This year VGM CON is excited to be supporting PFund Foundation as our 2024 charity partner! Pfund builds equity with LGBTQ+ communities across the Upper Midwest by providing grants and scholarships, developing leaders, and inspiring giving. VGM CON 2024, Midwest Speedfest, and the 2024 Charity Album Jam will all be raising money for PFund’s TRANSCEND Campaign. The TRANSCEND Campaign is raising funds for distribution to partners across the region doing on-the-ground work to protect and assist trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive youth and adults. Examples of how these funds will be used include:
- Supporting transportation costs for queer youth and adults from North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa to receive necessary and life-saving healthcare out-of-state.
- Covering tuition costs for remote schools that are welcoming to all gender identities in cases where students’ local districts are not safe spaces for trans and queer youth.
- Providing organizations doing on-the-ground service work with cash grants to support their mission as they rapidly respond to the increasingly-hostile and frightening political climates that are enabling and excusing anti-trans bigotry and violence.
- Sponsoring queer gatherings across the Upper Midwest. Over a dozen LGBTQ+ people in South Dakota, Iowa, and North Dakota told PFund that the first time they felt support as a queer person in the Upper Midwest was at a queer gathering. Gender expansive people in these states need community, and PFund wants to ensure that groups have access to financial resources to continue planning important queer gatherings.
WHAT CAN A DONATION TO THE TRANSCEND CAMPAIGN DO?
- $1,500 will cover the estimated cost of tuition for one student transferring to a remote school that is supportive and welcoming to all gender identities.
- $1,000 will sponsor a queer or gender expansive gathering or meeting series in rural Minnesota, or in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa or Wisconsin.
- $500 will provide organizations doing on-the-ground service work (especially in Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota) with cash grants to support their mission as they rapidly respond to the increasingly-hostile and frightening political climates that are enabling and excusing anti-trans bigotry and violence.
- $105 will support transportation costs for one trans youth from North Dakota, South Dakota, or Iowa to receive necessary and life-saving healthcare out-of-state.
WHERE WILL THIS CAMPAIGN HAVE AN IMPACT?
The 2024 TRANSCEND Campaign is an immediate response to urgent needs facing trans and gender expansive people living in, or coming to, the Upper Midwest five-state region of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota.
You can learn more about PFund Foundation and the TRANSCEND Campaign here: https://www.
