Corporates @ LGBT Pride — where are the receipts?

Firstly, this post is my own personal opinion, and while it is informed of some experiences of my job it is not the opinion of ShoutOut.

Secondly, before anyone accuses me of, I am not “corporate bashing” — I know first hand how important corporate involvement is in running a small charity, especially an LGBT one. And Pride is a great time to engage with corporates in a meaningful way, it makes the conversation happen and is a really good opportunity for orgs to raise some awareness, as well as some funds.

I have worked with dozens of supportive corporates over the years and it is undeniable that without them I wouldn’t have my job, especially since ShoutOut has never received any government funding but still we provided 349 workshops in 102 schools this year to tackle LGBT bullying.

However, there is an issue with corporate pinkwashing that cannot be ignored.

I think the issue can be split into three, from my perspective:

1. There is no vetting of the companies who can attend Pride, so not only could they be unsupportive of local LGBT charities, they can actually have anti-LGBT policies and conduct their business in a way that actively harms the LGBT community.

2. It’s not about sharing space with businesses, it’s about them taking over Pride. Last year ShoutOut had about 40 of our volunteers show up to march, but we were swarmed by a tech company from one side so we weren’t visible, and we were sucking the exhaust fumes from the corporate float in front of us.

3. LGBT people who dislike corporate engagement with Pride feel that pride is no longer for them, the community is fracturing and we should care about this and seek to bridge gaps where we can. We had a protest pride by Queer Action Ireland who is against the corporate pinkwashing of pride. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t read their literature until after the parade because I didn’t want to have something like knowledge or facts rain on my parade.

My personal views are mixed (typical bisexual): it’s great to see such big companies being involved. I hope it makes every queerphobe uncomfortable. Basically, if you wanted to boycott companies that participated in pride because you’re anti-LGBT you would have a very difficult time of it. And I like that. But on the other hand, Pride started as a protest, it should still be a protest, and companies are a guest in this space and guests shouldn’t trample their hosts, in an ideal world.

I think there are solutions though.

1. Vetting organisations for their internal policies on issues like hiring, parental leave, transitioning policies, and discrimination.

2. Limiting the size of corporate involvement so it’s more even between businesses and community groups.

3. Donation matching: corporates should match money spent on marketing material with donations to charities. If you have 8k for balloons you have 8k for donations, and if you only have 8k in total then spend 4k on balloons and donate 4k. 4k is still a lot of balloons.

Sorted right? No. If only it were all that simple. Firstly, Pride in Dublin is run by volunteers; a small committed team of wonderful folk who work their unpaid behinds off to make this festival, and parade happen. So it’s very easy for me to type “sure, vet all the companies there” and ignore the actual work that goes into it.

Well maybe we need to look at our priorities — maybe we can’t have the biggest Pride in Ireland and UK without loads of corporate involvement. Maybe it’s OK not to be the biggest. Maybe we should just try to be the best, even if that is smaller.

But the priorities of corporates need to shift too. If they only view it as a marketing party/fun day out/advertising opportunity then that is all it will ever be to them.

It’s been rightly pointed out to me that it’s not so simple as donation matching as outlined in point no. 3 because all the money is from different pots. CSR is from one pot, marketing is another, and company involvement in Pride is usually ran by an LGBT committee within the workplace and they’ll drive the spending on it.

But, I don’t see this as an unsolvable problem. If we imposed donation matching as part of pride then the corporates would figure out the financial administration, it would be worked out. If the LGBT committees changed the way they saw pride then this new idea of fundraising and not spending 30k on a float would soon become the norm.

And don’t get me wrong, many many companies have given more to charities than they spent on balloons. But many don’t. I have friends who have had to leave companies because of their sexual orientation or gender identity because they were harassed, and then to see that company with a 30k float in Pride is a massive insult.

At the end of the day, companies are just made up of individuals, wonderful, generous individuals. This year ShoutOut was supported by Google in Dublin for Pride, they provided t-shirts, flags, and fundraised for us. My experience of working with Google, Dublin on this was so utterly wholesome and fulfilling that a small part of my cynical soul was actually disappointed. I wouldn’t be able to cooly lament the capitalist corruption of the queer community at some future party, instead I would have to tell my story of working with Google through a series of squeals and fan-girl rants about how wonderful they were.

But the issue isn’t with that individual you know from that company. It’s about a zoomed out view of corporate engagement in Pride and whether their overall presence harms, or helps the community. When a vodka company has an ad “heterosexual, homosexual, who-gives-a-sexual” I just want to scream “I DO! I GIVE-A-SEXUAL! I care, I will not be trivialised so you can sell more booze, my experience will not be a catchphrase for your profit margin”.

Basically, I think I can summarize like this; where are the receipts? Where are your policies for your LGBT employees? Where are your winter queer events? Where are your donations? Give me your receipts.