All Out, New International Program Grantee, Profiled in New York Times
December 14, 2010
Campaign Encourages People to Go ‘All Out’
by Stuart Elliott, New York TimesAn organization that will ask people around the world to help secure rights for those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender is giving a sneak peek at its efforts. The organization, called All Out, is to formally introduce itself in early 2011. In the meantime, in kind of a teaser campaign, its Web site, allout.org, is going live on Wednesday. Site visitors can watch a video clip that explains what All Out hopes to accomplish; the video can also be watched on YouTube. All Out, with the motto “Equality. Everywhere,” is an initiative of the Purpose Foundation, created by the founders of an agency in New York known as Purpose.
Purpose, which specializes in working with advertisers and nonprofit organizations on what is called cause marketing, recently started a campaign, Hello Electric, that promotes the virtue of electric cars and encourages consumers to buy one, whatever the brand. The Purpose Foundation was formed as a 501(c) (3) nonprofit group, said Jeremy Heimans, chief executive of Purpose and president of the Purpose Foundation. All Out was conceived by Mr. Heimans and Andre Banks, the director for strategy at Purpose who is also a former deputy director of ColorofChange.org, an organization aimed at African-Americans. “The mission of the Purpose Foundation is to build global movements to solve problems,” Mr. Heimans said. And in this instance, “There isn’t a strong, powerful voice for L.G.B.T. people in many parts of the world.” “It’s almost the last frontier of human rights,” he added.
All Out and the foundation have already received a grant of $125,000 from the Arcus Foundation, which supports organizations around the world that help lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “Sexual-orientation and gender-identity rights-based work is one of most underfunded efforts in the world,” said Carla Sutherland, director for the international sexual orientation and gender identity rights program at Arcus in New York. Only about $20 million is spent each year for that work outside of the United States and Europe, Ms. Sutherland said, compared with an estimated $250 million a year in the United States alone. “There’s very little money that has to go very far,” she added, so an initiative like All Out, which encourages “lots of people to be giving small donations on a regular basis internationally,” could make a difference.
The Purpose Foundation worked on the video, which runs almost two minutes, with Found Object Films. It features people in countries around the world speaking of their support for the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people while describing the problems those people confront in many countries. Some people in the video hold up signs that say “I’m going All Out because … ” and other people hold up signs explaining the changes that All Out hopes to achieve in areas like marriage rights and employment rights. “Together, our tweets, voices and texts will make them pay attention,” other signs declare. All Out will have a presence in social media like Facebook and Twitter (@alloutorg).
