From All-Volunteer to Here to Stay

Our Story

In 2019, a family in rural North Texas went looking for a safe space for their transgender daughter and found that none existed. So they built one. What began at a kitchen table has become Grayson County Pride, the only dedicated LGBTQ+ resource organization serving Grayson, Fannin, and Bryan counties, a 1,500 square mile stretch where the nearest comparable resources are more than an hour away.

We have grown fast. In 2022, we served about 200 people. By 2025, that number had climbed past 1,450, in a region home to an estimated 14,000 LGBTQ+ residents. And we have done every bit of it on volunteer hours and heart, without a single paid staff member.

As affirming spaces have disappeared from schools and clinics across our region, more and more people have nowhere else to turn. When a local hospital or law enforcement office encounters an LGBTQ+ person in crisis, they call us. We have quietly become essential infrastructure for our community, the place that answers when no one else will.

But here is the hard truth behind our growth: an organization that now serves more than 1,450 people a year still runs entirely on unpaid labor. The day-to-day coordination that keeps our doors open and our crisis response moving is done by a volunteer who receives nothing for it. In a region where LGBTQ+ people face real barriers to stable employment, we believe the people who hold this community together deserve to be paid for the work they do.

That is why we are funding our first paid position. This is not about growing bigger. It is about being here, consistently and reliably, for every LGBTQ+ person in Texoma who needs us. It is about making sure this work does not rest on the unpaid shoulders of one person, and that it can continue for years to come.

Your gift builds that foundation. It turns a grassroots movement, held together by love and long hours, into something steady enough to last. Help us be here for the long haul.