2023 Fellow

Jack Beck
TurnOut

Website
https://www.turnout.org/

Personal Bio

Jack Beck is the Founder and Executive Director of TurnOut, a nonprofit dedicated to mobilizing communities to power queer and trans movements. He started his career in HIV services at AIDS Project Los Angeles and went on to lead the communications department at M-PACT, where he had the privilege of working with hundreds of queer and trans grassroots organizations around the world. In 2015, Jack left his job at M-PACT to start TurnOut, working to build community power to support queer and trans grassroots work at every level. TurnOut now works year-round to recruit new volunteers, staff, and Board members for queer and trans nonprofits, providing the training and support they need to maximize their impact for our communities.

Project Description

The LGBT+ nonprofit infrastructure is our community’s most important support system, but it faces serious system-wide challenges. LGBT+ nonprofits are historically underfunded; struggle with capacity-building efforts to manage key areas of growth; and experience vulnerable organizational structures and higher administrative turnover than their counterparts. TurnOut provides a novel full-infrastructure approach that allows us to strengthen a city’s entire LGBTQ+ infrastructure as a whole. By working to recruit, train, and support individuals at every level of the queer and trans grassroots response (volunteer, staff, and Board), we are working to build a powerful and well-resourced infrastructure of LGBTQ+ nonprofits driving change forward for our communities. This year, we will expand this work outside of California to support queer and trans communities who need it most.