and Digitizing At-Risk LGBTQ Historical Material

California State Library’s California Revealed Project

2024

This project digitizes a variety of material in partnership with California Revealed, including 1970s Sissy Poetry readings that document the cultural world of gay liberation activists in California; videotapes from the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA); recordings of Golden Gate Gay Liberation House board meetings from the late 1970s; audiotapes from the 1983 Jewish Feminist Conference, held at Berkeley High School; video recordings of one of the first public access television series made by and for transgender people, and a scrapbook documenting the career and relationships of Walter Hart, a headlining "female impersonator" at Finocchio's in San Francisco in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. California Revealed has also funded the processing of the Susan Laird papers, that include the records of TransGender San Francisco (TGSF).

Preservation and Accessibility of California’s LGBTQ Heritage

California State Library

2022–2024 

This second grant from the California State Library continues important digitization efforts begun under the 2019–2021 California State Library grant. The grant funds the second phase of implementing a Digital Asset Management System (DAMS); the building of 10 new digital collections; the processing and digitization of selections from the society’s LGBTQ Film and Video Collection; and the hosting of two public events focused on how to access and use digitized archival resources.

Castro District Historic Institution Visitor Attraction

San Francisco Office of Economic & Workforce Development

2023–2024

Funds from the Office of Economic & Workforce Development will be used to ensure the accessibility of the GLBT Historical Society Museum by maintaining regular open hours, engaging in outreach to various communities, and creating new exhibitions that explore underrepresented segments of LGBTQ communities.