Latest news with #TwinCitiesPride
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Pride Is Good for Business. But Corporate America Is Not Upholding Its End of the Bargain.
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. In a quiet, rural enclave, Clark County Pride is a big deal. The annual parade and festival, which is in its fifth year, is held in La Center, a southwest Washington town of 4,300 that doesn't have a stoplight. There are no hotels and only three restaurants . Still, about 100 people attended the event when it was held for the first time in 2021, braving record-breaking heat to march through the city's modest downtown. To accommodate the 100-degree temperature, organizers installed five different cooling tents—complete with water stations and copious misters—along the 0.9-mile walk. Rather than marching, some locals participated in the parade from the shelter of their air-conditioned vehicles. Attendance has since ballooned to nearly 700 people, not including the dozens of vendors who cater the event. For the businesses who provide food and beverages or sell rainbow flags and jewelry, many have reported that the festival is their single most profitable day of the year. 'Our vendors are so excited to come back because they do so well,' said Malerie Plaugher, Clark County Pride's board secretary. 'Folks who come and want to celebrate Pride rurally are so relieved to have a space that feels friendly, open, and safe that they're excited to spend their money among family.' While Clark County Pride is still much too small to survey the event's economic impact on the local community, all available data indicates that its vendors aren't alone in finding Pride to be a lucrative endeavor. Some of the larger Pride events have estimated that their financial footprint spans the tens of millions: A 2019 study tabulated that Los Angeles Pride generated $74 million in revenue for Southern California, and St. Pete Pride, Florida's most-attended Pride festival, brought in an estimated $60 million in 2023. Similar reports have found that Twin Cities Pride, in Minnesota, and Charlotte Pride, in North Carolina, contribute about $13.4 million and $15.8 million, respectively, to their local economies. San Diego Pride, which is typically the city's largest single-day event each year, is estimated to have a $30 million impact. Despite the fact that Pride remains big money, corporate America is increasingly unwilling to return the investment. Prides across the country have reported a sharp decrease in sponsorships for their 2025 events amid threats from the Trump administration against companies that outwardly embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion. On the high end, San Francisco Pride and WorldPride—the latter of which is set for the District of Columbia this month—have lost nearly $300,000 and $260,000, respectively, in sponsorships from corporate partners of previous years, and NYC Pride is down a reported $750,000. Some Pride festivals have been forced to scale back their events while they grapple with a new reality, and others worry that, someday in the near future, they may no longer have the money to exist at all. These funding deficits were nearly universal among Pride organizers I contacted for this story, reporting shortages that account for significant chunks of their overall budget. Representatives for Omaha Pride, in Nebraska, and Wynwood Pride, in Florida, each estimate that sponsorships are down by 50 percent in 2025, while a spokesperson for California's Long Beach Pride says that contributions from businesses have plummeted by 40 percent. Hampton Roads Pride, in Virginia, was forced to cut $80,000 from this year's budget—amounting to a little less than 20 percent of its 2024 expenditures—to keep pace with reduced commitments from corporate sponsors. These funding woes simply do not square with the considerable money that Pride groups bring in for their communities. The estimates cited by LGBTQ+ groups themselves are actually on the conservative side: When I contacted a representative for Columbus Pride—which brings in an estimated $16 million to $18 million for Ohio's economy each year—they said that their data is based almost solely on local hotel stays during the month of June. It's hard for them to survey the more intangible externalities of Pride, such as a surge in local restaurant bookings, bottled-water sales, or even temporary job creation. Airbnb, for one, has estimated that Pride festivals bring in $77 million nationally for its hosts each year, while Lyft has reported that Pride has an even bigger impact on the demand for rideshares than a Taylor Swift concert does. 'It's not something that Pride organizations always talk about because, for so long, there's been this diametrically opposed sensibility that Pride can't be something that also impacts revenue generation because it's protest—but it is both,' said Densil Porteous, executive director of Stonewall Columbus. 'Our opportunity as a community to demonstrate our power through the economic impact that we can make in a region is also part of that protest. It says: Look at what we can do. Look at what smart business is. Smart business is being welcoming, open, and inclusive.' Although Durham Pride generates about $2.7 million in annual revenue off 100,000 attendees, co-founder Trey Roberts says that many of the major tech companies based in North Carolina won't even return his calls. This year's weeklong roster of events—which includes a fashion showcase and a poetry open-mic night—is being funded almost entirely through the proceeds from a local charity 5K race. 'It's like a guarded fence,' Roberts said of trying to attract corporate sponsors. 'We have no clue how to break the barricade to get in there. It's crazy, because Pride feels like it every year gets bigger, but we're also trying to get more resources so we could do more. We're building ourselves up where everyone's expecting us to get bigger and bigger, and we're just struggling: Can you help us out? Can we find sponsors and donors? Can we get grants?' The cold shoulder that Pride groups have received is coming from not just Wall Street but also local businesses, establishments that would appear, on paper, to be natural partners for their programming. Although Come Out With Pride is one of the few major draws to Orlando's downtown district—as the city's tourism is largely centered on Disney World, out in the suburbs—organizers have struggled in recent years to get prominent restaurants and bars to sponsor the event. In this case, much of the hostility stems from fear of retribution, not from the White House but from the DeSantis administration: In 2023 Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a draconian bill restricting public drag performances (legislation that was declared unconstitutional by a federal appeals court this month). Even before the drag ban was enacted, at least one Florida city, Port St. Lucie, pulled the plug on its Pride event to avoid prosecution. As with Clark County Pride, many of the Orlando business leaders who have been hesitant to show up to the table have confessed that Pride is their best day of the year. Tatiana Quiroga, the executive director of Come Out With Pride, told me that after organizers were forced to change the parade route in 2024 due to the challenges of accommodating 230,000 attendees, the organization received 'major backlash' from businesses that were along the old path. Those numerous complaints, Quiroga says, were yet another indication of how valuable Pride is to the very people who don't want to fund it. 'We were like, 'Oh, wow, so you do need us. At the same time, where's your sponsorship? I'm really glad that you were standing room only at this wine bar or this brunch place, but there's no conversation with you. You have absolutely no representation in our festival whatsoever,' ' she said. 'Where is that mutual amount of support? We're the actual nonprofit having to support their business, when it's not a mutual relationship.' These roadblocks affect not merely Pride festivals but entire communities. Mallory Pollock, now the executive director of Wyoming's Casper Pride, joked that when the organization held its first festival back in 2017, she could turn her camera horizontally and capture the whole event in the same photo. But this year, Casper Pride will take over the city's entire downtown area with a week's worth of events—a lineup that will include a drag show, karaoke night, and bowling night. Although organizers have yet to see a reduction in funding this year, any losses in sponsorship or vendor participation would ripple across not just the town but the wider state. The festival is part of the And Let Live coalition, a network by which Pride groups in Wyoming share funding and resources with one another. One organization's being defunded would be extremely detrimental for each of ALL's members. Casper Pride not only brings revenue from LGBTQ+ people and allies to Wyoming, but it also keeps those dollars in the community. The city of 58,000 recently opened its first queer resource center, which offers monthly support groups, a food pantry, and microgrants. 'We've had people say that they moved here because of that, and I would like to think that we also keep people here because of it,' Pollock said. 'The surroundings are really hard, and so a lot of people tend to leave for bigger places with more to offer.' Without that support in place, Pollock worries, members of Casper's LGBTQ+ community might move away—and take their business with them. It goes without saying that Pride is about much more than money. It's about creating spaces where LGBTQ+ people can be visible but also feel safe to be in community, a moment to live without fear and luxuriate in collective joy. But the paradox is that those opportunities will be curtailed unless Pride itself is able to be economically sustainable. Some groups, like Utah's SLC Pride and Ohio's Cincinnati Pride, have pushed to end relationships with businesses that have backtracked on their support for the LGBTQ+ community, shifting to alternative fundraising models to help make up the gap. Jonathan Swindle, board president of the Mosaic Project of South Texas, said that he has never had the backing of Fortune 500 companies to put on Pride Corpus Christi, as there aren't very many in the area. 'That's South Texas,' he said. But Pride organizers say they remain committed to finding long-term solutions that uplift and celebrate the community, while also creating space for the most vulnerable. The first Clark County Pride was thrown together on extremely short notice, after its founders learned that LGBTQ+ students at the local middle and high schools were being bullied. Being in such a small town, Plaugher says, Pride is the only opportunity many queer youth in the area have to find their people and feel as if they aren't alone. At last year's festival, an eighth grader came up to Plaugher and told her, 'I made my very first friend today.' 'It's become so big and loud—in the joyful, happy way,' Plaugher said of Clark County Pride. 'To folks who are ignorant of what it looks like to celebrate Pride and what the meaning of it is, I would like to see them be unable to deny the fact that we are safe, happy, and courageous. I would like the naysayers to be unable to deny the positive impacts that our community has on the area.'
CBS News
4 days ago
- General
- CBS News
DEI rollbacks prompt people powered Pride month in the Twin Cities
Pride month kicked off with a literal running start Sunday: a 5K Run/Walk from Utepils Brewing in Minneapolis. Twin Cities In Motion Ambassadors put on the event that donates a portion of profits to Twin Cities Pride's year-round programming. Amy Lippert Hoffman, from Blaine, is one of the hundred or so who took part. It's a show of support for her LGBTQ friends, she said. "I am out here support them, just letting them know they are loved and they are important to celebrate," said Lippert Hoffman. The recent political climate under President Trump's administration, cracking down on things like transgender rights, has left a dark cloud of fear for many in the community, Lippert Hoffman said. "I wake up everyday and I'm just so worried about my friends, and I see how much they are worried," she said. "They're scared and that makes me scared too." Trump's executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the country saw a concurrent rollback of DEI initiatives from Target. Twin Cities Pride struck back, parting ways with the longtime sponsor. To fill the gap, Twin Cities Pride raised double the $50,000 that Target would have provided, all accomplished within a week. "We really increased our individual donations at the start of the year and I feel like people have been very motivated to really change, not only their shopping patterns, but their giving patterns, which has been really amazing to see," said Kelsey Alto, director of programming for Twin Cities Pride. New community partners and local small businesses have come forward following the loss of sponsors, Alto said. "All of the co-ops in the Twin Cities banded together to raise money for us," said Alto. A new, people powered pride, that Alto said stands strong in the face of adversity. "I think now more than ever that not only our community, but our small businesses in the Twin Cities are standing up and showing up for the pride community and for pride month," said Alto.
CBS News
24-04-2025
- CBS News
Minneapolis unveils safety plans for city's summer of fun
A plan is in place to help keep summer safe in downtown Minneapolis following a recent drop in crime that leaders hope will continue in the months ahead. Minneapolis has a lot happening this summer, including Taste of Minnesota, Twin Cities Pride, several Open Streets block parties and the Twin Cities Marathon in October — so city leaders are working hard to make sure everyone can just come and have fun. In a news conference on Wednesday, Minneapolis Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette said a big part of the plan is beefed up staffing. Certain parts of downtown, Uptown and Dinkytown should all see extra officers day and night this summer. "Over the past few summers, we've seen a consistent growth in both the number and size of events coming to the City," Barnette said. "This summer will be no different as our residents and visitors take advantage these activities." They'll be focusing on places like liquor establishments, tobacco vendors and food markets where data has shown higher concentration of gun crimes around those areas. Minneapolis police will depend on help from neighborhood safety programs like the "violence interrupters" to help in different ways this summer. The 911 Emergency Communications Center will also increase staffing as there tends to be more calls during the summer months. And the Minneapolis Fire Department will also increase staffing and have mobile EMS units at big events. The city has laid out its complete plans on its website.
The Guardian
18-02-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
A quarter of US shoppers have dumped favorite stores over political stances
Americans are changing their shopping habits and even dumping their favorite stores in a backlash against corporations that have shifted their public policies to align with the Trump administration, according to a poll exclusively shared with the Guardian. Four out of 10 Americans have shifted their spending over the last few months to align with their moral views, according to the Harris poll. 31% of Americans reported having no interest in supporting the economy this year – a sentiment especially felt by younger (gen Z: 37%), Black (41% v white: 28%), and Democratic consumers (35% v 29% of independents and 28% of Republicans). A quarter (24%) of respondents have even stopped shopping at their favorite stores because of their politics (Black: 35%, gen Z: 32%, Democratic: 31%). More Democrats (50%) indicated they were changing their spending habits compared with Republicans (41%) and independents (40%). Democrats were also more likely to say they have stopped shopping at companies that have opposing political views to their own – 45% of Democrats indicated so, compared with 34% of Republicans. It's a sign that consumers with liberal views are starting to use their wallets in response to politics in the private sector. Most recently, this has been seen with a backlash against Target – the seventh-largest retailer in the US that has enjoyed a typically favorable reputation among liberal consumers. In January, Target announced it was ending some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, including a program that helped the company carry more Black- and minority-owned brands in its stores, saying it was trying to 'stay more in step with the evolving external landscape'. Along with calls for a boycott on social media, Twin Cities Pride, the organization that runs the annual pride festival in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Target is headquartered, said it was dropping the company as a sponsor because of its announcement. 'What is more important is that we send the message that companies do the right thing,' Andi Otto, executive director of Twin Cities Pride, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in January. The last few years have shown that boycotts usually come from the consumer base whose party is not in power in Washington. When Joe Biden was president, conservatives boycotted companies that were deemed too 'woke'. After the beer brand Bud Light partnered with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a sponsored social media post, a backlash against the beer grew online. Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Bud Light, lost $395m in the ensuing months amid calls for a boycott. Now that Donald Trump is back in the White House, liberal consumers seem more ready to respond to political tides. After Trump won the election, multiple companies announced they were rolling back their DEI policies and pledges – much of which was created in response to Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Though some companies had been quietly rolling back DEI programs after the supreme court ruled affirmative action in higher education unconstitutional, raising questions about whether the court could end up scrutinizing diversity efforts in the workplace in the future, most companies were reticent about announcing any rollbacks publicly. That changed after Trump won the election, as the president said in his campaign that he would end all DEI. Walmart said it would phase out its DEI initiatives, including ones focused on diversity of suppliers and offering DEI training. Amazon said it was 'winding down outdated programs and materials' related to DEI. McDonald's announced the end of specific diversity goals for senior leadership. The companies largely said they were responding to the changing legal landscape around DEI. Trump's impact on DEI in the private sector is still up in the air, though his administration has indicated it is looking for ways to curtail DEI in the private sector. Trump signed two executive orders that essentially ended all DEI in the federal government, including laws from the civil rights era that were meant to prevent discrimination when choosing private contractors. But some companies have stood by their DEI policies, even when faced with pressure from conservative shareholder activists. Costco, Microsoft and Apple have all indicated they have no plans to cut back on their DEI policies. It's all made for a confusing landscape for American consumers, many of whom are frustrated by the political system. The Harris poll found that a third of Americans (36%) are trying to 'opt out' of the economy – cutting back on spending to avoid getting involved with the muddle of companies and shifting politics. 'Think of this as 'laissez-faire consumerism'. Buyers aren't boycotting, they're just opting out,' said John Gardena, CEO of Harris Poll. 'Instead of demanding more, they're simply disengaging with the marketplace and businesses who disappoint them.'
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Grocery co-ops pledge over $28,000 to Twin Cities Pride after Target was uninvited
As Twin Cities Pride continues to fill the financial gap left by uninviting Target from its 2025 events, six Twin Cities co-ops are stepping up. The co-ops — Eastside, Lakewinds, Mississippi Market, Seward, Valley Natural, and Wedge — have pledged a $28,700 donation to the Twin Cities Pride safety fund. The co-ops announced the donation on social media, and confirmed to Bring Me The News that they'll be delivering the donation this week. "As community-owned cooperative grocers, we've always been spaces where every member of our vibrant neighborhoods can find a sense of belonging, friendship, safety, and, of course, delicious local food," the co-ops wrote in a statement. The financial need arose from the organization uninviting Target from its 2025 event after the retailer rolled back its diversity, equity, and inclusivity initiatives just days after President Donald Trump signed executive orders attacking DEI policies. The move led community leaders in Minnesota to call for a boycott. Target had sponsored the Pride event, which includes a festival and parade, for 18 years. In the days after Target was removed from Twin Cities Pride, the organization ran a fundraising campaign aimed at bringing in $50,000 to help it meet its financial needs after losing funding from the Minneapolis-based company. It hit that goal quickly and has now raised more than $100,000 from community members, per its donation page. "To our queer friends," the statement from the six Twin Cities co-ops continues, "we see you, we love you, and we celebrate you every day. You are always welcome at all our co-ops, and we are proud to be your allies all around the Twin Cities."
