Campus Pride 20th Anniversary: 2021 Year in Review

The year 2021 was a celebration of 20 years of leadership and activism borne of the work of Campus Pride’s founder and executive director, Shane Windmeyer and the vast network of LGBTQ+ college students, advisors, faculty and administrators from across the country. 

To honor these achievements, the Campus Pride Board of Directors last month unanimously agreed to recognize Shane’s lifelong dedication to advancing LGBTQ+ youth with an achievement award as a gesture of our appreciation. Because of Shane’s hard work and leadership, especially in the last couple of years, Campus Pride has fairly weathered the global pandemic and is in a very good position to continue growing our impact in the years to come. 

Campus Pride has invested nearly $100,000 in development of a new platform aimed at connecting LGBTQ+ young people to mentorship opportunities and career leads with LGBTQ+ friendly employers. This platform, the Campus Pride Career Connect, will be launching in a couple of months and we hope it will have a meaningful impact on the future of the workplace for LGBTQ+ people. 

We also launched a new program to fund the social justice efforts of college students with mini-grants of up to $600. In 2021, these Social Justice Mini-Grants funded 20 different projects and we are eager to continue this program this year and in the years to come. 

With the increase in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and policies in recent years, coupled with a rise in bias and hate crime incidents, there has been a significant demand for Campus Pride’s proprietary Safe Space and Stop The Hate trainings, which are offered both online and in-person. 

On our YouTube page, we rolled out a Campus Spotlight Series where our student interns interviewed faculty and staff at 20 different campuses across the country about the work they’re doing to create safer, more inclusive communities and the challenges they face. 

Finally, we released an updated list of the “Best of the Best” list to highlight the colleges and universities who are leading the way in LGBTQ+ inclusive policies, practices and programs; and our “Worst List” called out 180 campuses for being the “absolute worst, most unsafe” colleges and universities for LGBTQ+ folks. 

I am so proud of the work that Shane, the staff, the student interns, and our board of directors have done this year to advance our mission to build future leaders and create safer, more inclusive communities.  

Happy New Year and thank you for your ongoing support of our work. 

My best,

Tom Elliott

Campus Pride Board Chair

Camp Pride Alum – 2008