There are considerably more than 200,000 charities in Britain, ranging from tiny one-woman-and-her-dog affairs devoted to preserving the local village green duck pond to the likes of the National Trust, with its 3.5m members and 45,000 volunteers. Faced with this huge variety of good causes, how do you decide which charities to support?

Well, I would argue, that should be easy: you’re reading DIVA, so you should support gay charities. Of the more than 200,000 registered charities, only a few dozen are devoted to gay causes or even predominantly gay causes. You can probably name a handful of them if pushed – Stonewall will be the first that springs to mind, then maybe a few HIV charities like Gay Men Fighting Aids. There are others, but they struggle to make themselves known, even within the gay community, because of lack of funds. And that lack of funds will continue unless you – yes, that means you – line up to help.

Though all charities say they find it hard to raise cash, some find it much harder than others. Ask any charity fundraiser and they will tell you that the three most popular charitable causes in Britain, the three that have the ability to open our wallets like no other, are always the same: children, cancer and animals. Charities outside this magic trio have to struggle harder than ever to get any interest from the public.

When you look at gay charities, that struggle gets tougher still. We are more out and proud than ever before, but the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is still a small minority of the populace, and we are often hard to reach – gay bars are the lowest common denominator, but many people wouldn’t dream of going out on the scene on a regular basis.

Straight people don’t tend to give to gay charities. If you doubt this, try ‘bucket rattling’ for a gay charity in a straight pub – or even a gay pub with straight people in it – and see the response you get. Nor will you often see gay charities solicit funds in other straight environments, such as the mainstream media where other charities advertise themselves. It makes no sense for a gay charity to market itself to straight people because, at best, the meagre returns just don’t make it worthwhile – and at worst, you cop a load of unpleasant abuse.

So the available pool of donors for LGBT charities is therefore automatically much smaller than it is for non-gay causes.
Outside the pool of individual donors, there are also charitable trusts and public sector funds available to gay charities. These trusts and funds should be some of the biggest sources of funding to the LGBT charitable sector. But I’ve been a volunteer at London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard for almost a decade, and involved in fundraising for the organisation for most of that time. I’ve seen countless applications for funding turned down by everything from Red Nose Day to the charitable trusts operated by big companies.

While some of these trusts have been fantastically supportive and positive towards lesbian, bisexual and gay people, others have been reluctant to consider working with gays. It’s hard not to think – particularly given the reaction I’ve witnessed from the administrators of a few donors – that some of these organisations just don’t see funding services for gay people as part of their remit. In some ways, that isn’t surprising – when the National Lottery has given funds to gay causes, the right wing press has seized on it to run more bigoted tirades against our community. No-one wants that kind of publicity.

At least when it comes to public sector funds – such as health funding – LGBT charities do get a good hearing. But public sector funding is inherently problematic because of the constant pressure on government to make cuts. Who knows where the axe will fall next?
That the gay community needs its charities is indisputable. Surveys show that three-quarters of us experience serious homophobia at some stage in our lives, ranging from violent attacks to malicious comments or workplace discrimination, and many people find themselves feeling anxious, fearful or depressed as a result of this.

My experience at London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard over the last decade has been that people need our service – providing listening, support, information and referrals to other organisations – as much as ever. The phone doesn’t stop ringing, and people still call us for hundreds of reasons – to talk about coming out, to air their relationship difficulties, to seek legal advice on partnerships or employment, to discuss their experience of isolation or homophobia, or to seek safer-sex information. That’s not to say it’s all doom and gloom; we also get a fantastic quota of happy calls from people who want to talk about what a fabulous time they’re having, how good it is to come out or how great it is to be gay. Hurrah!

We are one of the biggest gay charities in the country, with more than 150 lesbian, gay and bisexual volunteers answering the phones to more than 30,000 people a year from all over the country (about a quarter of them women), and with thousands of visitors to our information web site, www.queery.org.uk. But securing funding and recruiting volunteers remain enormous challenges.

Given the problems that gay charities face in finding the cash to offer their much-needed services to the gay community, doesn’t it make sense for LGBT people to support their own community rather than giving to generalist charities?
George MacDonald, a long-time donor to a variety of gay causes, thinks it’s gay people’s duty to give to gay charities first. ‘Any special interest group or union makes itself stronger when the people who are part of that group show their support. It’s that simple,’ he says. He advises people to look at the range of gay charities out there: ‘Don’t blindly support a charity just because it’s gay – I don’t support Stonewall, for instance, as I don’t agree with the way it claims to speak for all gay people. Pick the one that is closest to your own concerns.’

But others argue that this view is too narrow. Katherine Cowan, an independent research and diversity consultant, says, ‘It’s a complex issue. I suspect that the majority of individual donors giving to LGBT charities are LGBT themselves, and feel they have a vested interest, in a way that a heterosexual person might not. Having said that, we all have straight friends and family who care about us, so there’s no reason why they can’t be tapped for cash to help our cause.’
It’s difficult to find out how many donors to gay causes are gay themselves – Stonewall, for instance, says it doesn’t have such information, though anecdotally it says some straight people do donate.

Rosalind (not her real name) has worked on fundraising for a variety of gay and straight charities, and says, ‘I don’t think gay people should give just to gay charities. There are many charities out there who campaign and work on issues that touch the lives of both the gay and straight communities equally, such as cancer, welfare or human rights charities.’
But, she adds, ‘It’s important to recognise, though, that many smaller gay charities, such as helplines, which directly support the community, wouldn’t exist without the donations they receive from their generous gay supporters.’

Thomas Appleton, a transgendered man who is co-chair of FTM London, and who has worked at charities such as Treehouse, Shelter and Childline, warns against ‘self-ghettoising by saying I will only give to LGBT charities.’ He also points out that gay charities don’t offer the full spectrum of support for causes that other charities do. Anyone interested in international development, for example, would find it difficult to find a gay charity in that field.
Ultimately, it’s up to us, as individuals, to decide where our pennies should go. The causes that we choose may be as the result of long consideration, or they may be as random as giving to whoever shoves a collecting tin under your nose when you have a pocketful of loose change. But do remember that without funding from the gay community, gay charities just wouldn’t exist – and we would all miss them if they weren’t here supporting us.