The San Diego LGBT Community Center is the nation’s second oldest and third largest community center of its kind. Born of a dual vision to provide for our community and community members, and work to achieve full equality, The Center is the heartbeat of San Diego’s LGBT community.

Even if you haven’t walked through the doors on Centre Street, The Center has impacted your life. Whether working to achieve marriage equality or helping homeless youth find shelter, The Center works to ensure our future – your future.

As we kick off our end-of-fiscal-year membership drive, please give as generously as you are able. Every dollar makes a difference.

When wildfires swept through San Diego County last year, The Center became a gathering place for donations, supplies and information. When five men leaving the 2006 San Diego LGBT Pride Festival were attacked with baseball bats, hundreds of community members filled The Center, rallying against hate crimes and to hear from our public officials. Whenever there is a crisis affecting the San Diego GLBT community, The Center provides information, direction, and helps craft the community’s response.

Whether providing counseling for someone with a recent cancer diagnosis, offering confidential HIV tests, giving would-be parents lists of GLBT-friendly adoption and reproductive services agencies, finding homeless youth a place to live, providing computer classes for seniors, or simply directing couples to the California domestic partnership registry Web site, The Center is a resource for all community members. In the last year, The Center provided direct services to more than 25,000 people.

Every year, more than 800 people gather at The Center’s annual gala to celebrate community leaders, businesses and volunteers who have made positive, lasting impacts in San Diego. At Annual Women’s Night, we celebrate the accomplishments of outstanding LBT women in our community. Come Home for the Holidays brings us together to celebrate our blessings, and Nightmare on Normal Street allows us all to celebrate a fun holiday. For all the ups and downs in any given year, we still have a great deal to celebrate and when it’s time for a celebration, The Center is where we go.

In addition to all of this, The Center provides plenty of opportunities for social networking. Guys, Games & Grub brings together men ages 21 to 81 to meet new people, play board/card games and socialize. The Women’s Resource Center offers events ranging from Red Hot – a friendly nightclub atmosphere for women who gather to dance the night away – to book and film clubs. Family Matters brings GLBT families together for events, outings and workshops geared toward parents and their children, from infants to teens. The 50 and Better Club has a schedule packed with everything from art classes to meditation to monthly gatherings at local restaurants. The Hillcrest Youth Center keeps our youth busy with The Other Prom, ’zine workshops, game nights, movies, Youth Leadership Council and more.

The Center connects us to one another and to the broader community. It is our touchstone, the gathering place for us. It offers us help when we are in need and provides us a way to give back to others when we are not. It is where we go for information, where we gather to demand action from our public officials and where we celebrate as a community.

The Center is an intrinsic part of our community’s health and well-being. It keeps us informed, it keeps us involved and it keeps us connected. And it is our contributions that continue to make the work of The Center possible. To donate today, visit www.thecentersd.org/donate.php or contact Kevin Taylor at (619) 692-2077, ext. 200 or ktaylor@thecentersd.org.