17.8 Million LGBTQIA+ Americans are spiritual. Help them find your LGBTQIA+ affirming faith community.
You’ve proven your faith community cares about LGBTQIA+ people’s physical, mental, social, and spiritual health.
Now you can help LGBTQIA+ people everywhere by supporting GREATER, the resource referral app by QWELL Community Foundation, a 501(c)3 charity.
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- 24 Million LGBTQIA+ consumers in the USA.
- 47% are moderately or highly religious.
- 27% are spiritual but not religious.
- 4,500+ LGBTQIA+ affirming faith communities listed on GREATER (so far).
- App to fund gatherings for youth from faith communities like yours.
- GREATER app created by QWELL Community Foundation, a 501(c)3 charity serving the nation’s 3rd largest openly LGBTQIA+ population in Greater Austin, Texas.
SPECIAL NOTICE
We are alarmed by the recent Supreme Court decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis that allows businesses to discriminate against LGBTQIA+ customers.
While we wholeheartedly support our nonprofit partners’ work to engrain LGBTQIA+ protections in law, QWELL’s solution is to direct all LGBTQIA+ spending to LGBTQIA+ friendly businesses!
Your affirming faith community can help!
GREATER knows faith.
QWELL’s founder has worked with affirming faith communities for more than 25 years:
In the 2010s, QWELL’s founder, Clayton Gibson, organized annual interfaith events including “Bring Your LGBTQ Teen to Church Day” and the #PresentPerfect cooperative marketing campaign that invited ONE MILLION PEOPLE to visit a participating LGBTQIA+ affirming faith community in a single weekend of advertising.
Co-produced the nation’s first interfaith conference for spiritual LGBTQIA+ activists, Together in Faith, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, featuring Rabbi Michael Lerner, Rev. Dr. Mel White, Bishop John Selders, Rev. Candace Chellew, and others.
Created and ran MyOutSpirit, a directory website connecting LGBTQIA+ people with affirming spiritual resources (2007-2020).
Co-founded Michigan’s statewide Faith Action Network with the American Friends Service Committee’s LGBT Issues Program to organize LGBTQIA+ affirming clergy to stand up for equality.
Now QWELL wants to make sure LGBTQIA+ people in your neighborhood can easily connect with your faith community when they use our new app, GREATER.
GREATER is what GREATER does.
LGBTQIA+ people still face discrimination at work and in healthcare and public accommodation.
QWELL’s anonymous GREATER app makes it easy to find the LGBTQIA+ friendly faith communities, employers, healthcare providers, resources, and products and services in every neighborhood.
We need your support to make this huge undertaking succeed. Please sign up now!
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What We Do
GREATER fulfills the LGBTQIA+ community’s long-standing promise to support the organizations that have our back.
We won’t stand idly by while beloved LGBTQIA+ friendly faith communities and businesses struggle or close their doors. QWELL made GREATER to drive LGBTQIA+ and Ally people to resources like yours. We’re doing our part to make sure that LGBTQIA+ friendly faith communities thrive.
02
Our Approach
92% of LGBTQIA+ people say it’s important to support the resources and businesses that support our community.
Finding those resources in any neighborhood is easy with QWELL Community Foundation’s GREATER app. Users add businesses, healthcare providers, and other resources they personally know are LGBTQIA+ friendly so that other users can search for them anonymously.
Your GREATER listing even shows all the ways you support LGBTQIA+ causes, organizations, and employees. You get public credit for walking your talk as an LGBTQIA+ friendly faith community.
Our Mission
For QWELL Community Foundation to succeed in its mission to cultivate a queer culture of health and self-actualization, we need to engage every LGBTQIA+ person and connect each of them with whatever resources they need to improve their wellbeing as they see fit, like supportive spiritual communities, healthcare services, affirming employers, or restaurants where LGBTQIA+ people like them are hanging out.
With your support, our nonprofit GREATER app will be the world’s most powerful resource referral engine for LGBTQIA+ people.
About
QWELL & GREATER
QWELL Community Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in Austin, Texas, that works to maximize LGBTQIA+ health and happiness.
- QWELL is building LGBTQIA+ community centers with affordable housing.
- QWELL assembled the world’s first cohort of health systems to get LGBTQIA+ certified together (2023), representing more than 70 clinics and 300+ providers.
- QWELL’s FreePrideFlag.com program has distributed 5,000 free rainbow flags in Central Texas and will expand nationwide.
- QWELL is the lead producer of the Colors of Pride Gathering, Texas’ only Pride event celebrating queer/trans people of color of all backgrounds and origins.
QWELL’s app, GREATER, anonymously connects LGBTQIA+ people with the businesses, healthcare, and resources that support us. The app also houses our queer wellbeing research study and provides local data about how local LGBTQIA+ communities are doing wherever the app is used.
The GREATER app fuels our PRIDE SCOUTS youth program, funded with a seed grant from:
Lady Gaga’s BORN THIS WAY FOUNDATION.
Your faith community’s listing on GREATER is absolutely FREE!
The good news: You’re probably already on GREATER!
Our LGBTQIA+ community needs the spiritual support and guidance you offer while affirming LGBTQIA+ individuals and families. Most LGBTQIA+ people report that they are spiritual but they have not found the affirming churches, synagogues, temples, and sanghas all around them.
Our GREATER app already includes MyOutSpirit’s entire list of 4,500+ affirming faith communities.
For affirming faith communities of all sizes and traditions.
You get GREATER for free.
GREATER rewards anonymous app users for identifying and supporting queer-friendly businesses, healthcare providers, faith communities like yours, and other resources.
With your GREATER listing, you’ll know how many LGBTQIA+ people are already part of your faith community as well as get feedback on why or why not LGBTQIA+ visitors return.
We believe that centering LGBTQIA+ affirming faith communities like yours helps us shift queer culture in a healthier direction.
Your faith community will also be publicly recognized on your GREATER listing for all the good work you do on behalf of LGBTQIA+ people, like donations, volunteering, and advocacy.
Our GREATER app offers users rewards for:
- Frequenting your LGBTQIA+ friendly faith community and other GREATER resources;
- Reporting their spending at listed businesses;
- Volunteering and engaging in health-promoting behaviors!
Membership dues fund LGBTQIA+ population health research.
Nonprofit organizations and local governments across the country need reliable data about how their local LGBTQIA+ communities are doing so that they can formulate effective services and programming, write winning grants, and measure their success in improving queer wellbeing.
QWELL Community Foundation, the nonprofit behind the GREATER APP, knows data.
Since 2018, QWELL has conducted the annual, anonymous Queer Wellbeing Study in collaboration with researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, to track the health of the nation’s third largest openly LGBTQIA+ population here in Greater Austin, Texas.
With our GREATER app, QWELL’s data collection expands to anywhere the app is used, generating actionable information that we will then share for free with qualified nonprofit partners nationwide.
Extra perks for you.
When your faith community joins GREATER, you can:
- Control the text, images, and details of your LGBTQIA+ friendly listing.
- Include a link to your job openings.
- Access the forthcoming donor-matching portal that makes it easy for you to get public credit on your listing page for everything your faith community for LGBTQIA+ organizations in your area, like donations and volunteering.
- Easily participate in QWELL’s FreePrideFlag.com giveaway!
Make our future GREATER.
Please engage your entire congregation to invite LGBTQIA+ friendly businesses in your area to register at greaterapp.org.
QWELL hopes that business membership dues will fund a GREATER LOVE gathering for young people and youth groups from LGBTQIA+ affirming faith communities.
If you want to inspire and train the next generation of faith-based LGBTQIA+ activists, please encourage everyone you know to ask friendly businesses to join GREATER!
Join GREATER now to support our nonprofit app connecting LGBTQIA+ people with friendly faith communities, businesses, employers, healthcare, and other resources!
You get GREATER for free as a nonprofit faith community!
Please consider adding a donation of $99 (or any amount) to help GREATER launch strong.
As a nonprofit faith community, you can join GREATER now for free!
If you’re able, please add a donation of $99 (or any amount) to help us get GREATER off the ground!
Want to sign up but need to donate later? Click the “Make a Pledge” box!
Click the “Monthly” button to start a recurring donation.
Are you part of a network of affirming faith communities like a denomination, diocese, or advocacy group? Contact us for help getting all your members on GREATER!