QueerAF, the UK’s beloved queer newsletter and largest advocate of queer creatives, needs your help to stay strong and fighting for you
In an age of Trump and Musk trying to take away our liberties and filter our content, we need your help to cut through the noise. We’ve also been hit by business tax rises, inflation and increasing costs. Your support will help us continue providing a vital service for the LGBTQIA+ community.
Information is a tool for liberation, and it shouldn’t be a luxury, so this crowdfunder will keep QueerAF’s newsletter free for everyone as well as allowing us to invest in marginalised creatives and critical investigative journalism.
Why help QueerAF?
At QueerAF, we're different. We're the UK's only LGBTQIA+ publisher that’s both registered non-profit and press regulated.
We know all too well how terrible so many of the mainstream media titles have been to our community. Even some of the gay press have been captured by a focus on clickbait and profits over community. At QueerAF, as well as reinvesting all of our revenue on our mission to 'change the newsroom, to change the country,' we've been investing in news and queer journalists in a way no other UK gay media has.
We deserve better, and at QueerAF we’re not only modelling the change we want to see, but we’re working in and with the media so it better represents us. There’s a better way for our LGBTQIA+ community to be seen, heard and celebrated in the media, and we’re making sure it’s going to happen.
Why do we need your help now?
- The recent budget increased the cost burden on small businesses, disproportionately, increasing our tax bill.
- The changes in the Meta and X algorithms have made it harder to build our audience, gather news, and fight against hate our community faces.
- We're committed to paying queer creatives as our number one value - we won’t compromise on this.
- Other parts of the gay media have moved away from news and investigations leaving a vast gap in the information our community is getting.
- The mainstream media is actively harming our community, spreading misinformation and failing to tackle the issues and joys in our lives with justice.
We’ll level with you
We go over and above our community interest company regulation and publish our income and outgoings. So this is our reality:
- Though all our creatives are paid, and our part time staff on proper industry rates, our founder and only full-time staff member is on less than minimum wage, and delivers QueerAF on a shoestring budget.
- We have a long-term sustainable model, but with this modest additional investment now, we’ll be able to double down our efforts on securing the future.
How we’re delivering change for our community
Community media means delivering for the community. We’ve set out our full detailed list of achievements in the last year below (a preview of our annual transparency report.)
But here is the TL;DR of what our small but mighty publisher has achieved in just three years without the profits and developed audiences the UK’s legacy gay media have:
- Invested in, mentored, paid and published over 100 marginalised queer creatives. Six in ten of these are from a gender-diverse background, three in ten with disabilities.
- Launched Trans+ History Week to end the pernicious lie that being gender diverse is a modern contagion, with nationwide campaigns declaring that ‘We’ve Always Been Here, and Always Will Be’, hybrid events and international national media coverage.
- Been recognised by the World Health Organisation as a crucial part of the response to the Global North MPOX break out, delivering community journalism and holding the government to account
- Launched the careers of journalists and audio producers by directly facilitating bylines and commissions with national media like Virgin Radio and the Metro.
- Championed grassroots news, investigated the NHS, exposed government failures and set news agendas for the UK LGBTQIA+ news that matters most to the community, not for clicks.
If that’s what we can achieve on a shoe-string, imagine what more we can do with proper funding?
In the last year alone, our investigations have exposed:
- How hundreds transgender patients are being denied care, on the basis of discrimination alone, by GPs.
- Cover-ups of the numbers of young trans suicides, in order to better suit anti-trans government narratives.
- Plans that are tantamount to forcing some young trans people to detransition, or for parents to face safeguarding referals.
What we’ll do with this crowdfunding:
- Balance the books for our anticipated outgoing costs, like rising tax, so we can continue to deliver our award-winning newsletter and podcast
- Invest in even more marginalised LGBTQIA+ creatives, mentoring, training and commissioning them
- Develop deeper connections with the mainstream media so we can create talent pipelines that help change who shapes the UK's newsrooms.
- Deliver more investigative journalism, to expose transphobia and LGBTQIA+ prejudices in the UK’s highest offices of power.
