If you ask anyone in the community — gay or straight, as long as they’re involved — The Center is going through its own renaissance in tandem with what many feel is a renaissance within Long Beach itself.
With a new building facade, a plethora of programming that reaches one end of the youth spectrum to the opposite side of cultural affairs, and a community outreach that is arguably one of the most comprehensive, The Center is redefining its role in the LGBTQ community.
Of course, it wasn’t always this way.
In 2009, The Center was in a precarious position. In the words of Board Chair Ron Sylvester, The Center was “at the bottom of the barrel.” Facing six-digits of debt, their executive director resigning in September of that year, a lack of involvement and loss of board members, and dilapidating infrastructure, the Board had to convene on a consistent basis in order to keep it alive.
“We had no way to pay an executive director — you have the economic instability surrounding the country so grants were down, donations were down, sponsorships were down, funding was down,” explains Ron. “Everyone just kind of looked at each other and said, ‘How are we gonna get out of this?'”
The Board of The Center then became not just an advisory board typical of non-profits, where they simply meet once a month and attempt to raise money. They soon embodied the operation of The Center, having to unfortunately face the realization that not only was an executive director financially impossible to hire, they would have to work day-to-day to keep the organization alive.
Phyllis Schmidt, somewhat of a legend within the Long Beach LGBTQ community given her extensive work, offered four hours daily of her time to act as an interim executive director, with responsibilities ranging from opening the place to making sure staff was here.
Following suit were other board members, offering their various skills towards the pool that became keeping The Center alive.
“What was full-time became part-time, what was part-time was taken by a volunteer,” explained Ron. “We had to bring in a part-time bookkeeper just to make sure the bills were being paid.”
Bills, mind you, that Ron went through individually. Oftentimes, organizations–non-profit or otherwise–get lost in their operations when they get lost in assets, making money a less important aspect of the operation to focus on. The Center happened to be one of those organizations, having to whittle down any and every aspect they could: twelve phone lines were coming in and yet only five were being used; trash pick-up was happening at an unneeded twice per week; documentation being relegated to paper instead of digital copies…
They even had to repair their relationship with the Volunteer Center down the street, which handles court-mandated community service hours. The relationship had become deteriorated when The Center had become previously flush with cash. “Phyllis had to work her magic to get us those volunteers back,” said Porter Gilberg, current Administrative Director and former volunteer when he started an internship at The Center for her undergraduate work at UCLA in 2007. “These are the people who maintain our building–they were saving us over $400 a month.”
Ultimately, they realized that–beyond simple operational corrections–they needed a public facelift and they needed to take the much more difficult step of admitting they needed help. Their presence in the community wasn’t what it should have been and they’re outreach was lacking.
“And it just seemed to happened. We were managing better and we had to just start working for money, whether we thought we had a chance or not,” continued Ron.
Slowly but surely, the debt began to chip away–with the sudden realization that the debt had disappeared. And Porter emphasizes that, indeed, they are lucky to have rid themselves of the debt, putting them in a position to grow, “90% of running The Center is doing the small things that nobody thinks about. It’s ordering office supplies, it’s researching how to reduce the cost of obtaining those office supplies, it’s making sure that the building is clean, that things are printed and updated. It’s not glamorous but it’s rewarding,” he says with a broad smile.
The Center is ran on two major county contracts: one with the Department of Mental Health (DMH) and one through the Division of HIV & STD Programs. Each requires that The Center do certain things like test a certain amount of people for HIV or have focus on particular services such as youth programs. Porter dug into each of the contracts to ensure that not only The Center would receive the monies it should have been provided, but that The Center wasn’t overexerting itself. Much to his work along with the dedication of others, The Center’s upcoming contract with DMH has been extended with more money.
Even further, The Center has diversified its cultural programming to appeal to more people across different philosophies and to those who don’t rely on the organization’s direct services. Its QFilms Festival has reached a peak in popularity, with this year’s expected to be the most attended yet. And The Center’s popular QSpeak events, a series of cultural engagements that lean towards the subversive and intellectual, have become a must-attend staple in the Long Beach LGBTQ community.
To this end, it should be of no shock that The Center is back on track completely–and that arguably isn’t the most beautiful aspect of their story. Part of the sublime nature of it all was the fact that they didn’t rise from the well due to some miracle that came along and saved them, but a much more humanly-based effort to climb out of a dark place, with caring people who simply offered their bodies and time to dig an organization out of a rut.
The Center is located at 2017 E. 4th Street. For more information about programs and services, as well as other questions, call 562-434-4455 or visit www.centerlb.org