Dear Consortium Members,

As we continue planning for the year ahead, we wanted to share an update with you and, perhaps more importantly, let you into our thinking.

First, thank you.

We are incredibly grateful to everyone who took the time to share feedback about conference engagement and our programming this year. We were moved by both the number of responses and the thoughtfulness behind them. Your honesty affirmed something we already knew: our community cares deeply about staying connected, supporting one another, and continuing to learn together.

As a Board, we've spent a great deal of time sitting with your feedback and wrestling with what it means for our organization. We are committed to making decisions that reflect the realities our members are facing, not just what we wish were possible.

At a time when fewer LGBTQ+ centers have institutional funding and membership resources are increasingly limited, which in turn drastically impacts the Consortium’s finances, we believe it is important to invest those funds where they can have the deepest impact for our community. From the responses we gathered about the topic, it’s clear that membership is scattered across conferences, with many unable to attend more than one or not being able to attend any at all, so we believe that impact won’t be found at a single conference gathering.

Based on these communal realities, we have made the difficult decision to not host an official pre-conference session or national Consortium gathering at any in-person conference this year. 

The reasons are both practical and values-driven. Many of you shared that the costs of conference attendance, limited institutional support for professional development, and concerns around travel, safety and accessibility, make participating in national conferences increasingly difficult. Those realities are true for many members of our Board as well. Hosting an institute would require using a significant portion of our limited Consortium resources to ensure board members could be present to facilitate and support the event.

At the same time, we recognize something else that came through clearly in your responses: there is real value in being together. The conversations in hallways, the spontaneous networking, the feeling of being in community with people who understand this work; those moments matter.

And we also know that accessibility matters. Many members are unable to attend in-person conferences at all due to lack of funding, needing to protect personal or community health, or safety concerns. Any official Consortium offering at a conference leaves these members out.

As queer people, we understand that more than one truth can exist at the same time. We don't see this as an either/or choice. Instead, we want to find ways to honor both the importance of in-person connection and the need to make our community and professional development opportunities more accessible.

With that in mind, here is where we are headed:

• Supporting Members at National Conferences. For those who are attending conferences, we'd love to help amplify the work you're already doing. If you're interested in hosting a Consortium meet-up, facilitating a conversation, or creating a space for our members while you're there, we'd be happy to help with planning, curriculum, promotion, or logistics.

• Growing our Virtual Drive-In. We are exploring ways to make the Virtual Drive-In an even stronger hub for community building and professional development. We hope members will consider sharing presentations they have already developed or planned to present at national conferences so that more people can benefit from that knowledge. We're also reimagining the format to better serve the needs of our community.

• Investing in Regional Connections. We also want to strengthen our regional network by supporting our Regional Representatives and, where possible, encouraging more local or regional gatherings. Whether connected to the Virtual Drive-In or organized independently, we hope these opportunities can provide meaningful in-person networking while reducing the financial barriers that often come with national travel.

• Amplifying our Opportunities to Connect. We will continue to offer our webinars, bi-monthly general membership meetings, affinity calls, and asynchronous connections via newsletters and Substack. We remain steadfast in our commitment to foster spaces where our communities can work towards collective liberation.

We want to be honest that these ideas are still taking shape. Rather than waiting until every detail was finalized, we felt it was more important to be transparent about where we are and invite you into the process. As many of you begin planning for the new fiscal year, we wanted you to know what we're thinking and where we're investing our energy.

Finally, we want to express our gratitude for our longstanding relationships with ACPA and Creating Change. Those partnerships remain deeply important to us, and we look forward to continuing to collaborate and support one another, even if our engagement looks different this year. And, we especially look forward to having conversations about possibly returning to our pre-cons and engagements in the future, as time, finances, political circumstances, and capacity permit.

Thank you for your trust, your feedback, and your continued commitment to this community. We know that the strength of this Consortium has never been a single conference or event; it has always been the people who make up this community and the work we do for each other and our students. We look forward to finding new ways to learn, connect, and build with you in the year ahead.

With gratitude,

2026-2027 Consortium Board: Mich Wallace, Jeff Maliskey, des Velázquez, Lorant Peeler, Shantala L. Thompson, Sarah Simi Cohen, T Hernandez, Em Huang, Cornelius Baker, Jeremy Torres