An Important Update - September 2025
Dear Moonbow community members, collaborators and supporters:
We hope you and your loved ones are taking care to the best of your abilities. We hope that you are meeting yourself with gentleness and are able to find moments of ease and sweetness–in spite of this current stage of capitalism, ongoing state violence and authoritarianism. You might be curious to know how we have been doing. In this message we will share some of our experiences from this year, our process, and where Moonbow currently lands.
Transparently, we’ve been holding a lot this year. At the start, Christine was directly impacted by the Eaton Fire. In the spring, our Executive Director transitioned about a year sooner than expected. Christine’s long-anticipated, three-month sabbatical was also put on hold due to our ED’s resignation. We have since been operating as a staff of two.
Despite the shifts and heaviness, we accomplished a lot within a couple of months! We were able to relaunch the organization with our new name and website; published our beautiful report, Reflections and Refractions: Magnifying the Spectrum of Care for QTAPIs in Southern California; presented the report to 8 organizations; joined AJSOCAL’s Queer Joy Coalition in Sacramento over the summer to advocate for our QTAPI communities; designed a pilot peer support program that we dream of implementing; and created a long overdue organizational accountability and conflict guide together–we are proud of this and would love to share this with you in October.
We applied to five various grants between the months of May and August. We also received writing support from an incredible grant writer our Board hired in June. These grants range from unrestricted operating funds to restricted funding to implement peer support programming. So far, we have been denied three grants, and we are currently operating under the assumption that we won’t be receiving the other two based on our current lack of time and resources available.
We understand the changing landscape of non-profit work. Due to federal budget cuts and the subsequent response across the philanthropic landscape, we have been navigating a swift decline in funding opportunities. Thus, our expectations for incoming grants at the start of the year drastically changed as time went on, and what we received was much, much less than anticipated. This means there will not be enough funding for Moonbow to operate after the end of this month. In the last year at minimum, we have been operating with very little capacity.
Our process and strategy have been emergent. None of our collective decisions and actions come from a place of capitalist urgency. We continue to center our capacity and prioritize self and collective care during this time. We have been checking in with each other daily, uplifting each other, and shifting our strategy week to week. We initially planned to implement emergency grassroots fundraising, then pivoted to reconnecting with funders this week in hopes of resourcing ourselves with funding opportunities. While we worked to explore numerous pathways, we ultimately decided that we needed to prioritize our capacity–especially as we make a transition away from being paid staff at this time. Put simply: we don’t have the capacity needed to fundraise. We also do not want to ask individuals to donate to a non-profit organization when we recognize that your resources are radically more powerful when utilized for mutual aid.
None of our work as staff could have been accomplished without the unconditional nurturing and exceptional labor of our Board of Directors: Jasmine, Lisa and Acie. This is a Board who leads with integrity; our Board members value our autonomy and truly embody Moonbow’s vision, mission, goals and values. We really mean this with our hearts. It has been a rare privilege to work with this iteration of our Board, in spite of all of the challenges we faced together. The five of us not only acknowledge the power-over dynamic all Board of Directors historically hold within the ecosystem of a non-profit organization; we have also experienced Jasmine, Lisa and Acie honor this through their actions. Both/and we acknowledge the unpaid time and labor with which our majority-QT working class, millennial and gen z board members have devoted themselves. Because of these intersections (not to mention disability!), we take their capacity as seriously as we take our own–especially in our shared values to maintain true sustainability.
What will happen next? Moonbow will cease operations at the end of September and the organization will be taking an indefinite pause. However, there is also a chance for it to re-adapt, flex, and take on another form in the future–a form that will surely reflect its resilience in ever-changing conditions.
We will be sending out a more personal letter in October that we hope you get the opportunity to read! We welcome any responses or reactions; but please keep in mind that we will no longer be accessing our individual Moonbow email addresses after this Friday, September 26th as that is our last day as employees. We will continue to receive emails at info@moonbow.org, to which we may respond as our capacity and availability allows until Friday, October 17th.
With our utmost care,
Christine and Nora
P.S. Quick shoutouts to VROC, LavNix, AJSoCal for their camaraderie and ongoing support during this time of swift transition. We receive, feel, and appreciate your care so much!
