Organizing Pride 101
by Parker McElroy, Edited by Harvi Karatha, Taruni Manam, & Shoffana Sundaramoorthy, Art by Nivi Chozhan, Layout & Blogged by Sahithi Lingampalli
This year, I was given the absolute privilege to organize pride in my small, conservative town. I say given, but I just emailed the town telling them that I would be doing something for pride. The town just accepted it. While writing this article, I was running events and coordinating with people for about three weeks, so here is what I have learned:
Firstly, many logistics go into forming a pride committee. When I started this initiative, I was just expanding upon what I already do as the leader of the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) in my school and hoping it would go on without any bumps. Little did I know that when you start trying to organize a pride, you need to focus on three key things:
1) Until you get direct approval from your town, move quietly and stay away from the press. If you are in the papers or on the news too early on, the town could feel threatened and either deny your existence or have you walking on eggshells.
2) Registering your name and your committee with your province/state is essential to ensure your continued existence. This step is just cutting through the red tape so that you can have the freedoms that an established organization has.
3) Careful with sponsors and merchandise when you are first starting. Until you are officially registered, no pride merchandise that is sold with your platform as a marketing tool can be marketed with your name. This is another red tape thing, but in the early stages, it’s best to stay on the good side of the government.
Secondly, find someone who knows what they are doing. I would be nowhere without the two individuals who were put in contact with me through my town. They have experience on a pride committee, and they have so many connections which have helped us out a bunch. These people are my mentors, and they have done more for pride in our town than they would ever admit to; therefore, I highly recommend finding at least one person like them. Consider reaching out to an established pride near you and getting in contact with someone on the board or finding older queer people who have been around the block a few times and are willing to pass down their wisdom-just find someone. They don’t even have to work with you: they just need to help you get started.
Thirdly, networking! To me, there are three sections to networking; advertising, business, and connections. For advertising, my current method is very community based. I created a Facebook page, scheduled posts correlating to my planned events, and asked the town to repost all the posts that I made. This has worked so far, but it is also important to recognize your audience. My main platform right now is Facebook because I wanted to reach out to the older generations and raise visibility. The problem with this is that no one from my age group is on Facebook, so they don’t know that this is happening at all. My business motto is also very community-based. Since pride is not a business, this section focuses on collaborating with businesses. In my town, we have tons of local makers, so I reached out to some of them about making pride merchandise. A few businesses even offered to donate some of the proceeds! Word spreads fast through small businesses, so target them first and watch your movement grow. I know almost nothing about connections, but I know that they have helped us a lot. Reach out to people who you think could help and figure out where they fit into your plans, it makes all the difference.
Above all, have fun. Pride is about diversity and acceptance, and you should always keep those beliefs at your core. I will always be learning new things on this journey. All I can hope is that I leave something semi-stable for my predecessors to carry on.
Originally published at https://issuu.com.
