This post is part of a series on the impact of the CenterLink – Johnson Family Foundation (JFF) Mental Health Capacity-Building Initiative. Since its inception in 2009, the initiative has provided over $2 million in funding to nearly 70 LGBTQ centers across the United States. This series highlights the cohort of 2023-2024 grantees, whose projects wrapped in April.
Colors+ is an organization in Fairview Park, Ohio, with a mission to strengthen LGBTQ youth and allies. It was founded in 2018 by two licensed professional counselors due to a large gap in services for this population throughout Ohio. Since opening a location in 2019, Colors+ has had unprecedented growth and offers free weekly and monthly programs for LGBTQ+ youth, allies, and families based on requests by youth and parents/guardians. Mental health providers are present at all programs to remind youth of their strengths, to encourage healthy relationships and boundaries as well as increase healthy coping skills and self-confidence.
Colors+ has used the Mental Health Capacity-Building Initiative to expand on their existing mental health services offered to the area's LGBTQ+ youth. They built awareness of services, produced guidelines to assist other organizations with LGBTQ+ youth engagement, started new budgeting and fundraising endeavors, and provided education to mental health providers on LGBTQ+ youth needs.
The mental health grant had an immense impact on the organization over the year of their project implementation. "As a smaller nonprofit growing at an exponential rate, this grant allowed us to place foundational structure in a way that many other grants would not have," reported Kameron Pepera, Executive Director and Co-Founder. That permitted them to develop "a realistic sustainability plan that will continue to have a positive impact on our youth and families."
The Mental Health Capacity-Building Initiative is designed to improve the long-term capability of LGBTQ centers to provide direly needed services. Many of CenterLink's 375 member centers are small – with 36% having five or fewer paid staff and 16% having no paid staff at all – and they often need foundational resources to get started and expand. Colors+ had already been growing significantly in the lead-up to this grant but used those funds to accelerate further development.
"For marketing, we have been able to get vital equipment, subscriptions, and access to resources that allows our marketing staff member to not just get by with the bare minimum and his own tech," Pepera said. That staff member is now able to "thrive" and reach more community members than ever, "resulting in more volunteer outreach, higher social media engagement, and increased ability to meet the needs of our youth and families." Fundraising and collaborations with other organizations also increased significantly during the project's implementation.
Colors+ offers diverse programming for youth and families, including a drop-in center, art therapy, game nights, and peer groups. Their motto – "you are amazing just as you are" – reflects an attitude that LGBTQ+ youth need today more than ever, especially in areas with a dearth of resources specifically for them. As stated earlier, Colors+ is a youth-led youth center, with all programs stemming from requests and needs assessments from youth and parents/guardians to ensure that their needs come first and there are heard. Most programs focus on the age range of 11-19, but due to youth and parent/guardian feedback we have also expanded to having older teen-specific programming as well as younger youth programming. Colors+ wants to be sure that the whole family is supported and respected as each family may have differing needs. Through youth and parent/guardian feedback and community collaborations, they provide a holistic approach that facilitates adaptation to the ever-changing societal support and allow youth and families to have multiple resources to get the physical, mental, and community support they need and deserve.
"We are in a better foundational structure and have more access to vital resources to continue to grow together as a staff, board, and community," Pepera shared. "We cannot express how this grant has impacted our nonprofit not only in a short year's time, but how it will continue our nonprofit on a positive trajectory for years to come."
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