MISSOULA - Pride Month offers an opportunity for local organizations and businesses to show support for the LGBTQ+ Community Center, and the Missoula Organization of Realtors (MOR) is one of the biggest fundraisers for Pride Weekend.
MOR raised $30,000 for The Western Montana Community Center. This is MOR’s second year supporting Pride Weekend by calling on their community partners to donate.
“It was a great opportunity for us to reach out to some of our affiliates and other partners in housing throughout the community and by utilizing those relationships we were able to get others to help pull in some funds and help make Pride a successful event,” MOR board of directors president Carly Kelley Mcdonnell said.
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The donation is a part of MOR’s Homes for All initiative, which, in partnership with Homeward, works to break down the various barriers people may encounter when looking for housing.
“This initiative, supporting homes for all, supporting Pride and The Community Center here is all about showing that when you're working with a realtor from the Missoula Organization of Realtors, you don't have to have that fear of discrimination,” Karen Berg-Digangi, Chair of the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee, says. "Every human should deserve the opportunity to get access to housing without worrying that who they are, whether the color of their skin, their gender identity, their sexual orientation–that that's not an additional barrier."
Berg-Digangi — who orchestrated much of MOR’s involvement in Pride Weekend — says their goal was to double what they raised last year for the event, which was $10,000. She was happy to find out that they exceeded that goal.
The Center is able to use the funds from MOR however they see fit, and will spend it over the next two years. A lot of the money goes straight to Pride weekend events, according to Berg-Digangi. Pride Weekend is less of a fundraiser and more of a way to give back to the community.
“You know, we're putting on all these events so that queer joy can come through because a lot of times that's not what people are experiencing on a regular basis,” Berg-Digangi says.
MOR provides support and resources to those who wish to find housing, and that includes the queer community.
“I think a big part of what we do is making sure that everybody has the opportunity to be a homeowner if they would like to or a property owner if they would like to,” Kelley Mcdonnell says. “We have resources for you and we can help direct you to those resources. We just want everybody to know that those are out there for them.”
the Missoula Organization of Realtors will have a lounge at the Pride parade on Saturday alongside Homeward and Montana Fair Housing.
