New & Noteworthy
Hartford Foundation Awards $200,000 in Grants to Support the Wellbeing of Greater Hartford’s LGBTQIA+ Community
Eight Grants are the first provided through the Foundation’s Equality Fund
Anchor Health is a leading health center for the LGBTQIA+ community in Connecticut. With offices in Hamden and Stamford, the organization provides groundbreaking, racially inclusive, gender-affirming, and sex-positive medical, mental health, and pharmacy care as well as supportive services to thousands of patients across Connecticut and beyond. Anchor Health continuously works to advance health equity for LGBTQ people through advocacy, community-building, education, and research.
In an effort to expand its services, Anchor Health received a $43,000 grant from the Equality Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, to support the launch of a nine-month LGBTQIA+ pop-up clinic at The Health Collective East in Manchester, providing primary care, gender-affirming medicine, HIV prevention/treatment, and mental health services to 300 patients from Manchester, East Hartford, Vernon, Tolland, and surrounding towns. Manchester was chosen as the site for the pop-up clinic as Greater Hartford residents east of the Connecticut River lack convenient access to these services. The clinic plans to begin offering services in September 2025, with weekly in-person clinics and ongoing telehealth follow-up.
“We are honored and grateful to receive support from the Hartford Foundation’s new Equality Fund,” said Bethany Cinque, Director of Donor Engagement at Anchor Health. “At a time when LGBTQ+ communities face growing barriers to healthcare and rising threats to their safety and well-being, this funding is a powerful commitment to health equity. With this support, Anchor Health will expand into the Greater Hartford area. Anchor Health treats patients regardless of their ability to pay and focuses on the communities who need us most. Our partnership with The Health Collective and the generous support of the Equality Fund will help us ensure all people can access the high-quality, inclusive healthcare they deserve.”
Anchor Health is one of the first eight organizations receiving $200,000 in grants from the Foundation’s Equality Fund. Separately in 2018, donor Joel Roskin established a donor-advised fund, which supports organizations serving Greater Hartford that empower people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions to thrive. Combined, the two funds made the 2025 Equality Fund grantmaking possible.
With a grant from The Equality Fund, the Foundation commissioned a LGBTQIA+ Resident Wellbeing study in partnership with DataHaven in late 2023 to illustrate the current state of the LGBTQIA+ community’s quality of life in Greater Hartford. Findings provided in this report were designed to assist organizations and funders in understanding conditions that affect LGBTQIA+ residents’ health and wellbeing to better direct resources and meet the needs and opportunities of this growing community. The study provided disaggregated data to explore LGBTQIA+ residents’ lives at the intersection of other identities including age, disability, race, and ethnicity in relation to their experiences with housing stability, financial security, health outcomes, health access, and a sense of belonging and social connectedness.
While the study identified Connecticut as a national leader in LGBTQIA+ protections and resources, the report also highlighted some recurring themes and recommendations about ways to further strengthen the LGBTQIA+ community and promote better quality of life: through increased support for queer youth, increased access to quality and affirming healthcare, and continued advocacy for LGBTQIA+ needs around disparate health and wellbeing outcomes.
Grants awarded through the Equality Fund were considered for Greater Hartford organizations that have missions that explicitly support the LGBTQIA+ community or have programs designed specifically to address the unique needs of the LGBTQIA+ community.
The seven other organizations receiving inaugural Equality Fund grants are:
| Organization Name | Program Description | Recommended Award |
|---|---|---|
| Colored Hemisphere LLC | Colored Hemisphere will expand their emergency response service delivering free, at home HIV test kits and crisis support resources to underserved LGBTQUIA+2 communities within Greater Hartford. | $7,500 |
| Equality Connecticut | Equality Connecticut has intentionally built systems and processes to engage key stakeholders and develop a truly community informed policy agenda. The grant will allow the organization to hire a policy analyst or to contract with policy experts, to complement their developed strengths in community organizing and strategic communications. | $30,000 |
| Metropolitan Community Church of Hartford | Metropolitan Community Church of Hartford will increase the services and numbers serves by its Trans-Evolution Program (TV-365) over a 12-month period. It seeks to serve 50 people. It will collaborate with Harriott Home Health to provide employment training/counseling, culturally competent health education, outreach and introduction/integration of Harriot Home Health and other racial/ethnic minority organizations to events held by mainstream providers. | $18,000 |
| Planned Parenthood of Southern New England | Planned Parenthood of Southern New England will engage in a 12-month project to expand access to high-quality, gender-affirming care for transgender, non-binary, and gender-diverse individuals in the Hartford Foundation's 29-town region. This project will focus on greater access to gender affirming hormone therapy (GAHT), sexual health services, and individualized patient support. | $25,000 |
| Queer Youth Program (Q Plus) | Queer Youth Program (Q Plus) will hold 14 monthly group sessions in Hartford, Simsbury, Newington and West Hartford, to help them maintain their mission-driven work, to reach more youth in the region and increase their attendance. | $25,000 |
| The Health Collective | The Health Collective's Queer Health and Connection is a one-year project designed to expand access to culturally affirming care while deepening health equity and social connection among LGBTQIA+ residents across Greater Hartford. The project addresses urgent gaps identified in the 2023 LGBTQIA+ Resident Wellbeing Report including affirming medical care, mental health access, and inclusive spaces for youth. | $35,000 |
| The People's Saturday School | The People's Saturday School is proposing a year of Just Kin programming, starting Fall 2025 with the next iteration of the People's Saturday School Book Club, continuing in the Spring 2026 with a workshop series for queer and trans people on navigating conflict, harm, and desire in interpersonal relationships inspired by Dean Spade's recent book Love in a F*cked Up World, and culminating with an multi-day Arts Festival in Summer 2026. | $16,500 |
| $157,000 |
“The Foundation is pleased to be offering this opportunity for nonprofit organizations in our region to develop proposals that seek to address the needs of Greater Hartford’s LGBTQIA+ community,” said Senior Community Impact Officer Kate Piotrowski. “The report issued in 2023 pointed to a broad range of challenges and strengths that LGBTQIA+ residents both encounter and possess, and it offered a roadmap for the type of services the Foundation can support to meet those challenges and amplify those strengths for Greater Hartford’s queer community. We are so grateful to be awarding this first round of grants from the Equality Fund, which we hope will serve as a foundation to build upon in the future.”
The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving is the community foundation for Hartford and 28 surrounding towns. Through partnerships, the Foundation seeks to strengthen communities in Greater Hartford by putting philanthropy in action to dismantle structural racism and achieve equity in social and economic mobility. Made possible by the gifts of generous individuals, families and organizations, the Foundation has awarded grants of more than $1 billion since its founding in 1925. For more information, visit www.hfpg.org or call 860-548-1888.