1. Assignment #5
Ed Sczesnak
Harriet Hoffman
Grant Proposal Writing
June 23, 2013
(1) Executive Summary
Community Health Services (CHC), a 501(c)(3) agency in New York City, is
requesting a grant in the amount of $25,000 to launch its Manhattan-based
suicide-prevention program. The goal of this project is to prevent endangered gay
and transgender teenagers, a population statistically shown to be one of the five
most highly suicide-prone, from taking their lives. The program will provide: (a)
trained strategic support, at an extremely critical juncture, for vulnerable LGBT
youth, and (b) follow-up monitoring and assistance to promote emotional stability
and a path to maturity thereafter.
Adolescent support services will include the establishment and maintenance of a
seven-day-a-week Walk-In Clinic, as well as a twenty-four-hour crisis hotline;
supervised weekly meetings for volunteers; and monthly trainings designed to
improve our volunteers’ skills and reduce their stress. Outreach to promote
awareness of the suicide-prevention program to the larger New York City LGBT
community will include flyers, targeted social media including Gay New York,
Facebook, VillageVoice.com, and Twitter, and presentations to leaders at relevant
forums ― for example, the Gender Identity Project in Manhattan and Brooklyn
Pride. A pioneering provider of health services for LGBT people in New York, CHC
will capitalize on its unique position within the community to provide invaluable
assistance to troubled gay and trans youth. In our first year we anticipate working
with 250-500 gay and 100 transgender teens living in all five boroughs of New
York City.

2. (2) Organization Background
Manhattan’s Callen-Lorde Community Health Center was established in 1983 with
the merger of the St. Marks Clinic and the Gay Men’s Health Project, two New
York City volunteer-based organizations that provided screening and treatment
for sexually transmitted diseases. The CHC operates the Michael Callen-Audre
Lorde Clinic, located at 356 W. 18th
St. in Chelsea. The Clinic, with its long history
of reaching out to gay and transgender youth, was created at the onset of the
AIDS crisis specifically to meet the urgent need of LGBT people for
compassionate, thorough, and immediate care―a tradition it continues today.
Operating with a paid staff of 75, including both executive and clinical directors,
the Clinic offers a variety of physical and mental health services, including testing
and treatment, dentistry, youth counseling, and HRT (hormone therapy for the
transgendered). Nearly 40,000 patients came through Callen’s doors last year; as
a result of receiving funds from a wide range of generous donors, including a
major $30,000,000 gift from the Carnegie Foundation in 2007, many of them
received treatment at minimal or no cost. Continuing to expand and upgrade its
facilities in response to the ever-shifting needs of New York City’s growing LGBT
population, Callen-Lorde has garnered an international reputation as one of the
world’s premier LGBT health-care facilities.

3. (3) Needs Statement
Of the approximately 1.6 to 2.8 million homeless young people in the U.S., a
disproportionate number are gay or trans. Nearly all are low- or no- income; a
majority have endured profound rejection from peers, family, and community. In
New York City, gay teens in general, and trans teens in particular, are 8.4 times
more likely to report having attempted suicide and 5.9 times more likely to report
high levels of depression compared with peers from families that reported no or
low levels of family rejection.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) notes that “High rates of depression,
emotional distress, loneliness, and social isolation have been linked to suicidal
thoughts and suicide attempts by transgender people.” Teen-agers who are gay
or bisexual are more than three times as likely to attempt suicide as other youth,
according to a Massachusetts study in The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent
Medicine. Researchers found that students who identified themselves as gay,
lesbian, bisexual, or transgender were 3.41 times more likely to report a suicide
attempt within the previous year than were heterosexual students.
The groups who are specifically targeted through this proposal, gay and trans
youth, are among the most underserved populations in the five boroughs. Some
outreach has been visible under the Bloomberg administration, and the mayor
himself (who is responsible for the $30 million Carnegie grant) is a generous
philanthropist, yet the fact remains: although there are a variety of health,
education, and culture programs available to LGBT youth, including Callen’s own
H.O.T.T. (Health Outreach to Teens), at this writing there is no dedicated,
permanently staffed suicide-prevention facility in place for LGBT youth in New
York City.

4. (4) Project Description
The Callen-Lorde Community Health Center (CHC) is requesting a grant in the
amount of $25,000 from the xxy Foundation to establish and run a suicide-
prevention center. The program’s mission is to intervene in crisis situations with
gay and transgender youth. CHC will use its unique position of visibility within the
LGBT community to launch a comprehensive, well-organized program that is
targeted specifically to this population.
CHC will establish and maintain a walk-in center, to be operated year-round on
evenings and weekends, as well as a twenty-four-hour crisis hotline.
CHC-trained volunteers will run the walk-in center, under the direct personal
supervision of the clinical director, who will be on call at all times. The hotline will
be maintained by a rotating staff of therapists with professional training in LGBT
issues, who will work from home.
Goals of the program include:
• Accessing the “competent and compassionate LGBT community” in preventing, intervening, and
responding to gay and trans youth in danger of committing suicide.
• Using the comprehensive components of CHC to support the implementation of the program.
• Determining and implementing the roles and responsibilities of the crisis team.
• Developing CHC’s policies and procedures regarding suicide.
• Developing a process for responding to a death by suicide and to friends of the deceased who
are at risk for suicide.
• Informing other CHC staff about their role in suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention.
• Training other CHC support staff in suicide intervention skills.
A staff therapist will meet, once a week, with volunteers who have worked in the
center in the previous seven days. These meetings will enable staff to resolve, in a
therapeutic setting, issues that will naturally occur as a result of working with the
target population, and which will serve to strengthen staff performance going
forward. For example, a volunteer may have questions regarding an appropriate
referral for a walk-in client that the therapist will answer. Volunteers will take
notes on their client meetings (a form will be provided for this purpose), and will

5. present their cases to the group during the day on Saturday or Sunday. The
meetings, which will be modeled on other successful gay peer-counseling
programs, such as Identity House, will run two hours.
Specific goals for volunteers in these meetings include:
• Critique of treatment modalities
• Refinement of their skills
• Mutually positive reinforcement
• Stress reduction
A monthly training will be offered within these meetings – role plays, for example,
will be undertaken, as will other exercises based on the model of Gestalt therapy,
as established and elaborated by Paul Goodman, Fritz Perls, and others. The
purpose of these will be to model alternate methods for dealing with particular
problems likely to arise in the operation of a crisis center and suicide hotline.
There is limited space available at the current Callen-Lorde clinic (a move to a
larger facility is being studied). Accordingly, for practical purposes and with a view
toward maintaining focus within the community, CHC proposes to rent, on an
ongoing basis, suitable room at the LGBT Center located nearby at 208 West 13th
Street.

6. (5) Evaluation
Prior to the start of their session, clients at CHC’s Walk-In Clinic will be required to
complete a form including their name, contact information, whether they are
insured or employed, and previous medical history. Where possible, therapists
will also elicit this information from hotline clients. Therapists will schedule
follow-up visits, and, to the extent possible, therapists and volunteers will contact
on a monthly basis, primarily by telephone but also by mail and email, those
individuals determined to be most in need of ongoing treatment. A significant
number of our clients are likely to be either transient or homeless, however, and
may therefore prove difficult to keep in touch with.
Additionally, the impact of CHC’s program will be regularly assessed by an outside
panel of professional evaluators. Because it is our goal to prevent young gay and
trans people from taking their lives, the CHC program coordinator and others will
work with the outside panel to develop a more sophisticated, yet practical,
evaluation process in order to measure the long-term impact of the program on
youth who participate.
(6) Sustainability
In the past year, CHC has approached several new grantmakers for support, and
we are pleased to report that CHC has received grants from the Susan G. Komen
Foundation (for breast health services and part of its lesbian funding), the Non-
profit Finance Fund (for primary health care), the New York State Health
Foundation (pharmacy), and the Horizons Foundation (transgender care).
With assistance from the Carnegie Foundation, CHC was able in 2008 to hire a
fundraising consultant, who is working with our board of directors on an ongoing
basis to devise and implement strategic fundraising plans to increase annual
giving. Building a larger individual donor base ― we have raised, on average, 5%
more each year since 2008 ― will complement CHC's successful grantseeking
program and help ensure our financial future. CHC currently has five suicide-

7. prevention grant proposals pending, requesting a total of $100,000, and will seek
to raise $100,000 annually for its suicide-prevention efforts going forward.
(7) Conclusion
Michael Callen (1955-1993) and Audre Lorde (1934-1992) were visionary artists –
respectively a songwriter-composer and an award-winning poet and author – who
were also in the vanguard of AIDS awareness and activism. They witnessed
firsthand the effects of discrimination in the health-care system, which, in the
1980s, were often fatal even for privileged gays and lesbians. They would have
been horrified by the suicide of Tyler Clementi, the New Jersey teen who, upon
being outted by a Rutgers University classmate, jumped from the George
Washington Bridge to his death in 2010. And undoubtedly they would wish to see
a decline in the overall teen suicide rate (which has climbed in the past few years,
from 6.3% in 2009 to 7.8% in 2011). A $25,000 grant from the xxy Foundation will
enable CHC to marshal the efforts of the “competent and caring” LGBT
community, both volunteer and professional, to intervene in the lives of several
hundred at-risk, vulnerable LGBT youth so that their lives will not be similarly
wasted.