Meet Jeff Graham of Georgia Equality in Candler Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff Graham.

Jeff, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I began advocating on HIV and LGBTQ issues as a college student in the mid-1980’s in San Antonio, TX. In 1989, I moved to Atlanta to be with my partner and immediately became active in the local chapter of the AIDS-activist organization ACT UP. After five years of volunteering my time in HIV advocacy, I was hired as an administrative assistant for an organization called AIDS Survival Project. Several months after I started there, I was asked to step in as the interim executive director and became the permanent executive director six months after that. Over the next decade, I built that organization to have a staff of 20 and a statewide presence with our educational and advocacy programs.

In 2005, I stepped down as executive director and spent two years as the development director for Positive Impact. In 2008, I was hired as the executive director at Georgia Equality, the state’s largest LGBTQ rights organization. Over the past ten years, the agency has grown from a two-person operation with a modest budget of $200,000 into one of the leading state-based LGBTQ rights organizations in the country with seven full-time employees, a budget of $1.3 million and a reputation of working in a bi-partisan manner to advance fairness, safety and opportunity for LGBTQ Georgians and people living with HIV/AIDS.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Taking the helm of a small nonprofit during the worst financial crisis in decades was a tremendous challenge. The first few years at Georgia Equality my focus was on simply keeping the doors to the organization open. The other struggle was to build a sense within the LGBTQ community that advances in our rights is possible, even in such a conservative state as Georgia. With the hard work of our staff and board, as well as a growing track record of success, we are now at a place to not only successfully fight back against anti-LGBTQ legislation but to advance proactive policies on a local and state level.

Georgia Equality – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Georgia Equality’s mission is to advance fairness, safety, and opportunity for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities and people living with HIV/AIDS throughout Georgia. We do this through multiple affiliated organizations including a 501c3 educational foundation, a 501c4 lobbying organization, and a state-based political action committee. We have a combined membership of nearly 70,000 and an action alert network of over 40,000 individuals. We currently run leadership development programs for young people living with HIV and transgender individuals, have active voter registration and get out the vote programs and work in coalition with dozens of state and national organizations. We are a founding partner in the Phillip Rush Center, Atlanta’s LGBTQ community center and through our Georgia Unites Against Discrimination campaign, have successfully prevented any anti-LGBTQ legislation from passing in Georgia over the past five years.

Image Credit:
Transformation Journeys WorldWide

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