The Queer Joy Fund

What is the Queer Joy Fund?

The Queer Joy Fund is an informal effort to spread joy in the Tri-Cities, WA area via direct grants to members of that community.

In plain English, it’s a project to hand queer people in the Tri-Cities some cash and say “go do something that will make you happy”.

Who is eligible to apply?

We’d like to limit the fund to people in our own community for the moment. So if you don’t live in the Tri-Cities, WA area (loosely defined), sorry, this isn’t for you.

We’re also only awarding grants directly to individuals, not to organizations.

We’re only accepting applications from members of the queer community and/or parents or guardians applying on behalf of a member of the queer community.

We’re defining “queer” very loosely. If you don’t identify as an ally and aren’t sure if you count, you probably do.

What kind of things can I apply to get funded?

Anything that will bring you joy. Need help with rent or groceries this month? Okay. But it can be a want, not a need, too. New video game came out and you want to play it but can’t swing it this month? Your week would be improved if you could treat yourself and a couple friends to bubble tea? Very much in the spirit of the thing.

Also, if you don’t end up using the money for what you told us you were going to use it for, we’re never gonna check and we’re never gonna know. Being a cop about this sounds exhausting. We’re counting on people knowing that we have a limited fund to spread around, and to work with us to maximize the amount of queer joy we can collectively create, by keeping to the spirit of the thing.

How do I apply?

Unfortunately, applications for this year are closed. Check back next year.

How do you decide who gets money?

We look at what people are asking for and make some judgment calls. We’re just some randos giving away money, we’re not a charity or anything, so we don’t have an overly-prescriptive or formal process. We’re just gonna do our best to stay in the spirit of the thing.

That’s not really helpful if you’re trying to figure out what to ask for so that it’s likely to get funded, so here are some preliminary thoughts:

• We have a limited fund. The larger the amount you ask for is, the harder it is for us to pick that, because we want more than a couple people to benefit from this.
• We will generally try to prioritize needs over wants, but also realize we’re probably not going to be able to meet the needs of the entire area, and want to make sure we get some wants in there, too. Queer people deserve joy, not just survival, but it’s hard to find joy when you can’t survive.
• If you mark a request as “all or nothing”, we will not partially fund it. We will either give you the full amount or nothing.
• This year we’re going to try and select applications without knowing anything about the demographics of the people writing them. We are still collecting demographic data, however, and will be analyzing whether we’re happy with the breakdown of who gets funded at the end. If we’re not, we’ll add safeguards to future applications and awards to ensure our diverse community is well served by the fund.

How is my information used?

We collect some necessary administrative information and some optional demographic information as part of your application. The necessary information will only ever be used for the administration of the fund (e.g. deciding whether to make a grant and dealing with the logistics of delivering it). The demographic information will only ever be used for evaluating for unconscious bias in the selection of applications and to ensure our whole community has a chance to benefit from the fund.

Only the fund administrators (and our service provider, who has better things to do than go snooping) will have access to this data at any point.

We will never sell, share, publish, distribute, or otherwise divulge the information you share with us without your prior authorization.

We will only ever communicate with you about your application through the contact information you provide to us for that purpose.

On or before July 31^st, 2024, all data will be deleted from our database. We will retain hard copies of the data for our records and to improve the administration of the fund. These hard copies will be kept in a manner similar to and treated with the same level of care and discretion as our own financial documents.

You may reach out and request the deletion of your information at any time, for any reason. If you request the deletion of your information prior to the application process finishing, you will be removing your application from consideration, as we will not have it anymore, nor records on how to deliver the money to you. We will confirm with you, via the contact information you provided, that you wish for us to delete your information. Once confirmed, it will be deleted.

As part of our operations, we take regular backups of our database. These backups will be retained until September 30^th, 2024. After that point, they will be permanently deleted.

How much is the fund for 2024?

We’ve set up a $1,000 fund for 2024.

Who runs the Queer Joy Fund?

Paddy & Ethan Carver are running this at the moment. We’re a couple that lives in Pasco, and we’ve lived in the Tri-Cities since 2015. We’re fundamentally Just Some Guys.

If you need to reach us for any reason, send an email to contact@queerjoy.fund.

Why is this a thing?

We wanted to support our community. Studies indicate that one of the best ways to support a marginalized and/or distressed community is to just literally hand them money, rather than trying to dictate what they spend it on and police their spending. That’s a somewhat tricky model for charities in the US to take, because of some of the requirements and paperwork required of charities. But there aren’t any rules we know about preventing Just Some Guys from handing out gifts, so we figured we’d give that a shot. If it goes well, we may investigate if we can set it up as a foundation or something in the future, but for the moment we’re doing the easy, impactful bit.

I have feedback!

By all means, reach out! We’d love to hear from you. If you have a critique about how we’re going about doing this, that’s very fair, and we’re interested in hearing it, and also just realize we’re randos voluntarily giving away some money and will be fielding feedback from that posture. You can reach us at contact@queerjoy.fund.