World Pride It Begins With You
By Tim Kennedy
Did you know that when you support the Greater Palm Springs Pride parade and festival, you are supporting numerous organizations that are vital to the health and well-being of our entire LGBT community?
The annual philanthropy within our LGBT community makes the parade and festival weekend a real success. GPS Pride is the producer, bringing together the skills, talent and vision of our diverse community to produce the annual Pride events. The ultimate goal of GPS Pride is to distribute funds raised during the Pride weekend to benefit the community organizations. When the Pride festival is a financial success, GPS Pride distributes to those organizations which have partnered with it, supported it, and sought a larger participatory role in Pride celebration events. Since the year 2000, until 2006, GPS Pride gave back to the organizations in the community in excess of $150,000. Year 2006 was the first year GPS Pride was unable to provide such grants.
What may not be obvious is that the Pride weekend attracts 40,000+people to the Palm Springs area, filling its hotels, restaurants, bars, spas, stores and local attractions. Even the city of Palm Springs benefits from the related fees paid to it by GPS Pride and from taxes generated by the events and influx of visitors.
The key word here is "participation" GPS Pride can only produce a successful Pride weekend when everyone in the community participates. The annual Pride Weekend is funded solely from donations and purchases. This can of course take the form of donations, but also donations in kind, volunteers to staff the events, advertising purchases, sponsorships, and attendance at the festival. If the community doesn’t support GPS Pride, the Pride weekend events cannot happen, and the cycle of giving and receiving is broken. This year’s Pride Parade and Festival are fast approaching. We encourage you to ask of yourself how you will demonstrate your pride in our community and how you benefit from supporting its annual celebration. Supporting Greater Pride Palm Springs Pride’s sole purpose of producing the Pride Weekend events in turn supports the LGBT community, supports you and demonstrates to everyone the power of unity, as the theme of the weekend proclaims.
Visit their new websites for complete information www.PSPRIDE.org
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