PFund Grantee Profiles
Joe Barb (right) with his husband Lambert Miller and their son Jaden.
Joe Barb
Family Connections Center/The Circle
2023-24 PRISM Grantee
Sometimes a routine conversation can change everything. That’s what happened to Joe Barb several years ago. While taking his son to get a haircut in 2019, the barber mentioned that his stepson was a teenager struggling with depression and family rejection and needed mental health services. Joe offered to see if he could locate services that could help the barber’s stepson.
As he searched for resources for the troubled teen, Joe was surprised and disappointed to find a dearth of services available to teens and young adults in the Rapid City region of South Dakota. Services that were available often had wait lists or other barriers that prevented struggling youth from quickly getting the help they needed.
In response to what he found, Joe decided to resign from his corporate job and became the founder and executive director of the Family Connections Center, a hub of support for youth aged 16-24 that provides resources and support to help teens and young adults at risk of or currently experiencing homelessness. In addition to operating a drop-in center that directly connects at-risk individuals to a variety of services related to mental health, transitional housing, and employment.
For Joe, this work is deeply personal. As a teenager from a religious family in Maryland, he was asked to leave home for being gay. Not knowing where to turn, he ended up relocating to South Dakota where a family friend was able to connect him with housing and the support he needed. Joe’s experiences during this time now inform the work that the Family Connections Center does. For example, the team has been especially keen to listen and respond to the experiences and needs of the youth with whom they work. It was Family Connection’s young clients who initially suggested the idea of a drop-in center for young people experiencing homelessness or domestic violence.
In October of 2022, this vision became a reality with the opening of The Circle, a center where struggling young people can access shower and laundry facilities, computers and the internet, and receive a meal or vouchers for food. The center also connects youth with housing resources, though currently the demand for safe and secure shelter exceeds the supply. “We currently have a long waiting list for transitional housing because the need was so much greater than the community initially anticipated,” Joe stated. “In a year we might have 500 individuals coming through.” Once housed, The Circle works with its clients to assist them in figuring out what kind of support they need to secure employment, whether it’s education, mental health support, or anything else required for independent living.
To help support the work Joe and his team do at The Circle, PFund awarded the Family Connections Center a $18,000 PRISM grant in fall 2023. Of the grant, Joe stated “We’re going to use that funding to provide queer-specific housing to anyone from the LGBTQ+ community who seeks services from us. We want to give them housing where they feel supported and met where they are at. I was one of those kids and I understand needing a safe and affirming space.”
Barb Farrar
LGBT Center of SE Wisconsin
2022-23 PRISM Grantee
2023-24 PRISM Grantee
“Move to the nearest big city.” It’s a piece of advice so common to young people in the queer community (especially young LBGTQ+ individuals in rural areas) that over the decades it has become a cliché that passes for conventional wisdom. But this advice often ignores the complexities of why people live where they live, the different kinds of communities available, and the fact that many queer people prefer living in small towns or rural areas as opposed to cities, suburbs, or exurbs.
Of course, rural areas bring their own set of challenges for queer individuals. From conservative politics, hostile religious denominations, and lack of access to affirming medical providers, rural life can at times feel lonely to LGBTQ+ folks.
One organization helping make rural spaces feel more comfortable for all residents–including the full spectrum of orientation and gender identity–is the LGBT Center of SE Wisconsin. Founded in 2009, the nonprofit provides a variety of services on behalf of Wisconsin’s queer residents.
PFund recently had a remote interview with the center’s executive director, Barb Farrar. Farrar is a queer Iowa native who lived for years in San Francisco before returning to the Midwest; she has been running the center for the past five years. “I realized from my time in San Francisco that I had absorbed a lot of information about the queer community and organizing, so when I moved back to the Midwest, I started by joining the LGBT Center’s board,” she stated over a Zoom call where we got to know her better. At the time, the center was running on a very tight $80,000 annual budget and had no executive director or paid staff.
Under Farrar’s leadership, the organization has expanded its budget and programming and now provides four key programs that the center considers pillars of its work. These include safe zone trainings provided across the region, various queer support groups, youth programming including an annual Equality Prom, and a new equity program called Colorful and Connected that focuses on queer communities of color.
The LGBTQ Center of Southeast Wisconsin is a 2022 - 23 PRISM grantee and received $3,000 from PFund to build its capacity and keep offering its vital programming. Farrar first learned about the PRISM grants via CenterLink, a nationwide coalition of queer community centers. “When I saw the rural emphasis of PRISM grants, I said ‘oh my gosh, this speaks to me,’” said Farrar. She added, “we are using the PRISM grant funds to build our social media and to expand our existing programs across Wisconsin.”
On our interview call, Farrar was keen to outline the ways that the LGBT Center of SE Wisconsin differs from the queer community centers commonly found in urban areas. “Even though we are a small center, we have a large region that we serve. We see a lot of our services being virtual and available across the entire state.” Throughout its work, the LGBT Center of Southeast Wisconsin is dedicated to serving as a resource for the queer communities found outside of urban centers. “We forget that where you live is really a choice and a lot of people choose to stay in their hometown. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Image credit: Diana Albrecht
Cándida González
Las Ranas Jewelry
2022-23 Equity Fund Grantee
Cándida González is one of those talented people for whom multiple hyphens are required to fully describe the breadth and depth of their professional practice. Cándida brings their lived experiences as a queer person of color to their work as an artist-teacher-organizer-entrepreneur.
It was in their capacity as a small business owner that Cándida crossed paths with PFund Foundation. At an Open Streets event last summer, they received a flier about grants from PFund’s Equity Fund. Launched in 2020, over the past three years the Equity Fund has distributed approximately $190,000 to queer entrepreneurs of color in Minneapolis. Cándida applied and their company, Las Ranas Jewelry, was awarded one of the largest grants in the 2022 Equity Fund cohort.
Cándida’s mixed-media jewelry is a bewitching combination of found objects, often tied to themes from astrology, tarot, and the zodiac. “When I was growing up, I always made jewelry for myself or my friends,” Cándida told PFund in a recent Zoom interview. “When I was unexpectedly unemployed in 2018, I felt the need to develop my individual creative work so I started making jewelry again and trying to sell it. It took me half a year to find the authentic voice in what I was making, but then it just took off.” Candida considers QTBIPOC communities their primary audience, saying, “It really has been the community that has embraced my work. QTBIPOC people are able to see themselves in the work I am doing, which in turn makes me feel seen.”
Cándida relied on Las Ranas for financial support during the pandemic when their other in-person consulting work in the arts and educational sectors dried up. As a single parent, Cándida needed to balance their caregiving responsibilities with making a living during the worst of lockdown. Making jewelry could be done from home on a flexible schedule, so Cándida started selling their work on Etsy. Today, they sell their work at a half-dozen stores across the Twin Cities area in addition to their online shop.
Cándida used their Equity Fund grant to set up an expanded studio space. Prior to the PFund grant, they were limited to fabricating jewelry via mixed-media assemblage, but with the infusion of funds, they were able to begin exploring metalworking. They took classes at the Chicago Ave Fire Arts Center and began building themselves a proper fabrication space. “I was slowly trying to buy things, but it’s really expensive to set up a metalworking studio. All of sudden with the grant funds I could buy everything. It was amazing.”
When asked what they would tell other queer small business owners of color interested in applying for a grant, Cándida noted, “This is an incredible opportunity to participate in a program that is going to give you a cash infusion into your business and a chance to build community with other QTBIPOC business owners in the Twin Cities. It’s invaluable to not feel alone and have others in the community to talk to about the struggles and rewards of running a business.”
Susan Williams
The Transformation Project
2022-23 PRISM Grantee
2023-24 PRISM Grantee
2023 TRANSCEND Grantee
Six years ago, Susan Williams’s son came out to his parents as being transgender. Seeking to learn more about gender expression and the transgender community, Susan started looking for support groups or organizations that could provide advice, referrals, and support to her son and family as they began navigating the logistics of providing gender-affirming care to their child. “We started looking in South Dakota and there was just nobody out there,” Susan recalled when she recently spoke with PFund via Zoom from her cozily-decorated home. “I just felt like in order for South Dakota to become a better place for the trans community there needed to be something for them, whether it’s helping with a name change or connecting with a therapist or physician or even a hair stylist.”
Based on this need, Susan founded the Transformation Project four years ago and currently serves as its executive director. The organization supports and empowers transgender individuals and their families while educating the public about gender identity and expression. What started as an all-volunteer organization is today run by a small but dedicated group of paid staff. In addition to Susan, the Transformation project has a social worker who coordinates community programs, and a community health and outreach manager. The organization is actively working with approximately 150 trans families across the state.
South Dakota is, unfortunately, among the states that have passed anti-trans bills in 2023. In February, Governor Kristi Noem signed HB1080, which outlaws gender-affirming medical care for minors. The law goes into effect July 1. This is in addition to a bill banning K-12 trans girls from playing on girls’ sports teams that was signed last year.
The Transformation Project has been collaborating with PFund across multiple areas over the past year. The organization is one of 17 rural-serving nonprofits that was awarded a PRISM (Promotion Rural Interconnections for Sexual Minorities) Grant in 2022 to support its work. When it became clear that the trans youth medical ban was likely to pass, Susan reached out to her connections in Minnesota to start planning how to get gender-expansive youth care across state lines.
Through this outreach, Susan learned that PFund was in the process of launching a rapid-response campaign to help address the rising tide of anti-trans bigotry. “I was over the moon to see that this could be an opportunity,” Susan said. “We have all these families that are going to need to travel out of state and many of these families are low-income.” Transformation Project had been collecting information from families about what kind of support is needed, but the organization lacked in-house funds to provide the level of assistance families were reporting needing. Using $2,500 in TRANSCEND grant funds as a challenge match for a local fundraising campaign, Transformation Project was able to raise $2,500 from its base of support in 48 hours. (PFund has since granted another $2,500 to the Transformation Project for this work.)
Already, the TRANSCEND funds are making a difference. Susan shared that earlier this spring, “I had a mom from a small town call me freaking out. She started to feel like maybe her family needed to move, because she was concerned about the costs of driving out-of-state and balancing her care responsibilities for aging family members at home. Knowing that TRANSCEND funding came through, we are able to give her peace of mind that she will be able to travel with her transgender kid to seek care without having to leave South Dakota.”
The work of fighting anti-trans legislation and sentiment in South Dakota will be a long road, but Transformation Project is committed to supporting its local gender-expansive community, and PFund TRANSCEND campaign is dedicated to supporting on-the-ground organizations like Transformation Project who are doing their part every day to make the lives of queer and transgender individuals better.
Belo Miguel Cipriani
Oleb Media
2022-23 Equity Fund Grantee
How are you reading this text right now? Maybe you’re reading it on a desktop computer at home or on your phone as you ride the bus to work. Or maybe you are one of the estimated 12 million Americans with some sort of visual impairment and you’re using a screen reader to have this text read aloud to you.
The issue of providing online spaces that are accessible and inclusive to people with disabilities–especially individuals with reduced or no eyesight–is one that 2022 Equity Fund grant recipient Belo Miguel Cipriani thinks about a lot. Cipriani is the founder of Oleb Media, a digital inclusion consulting firm in Minneapolis that specializes in accessibility testing and remediations for websites and other digital spaces.
Cipriani, who is queer and a person of color, was blinded fifteen years ago in a vicious attack. When he speaks about how he adjusted to life as a blind person, he stated, “I really feel that being gay helped me negotiate my disability. That’s because I was born into all the other minoritized communities I’m a part of. Being LGBT was the first community where my family couldn’t help me seek out community. I had to go to the gay book stores and gay clubs to find my own. So when I became disabled, I knew I had to do the same thing. I had to go seek out my disabled community and frankly I think that’s what helped me move along my rehabilitation quicker.”
Prior to being violently robbed of his sight, he worked in San Francisco in the tech industry. As he worked to adjust to life with a disability, he had to interact with digital tools and products in a completely new way. As he did so, he noticed how many digital spaces and products were not designed to effectively communicate with people with visual impairments. This eventually led him to found his company in 2018. Cipriani says, “As a person with a disability, I have faced barriers to accessing digital tools and products. As an advocate, I was good at pointing out these problems, but I didn’t feel like I was making much of a difference until I started working on solutions. Oleb Media was a way of framing the problem and thinking about fixing it.
In his work with Oleb Media, Cipriani works with clients to educate them about accessibility in digital spaces. The company produces content that aligns with digital accessibility standards and is inclusive to audiences with different abilities and disabilities. Cipriani views digital accessibility and inclusion as “Really part of quality assurance. You have to get someone who is qualified in the accessibility industry, in the legalities and technicalities, scripting and training. There comes a point where you have to hire some professionals to do the work correctly.”
Oleb Media has received two Equity Fund grants to date. Cipriani has been using the grant funds to develop an inclusive learning management system that the company will use in the training it conducts with clients and others who work on issues of digital accessibility.
When asked what advice he’d share with young entrepreneurs (especially ones from marginalized groups), Cipriani remarked, “I feel that the most successful entrepreneurs are those that build community right away. There’s no need to do this on your own. When you’re in a community, you make so much progress.”
To learn more about the work of Oleb Media, please visit the company’s website at www.olebmedia.com.
Sammy McDowell
Sammy’s Avenue Eatery
2020-21 Equity Fund Grantee
As the owner of Sammy’s Avenue Eatery, Sammy McDowell is a lot of things: an entrepreneur of color, proud resident of Mineapolis’s north side, and member of the LGBTQ+ community. After 23 years in the food/hospitality business, Sammy used his personal savings to open his first shop and hasn’t looked back since.
During 2020, Sammy and the restaurant staff worked with the NAACP and several other organizations to provide food and essential items to our community at the outset of the pandemic and following the murder of George Floyd. The cafe remained open around-the-clock for nearly six weeks to support the Minneapolis community through these intersecting traumas.
Sammy was a recipient of a 2021-22 grant from the Equity Fund. He used the funds to keep his staff employed and to market his business.