Nonprofit Spotlight: Rainbow Youth Project

CharityAuctionsToday Social Media Manager, Kelly Plyer, sat down with Lance Preston, CEO of the Rainbow Youth Project. Read on to learn more about how the Rainbow Youth Project got its start and how it pursues the life-saving measures and support it provides to LGBTQIA+ youth. 

The Beginning of the Rainbow

After being hospitalized for 28 weeks for a debilitating case of COVID, Lance decided to retire from his long career in law. While he recovered, he spent more and more time on social media and saw firsthand the type of bullying and hate speech facing queer people online. Particularly young queer people.

“I saw all the attacks on these young people and on the LGBTQ community in its entirety. And I remember being in the back of an Uber and I was watching a lady [online] just ask for basic advice on how to support her gender non-conforming child. And the attacks that she was going through, it still gets me even today, were so vile and just things that I could never even say here. I literally screamed like, ‘Screw that!’ so loud that the Uber driver stopped and asked if I was okay. And I knew right then that I wanted to do something and I felt like that was my calling.” 

Lance had many friends who were also attorneys, some who had worked in the nonprofit space for years. All of them had supported various LGBTQIA+ focused nonprofits individually, but they decided that together they might be able to fill some of the gaps that they saw in support available to queer youth. 

For example, Rainbow Youth Projects’s core program a suicide prevention hotline, which currently takes over 3,000 calls per month. In 2023, 60% of 2SLGBTQ+ (Two-spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, plus) kids who wanted mental health counseling were unable to get it. 

“You have the Trevor project who is doing amazing things with crisis, the hotline. But the hotline call is where it ended. You have Lambda and the LGBTQ Task Force that we’re doing the legal representation, but not [addressing] anything that, you know, that was causing depression, isolation, anxiety, you know, the other elements.”

In the space of less than three months, Lance’s team had incorporated the Rainbow Youth Project and started connecting youth and families in crisis with mental health professionals who can provide recurring, affordable or free services. 

Some of these professionals have even become licensed in states outside the ones they live in, so that they can service families who are afraid that local pros might out them due to conservative state legislation. Lance is proud of the team’s speed in helping others: for him and many of his fellow volunteers, this is a very personal mission.

“I can honestly sit here and tell you that I could have a young person call this morning, right now, and we will have them in mental health counseling either later this afternoon or tomorrow with a licensed psychologist. Our entire leadership team, including me, we all attempted suicide as teens because of our sexual orientation or a gender identity. We’ve been there.”

Lance, the leadership team, and the Rainbow Projects network of professionals are all volunteers. No one takes a salary for the work they do for the organization. Founded in 2022 in the midst of a nationwide wave of proposed anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation, the Rainbow Project quickly discovered that they needed to provide other services in addition to mental health.

Helping Homeless Youth and Families Left Behind

The Rainbow Youth Project offers transitional housing for young people who have been evicted or find themselves living on the streets. Through that program, they also offer the Michael Moss HIV Youth Outreach Program. Because of what they’ve had to do to survive, many of those kids who had experienced homelessness test positive for HIV or other STIs. The outreach program helps them receive important medical care while they’re getting back on their feet.

The transitional housing program strives not only to help young people find secure shelter but also help them finish their high school education. If they wish, the Rainbow Youth Project will put them through a vocational training program at no cost.

The Rainbow Youth Project’s legal representation program provides legal counsel to young people who are being bullied or facing harassment at school. This includes children who are being bullied by adults and by teachers. This unit of the Rainbow Youth Project represents them in Title IX claims and in civil litigation. 

Unfortunately, one of the Rainbow Youth Project’s most requested services, currently, is the Emergency Assistance Fund. The Emergency Assistance Fund helps pay for complete memorial services for 2SLGBTQIA+ young people who complete a suicide. 

“Many people don’t think about that. Parents don’t have life insurance on a 14-year-old. We’re seeing them as young as 10 now, which is just horrendous. And [the families] find themselves in a situation where they can’t grieve because they have a hospital who is saying, you have X amount of days to retrieve your child’s remains. And they have a funeral home saying we won’t retrieve your child’s body until we have X amount of dollars. So it’s really difficult for them and puts them in a bad spot. 

So we’ve created a crisis response team in 28 cities across the country that respond to those situations. And we help pay for the funeral service, the casket, the burial plot, the headstone, and help the family with grief counseling, grief counseling for the child’s friends or peers or siblings.”

It might feel like the outlook is grim for LGBTQIA+ youth: that’s certainly how many of them feel as their governments discuss harmful laws, their school boards ban books, and their peers harass and even assault them. Lance relays a profound statement: 

“A young person, I think he was 14, was talking to one of our case managers and said, ‘Don’t you think it’s crazy that the United States is becoming like one of those third world countries?’ And she was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He’s like, ‘You know, where they push the gay people off buildings, they stone them in public or they execute them in public.’ And she was like, ‘This is the United States, that will never happen here.’ He said, ‘They don’t pull the trigger, they don’t throw the stone, and they don’t push us off the roof. But they push us into a corner where we believe that suicide is the only option. Is that not the same thing?’“

This young person’s wise observation only motivates the Rainbow Youth Project to continue their work. Lance and his fellow volunteers take heart from the young people who come out the other side of dark and challenging periods in their lives.

“[People] say ‘You left a very successful law career to do a nonprofit.’ The best paycheck that I have ever received in my life is watching a young person whose only goal was to take their life. Transform in a matter of months to a year to this amazing, wonderful, self-confident, just warrior is truly the best paycheck that you will ever get”

The Goal: Find the End of the Rainbow

Although Lance is confident in their volunteers’ ability to help many young people for years to come, his ultimate goal for the nonprofit is to become obsolete. 

“My ultimate goal with Rainbow Youth Project would be to close our doors. Shut down. Not have to answer another call. Not have to worry about another young person not getting mental health. Not having to worry about another young person being evicted because they are who they are. If all of that would go away and run us out of business, I would be the happiest person in the world. And that is our ultimate goal, is to build a much more inclusive world.”

As we reach the close of Pride month 2024, we would like to thank Lance for taking the time to share his organization’s mission and objectives with CharityAuctionsToday. A truly eye-opening conversation, we hope that by sharing this condensed version we can help build a more inclusive world alongside important organizations like the Rainbow Youth Project.