CCSG Raising Money for Pride Month
By Meagan Wiper
To celebrate Pride Month in June, the Capital City supporters Group is raising money for Kind Space via the Prideraiser campaign!
Kind Space is Ottawa’s own 2SLGBTQIA+ community center that offers peer support groups, events, short-term individual therapy, a food bank, as well as a library of queer fiction and nonfiction books. They also provide a trans ID clinic that assists trans-identified individuals in obtaining documentation that correctly reflects their name and gender.
Community centres like Kind Space are often sorely underfunded and understaffed. The fact that queer people are receiving backlash not seen in decades, as well as teams in many sports backing out of Pride matches due to pressure from queerphobes, is not lost on us either. Football should be an escape, but it is not an escape for everyone. Not yet.
So here’s how the Prideraiser campaign works:
For those that don’t know, Prideraiser is a coalition of over 70 football supporter groups in Canada and the US, as well as admin volunteers that raise money for 2SLGBTQIA+ causes in their local communities every June. Prideraiser was founded in 2017 by sheer accident
when a couple of fans realized the power of the platforms given to fans by soccer, they not only used those platforms to raise funds for queer causes but also observed that reaching out to new fanbases strengthened their own supporters' groups by providing a safe space and brought more people together to support their teams. The model was shared with the supporter community, and it grew into what it is today.
The 100% free fundraising model is based on fans making a pledge per goal scored during Pride Month. For example, if your team scores 5 goals in June, a fan's $5-per-goal pledge means $25 goes to further the mission of the local 2SLGBTQIA+ charity selected.
The best part is that Prideraiser charges zero application fees, zero setup fees, and zero transaction fees, and no data is sold. So 100% of the money raised goes to Kind Space. Prideraiser nor we get a cut of the money whatsoever.
Also, Atletico Ottawa’s captain Carl Haworth is raising funds again for Playing for Pride & Athlete Ally, something he has done for several years since his Fury days. Launched in 2017 by former MLS player Austin da Luz in reaction to the transphobic bathroom laws signed in March of 2016, by Governor Pat McCrory in North Carolina, Playing for Pride and Athlete Ally serve as a way for professional football players in the US and Canada to show their support for queer inclusion in and through sport.
To contribute to CCSG’s Prideraiser campaign to raise funds for Kind Space, click on the hyperlink. The campaign will be open until the end of June, so be sure to sign up soon!
If you want to contribute to Carl Haworth's Playing for Pride campaign, click here.