By Amber Hair Monday, June 10th, 2024

Pride festivals are often big, boisterous events where people from all walks of life come together to celebrate love and identity. 

Nonprofits and local businesses put up booths, often handing out beads or knickknacks emblazoned with their organization’s logo, as music from an entertainer or two blasts from a stage. 

Someone somewhere is selling flags and shirts, and there’s often a line of food trucks or other vendors with long lines stretching back as people chat and walk around.

None of that happens organically. 

LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations like Diversity Collective, the Pacific Pride Foundation and Central Coast Pride spend months raising money and organizing to make sure Pride festivals go smoothly.

Tyson Halseth, the director of development at the Pacific Pride Foundation, said that Pride costs a little more than $100,000 for the organization to put on. 

Pacific Pride Foundation hosts the largest Pride in Santa Barbara County, and this year, the Pacific Pride Festival will be at Chase Palm Park Field in Santa Barbara.

Before COVID, the organization hosted Pride in the smaller facilities at Chase Palm Park, instead of the field, but they’vefound since the pandemic it’s been more accessible for people to attend an event with more space to spread out in.

Additionally, the Pacific Pride Foundation recently rethought how they approach Pride. 

In the past, it was part event, part fundraiser. 

Now, they’ve dropped the fundraiser part of the equation, to focus on the communal aspect. 

If a non-profit wants to set up a booth at the event but doesn’t have the money to afford booth fees, they’ll be invited to attend and set up the booth anyway.

“We really try to make it an event everyone can participate in,” Halseth said. “We don’t want financial issues to be a barrier.”

The Pacific Pride Foundation puts a heavy focus on accessibility of all types: beyond choosing a more accessible space, organizers also enlist the help of ASL interpreters and translation headsets people can use, as well as a viewing deck for people with wheelchairs and other mobility devices.

“Pride is important,” Halseth said. 

“It’s about celebrating our authentic selves. We want everyone to be able to access that.”

The Pacific Pride Foundation works with private contributions, sponsors and donors to pull everything together, and they do that by being financially transparent. 

“We really bring our donors with us,” Halseth said.

Central Coast Pride also leans heavily on sponsors to help fund Pride.

Central Coast Pride is the organization that organizes several Pride celebrations in San Luis Obispo County, including San Luis Obispo’s Pride in the Plaza and Pride in the Park, Atascadero Pride, Queerwood (which serves Los Osos) and Pride by the Sea, which is in Cambria. 

They still have a lot of Pride events left in the month of June, but so far they’ve had about 10,000 people attending the events the organization has put on thus far, making it the most-attended Pride yet.

This year, it cost Central Coast Pride about $96,000 to put on these events, but in previous years it’s cost more — a lot more. 

Last year, the organization spent $183,000, and a lot of factors went into that, including a bigger event space, which meant the organization had to hire more security and put more fences up to keep the event secure.

Central Coast Pride also invested $10,000 in printing flags that were then hung all over downtown SLO, which was a one-time investment that’s continuing to pay dividends.

Sponsors help carry the cost of the events. 

This year, Central Coast had about $40,000 worth of sponsorships, and the previous year, they had $60,000.

“We have a lot of sponsors that come back to us year after year,” said Daniel Gomez, executive committee chair of Central Coast Pride. 

Gomez also mentioned that the organization has had a lot of success working with its suppliers, who have helped them deal with cost increases. Sometimes the cost of something will go up, and the supplier will make sure they’re getting more for their money, or the supplier will sponsor Central Coast Pride in some way.

Not every Pride event is so big, though. 

Michelle Burns, one of the co-founders of Camarillo Pride, said her first vision for the Pride she’s helped build was as a playdate for families with LGBTQ+ children, with details of the event hosted on a Facebook page.

Now in its third year, Burns has found a lot of community support for Camarillo Pride.

The first company that reached out and offered to sponsor Camarillo Pride was Topa Topa Brewing Company, which also hosts events for the Business Times.

Once Burns realized that there was a lot more interest in a Camarillo Pride than she originally anticipated, she reached out to Diversity Collective, the organization that puts on Ventura Pride every year.

Diversity Collective is one of the organizations that sponsors Camarillo Pride, and for the past few years, has helped it with organizational tasks. Companies who want to sponsor Camarillo Pride have sponsored it through Diversity Collective, which allows those companies to claim donations on their taxes using Diversity Collective’s nonprofit status.

Next year, though, Camarillo Pride will be under the umbrella of its own nonprofit — Love Always Wins in Camarillo. 

Through it all, Burns has focused on the family-friendly theme, including events like a drag queen story time, bounce houses and arts and crafts.

Local businesses have been quick to respond and support her mission. Channel Islands Art Studio has provided supplies in the past, and several local food vendors — like Pizza Man Dan’s and Connie’s Hot Dogs — have set up shop at the event.

“This is a Pride that’s celebrating families, whatever they look like,” Burns said. 

“This is work that matters to me.”

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