States Project

The goal of the States Project is to ensure that every state LGBT community is provided with the technical training and legal counsel necessary to support their work to achieve fair and equal political representation. This project increases the visibility and effectiveness of local LGBT communities; empowers LGBT communities; and creates the much needed infrastructure to foster long-term change.

The concept for the States Project was developed after numerous conversations with state organizations and a desire to utilize the Leadership Institute’s long standing training skills to benefit state organizations. With a collaborative effort already underway to increase the number of the Leadership Institute’s renowned Candidate & Campaign trainings, our staff team developed this concept to enhance the skills of locally-based LGBT leaders and the staff and officers of their respective community based organizations.

The States Project was created as a collaborative effort of the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute and the Equality Federation of state LGBT organizations. The ultimate goal of the project is to identify and develop more experienced leaders seeking to enter public service.

The project launched in 2005 and we were able to strategically prioritize additional states and organizations to be added for a 2006 expansion. Should we should we obtain sufficient funding for 2007, we will continue the States Project for expansion and enhancement.

We have been successful in identifying future collaborators and in refining the materials and lessons provided to the states. In 2006, the Leadership Institute worked in collaboration with state LGBT groups in the following 16 states: Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Washington. The Institute provided one-on-one support to the states, including work with political consultants. The Leadership Institute also developed and offered a National States Project Training, held in Washington, DC from April 20 – April 22, 2006.

The 2007 expansion of the States Project saw the addition of five states: Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin. The Project gave the states an opportunity to participate in training programs relating to:

Consistent and sustained legal support;
Political programs to identify and support candidates;
Growing programs that affect change;
Programmatic and campaign fundraising; and
Advocacy and electoral goals.

Consistent and sustained legal support: The states need ongoing legal support to make sure they are complying with complicated state and federal laws. This becomes even more important as states develop more aggressive politically. This support would include bi-annual or regional trainings for state organization leaders on IRS laws of running multiple entity organizations (i.e., 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4) and 527) and campaign finance laws for running political activities through a 501(c)(4) and 527

Political programs to identify and support candidates: We would continue to build on the National States Project Training but continue to grow the complexity and specificity of the training program. We would continue the collaborative efforts between the states, including idea sharing and best practice discussions, while providing more in-depth training programs to build skills specific to winning elections; programs such as: “Building and Utilizing a Voter File” or “Developing a Canvassing and Voter Identification Project” and “Developing a Vote-by-Mail Program for Your Base Voter.”

Grow programs that affect change: "Less is more” when building an electoral program the first time. GLLI encouraged participating states to be very selective about how many races they targeted and how many new programs they started. As the States Program grows, states will be encouraged to expand their programs by adding the number of targeted races and new political programs they use to affect these races.

Programmatic and Campaign Fundraising: Building fundraising capacity is critical. We need to continue to expand training on how to raise money for political programs and candidates. The April 2006 training had an in-depth discussion on fundraising, but there is a need and desire to spend more time on this topic.

Advocacy and Electoral Goals: We need to train more on how to link advocacy goals to electoral goals. There are a lot of partisan programs that can be used to not only affect voter behavior, but can also be helpful in engaging citizen involvement on issues. For example, a canvass program that is identifying voter support for a candidate could also include questions relating to the voter’s position on issues. Information regarding voter interest on various issues could be used to help engage the voter to reach out to their legislator during a debate on that particular issue.