Transforming Steph’s Place

Aim

Transforming Steph’s Place into the UK’s first dedicated Transgender, Non-Binary & Gender Diverse rights and advocacy organisation.

Transforming Steph’s Place into the UK’s first dedicated Transgender, Non-Binary & Gender Diverse rights and advocacy organisation.

We need to raise around £3000 before the 17th October in order to access significant additional funding.

Who are Steph’s Place?

We are a small group of dedicated trans and binary people, parents, partners and allies dedicated to defending and further the rights of trans, non-binary and gender diverse people across the UK. 

Personally, I'm one of the co-founders of Steph's Place, alongside Steph, Paul, Nicola and other members of our extended team.  To date all our work and presence has been self funded, largely by Steph, and unfortunately this is now becoming unsustainable.

We started around 2 years ago with the intent of addressing the myriad misinformation in the press and on social media. Two years later we have thoroughly exposed the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission as working a trans hostile agenda, submitted two highly detailed dossiers on these actions to the United Nations, debunked numerous myths and articles of misinformation about our community, and given a voice to disenfranchised members of our community. 

As a result of this work, in September 2022 we won one of the UK’s most prestigious awards in the field, a National Diversity Award for Community Organisation - LGBT Award, after being nominated & shortlisted earlier this year.

But we want to do more, and now we have an opportunity to make that happen.

Where do we go from here?

We already have plans in motion, but winning this award has really shown us that we are in a firm position to make a real difference. After much discussion we are formalising as a community interest company (CIC) with the intention of moving on to becoming a charity, and we are rebranding with a new name as the UK’s first dedicated trans, non-binary & gender diverse rights and advocacy organisation, of which Steph’s Place will continue to be a big part.

Our intention is to leverage the contacts and reputation we have built in two short years to further directly work to improve the rights of our community across all of UK society, including:

• Continuing to combat misinformation about the trans, non-binary & gender diverse community.
• Campaign against trans hostile hate and discrimination in all its forms.
• Campaign for simpler legal recognition, access to better healthcare, a ban of conversion practices and inclusion of our community in all aspects of UK society.
• Provide a voice for our community, by our community.
• Become a hub for our community and others to easily access accurate information, support, education services and other help.
• As well as many other areas which we have identified as requiring attention.

How can you help?

We have been offered an opportunity to pitch for funding at a corporate crowdfunding event as one of only two UK participants, alongside two global charities. The event provides what is known as ‘match funding’ from those attending, and in order to participate we need to raise some core funding via sponsorship and the community.

What this means in reality is that all funds raised via this crowdfunder have the potential to be tripled or more, meaning your support today will go a lot further. We are already in the process of approaching several potential sponsors in addition to this fundraising.

What will this do for us, and our community?

If we are successful, this money will go towards a number of different objectives, including but not limited to:

• Costs related to setting up & administering as a Community Interest Company as the first step towards becoming a registered charity.
• A new, much more friendly website, email & hosting solution.
• The ability to provide payment to community content creators.
• Support for travel costs to attend events, protests and meetings.
• Lots more! 

Unfortunately we can’t give too much away about our future plans at this point in order to avoid our efforts being opposed and countered by trans hostile activists.

Please Note : 

• None of this funding will be used to provide an income to the founders & directors. 
• As we are not set up as an organisation just yet (this is currently in progress and this opportunity has popped up before we have completed this bit - sometimes things move surprisingly fast!), this crowdfunder has been set to to transfer funds to an account held by Claire in the interim, and all funds raised will be transferred to the new organisation upon completion. We do hope that this will not deter you from contributing and supporting us, and are happy to answer any legitimate questions if you have them, either via here or the contact form on our current website.

This is a fantastic opportunity for transgender, non-binary & gender diverse people and allies to really start to make a difference in the current hostile environment in the UK, created by a hostile media and government led moral panic against us.

We know it's difficult financially for many of us, but together and with your support we can start taking real steps to tackle the hate, lies, misinformation, social and medical stigma affecting our community in the UK, and improve our rights, healthcare and acceptance. None of this will be easy nor quick, but only together can we improve the lives of trans, non-binary and gender diverse people in the UK.

We hope this has inspired you to support us to make this happen, because we really couldn’t do this without you.

Thank you so much for reading, and please consider following us on Twitter or dropping by our website to keep up to date with events and activities.

This project successfully funded on 28th October 2022