Hello DSR members!
My name is Jessica Frantz and I have been working as an intern this summer with the Donor Sibling Registry. What an amazing opportunity this has been and continues to be! Every success story I hear fills my heart with joy. I feel blessed to be involved with an organization that brings happiness to so many.
With a grant from the Arcus Foundation Gay & Lesbian Fund and the support of the Women and Gender Studies department at the University of Colorado, Boulder, the focus of my internship is to extend DSR outreach to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) community.
Approximately one-third of the children searching for their family members on DSR are from GLBT-headed households. While the Donor Sibling Registry is a non-GLBT specific organization, we are strongly supportive of GLBT civil rights, equality, and diversity, and are uniquely positioned to be a watchdog advocacy organization to ensure that GLBT prospective parents and donors are treated equally and fairly. We are seeking to build coalitions with GLBT specific organizations so that our alliance will be broader and stronger.
The outcomes we are targeting include:
-Coalition partnerships with GLBT nonprofits for advocacy and education;
-Greater awareness about DSR and the issues of raising donor conceived children in the GLBT community;
-Greater number of GLBT registrants.
In order to assess the extent to which these goals are achieved, we will measure new registrants to the DSR over a time period and track how they heard about the DSR. We also will measure the number of people reached by the circulation of newsletters. We will look at the number of coalition partnerships and their quality based on frequency of joint activities, commitment to ongoing joint activities, and the interest from the leadership level of our coalition partners.
I am now in the phase of this project where I need input from DSR members who are members of either the GLBT or straight community. I am interested in your comments, questions, and advice on extending DSR outreach to the GLBT community. I would also love to hear from GLBT members about their experiences with the DSR, as well as any GLBT parenting or family-organizations you have been involved with or that you feel could possibly benefit from becoming partners with the DSR. You may email me at JessicaFrantz@yahoo.com .
As the Donor Sibling Registry continues to be pioneers in building a more inclusive concept of family, I look forward the future and hearing from you!
Sincerely,
Jessica Frantz
JessicaFrantz@yahoo.com