Charity Guide

Get involved with these LGBTQ charities proudly impacting San Antonio

San Antonio Aids Foundation has proudly been servicing San Antonio since 1986.

Courtesy of San Antonio Aids Foundation Charity

Culturally rich and beautifully diverse, San Antonio boasts a blossoming LGBTQ community that includes a growing number of small businesses, organizations, and nonprofits.

From SA Pride "Bigger Than Texas" Festival and Parade to Fiesta San Antonio's many queer-centered events, Alamo City's LGBTQ and allied folks energetically celebrate queer identities while advocating for the rights and protections of all gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning individuals in the community. Here's a look that the amazing organizations that make it easy to get involved.

Allgo
Mission: For over 30 years, allgo has worked to create and sustain queer people of color activists, groups, organizations, and allies through artistic expression, promoting wellness, and grassroots organizing. Allgo celebrates and nurtures vibrant queer people of color communities in Texas and beyond by supporting artists and artistic expression; promoting health within a wellness model; and mobilizing and building coalitions among groups marginalized by race/ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation and identity in order to enact change.
Membership: Allgo members pledge either a monthly or annual donation and/or a regular in-kind donation and/or regular volunteer work. Contact allgo to sign up to become a member.
Get involved: Donate or learn how to volunteer here. For more information, email allgo@allgo.org.
Big event:Statewide Queer People Of Color Activist Summit

Equality Texas Foundation
Mission: The Equality Texas Foundation works to secure full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Texans through education, community organizing, and collaboration.
Get involved: Donate here and volunteer here. You can also pledge to fight back against hate crimes, new laws that grant a license to discriminate, efforts to undermine marriage equality, and blocking access to healthcare here.

Fiesta Youth
Mission: Fiesta Youth serves LGBTQ teens, young adults, and their allies in San Antonio. Their mission is to empower youth to build a future where all people are accepted and loved as they are. In providing these services and support, San Antonio's youth may become successful and contributing members of the community.
Get involved: Learn how to volunteer here or make a donation here.
Big event:LGBTQ Teen Prom

San Antonio AIDS Foundation
Mission: Since 1986, the San Antonio AIDS Foundation has been providing compassionate care to low-income San Antonians living with HIV and AIDS. The organization provides resource and benefit assistance, mental health screening and counseling, medical care, housing, and a year-round hot meal program. SAAF also provides STD and HIV testing, as well as HIV prevention education to area public schools, colleges, and universities.
Get involved: Learn how to volunteer here. Those interested in getting involved are encouraged to meet with SAFF's volunteer coordinator Tuesdays or Thursdays from 9 am-3 pm or by emailing volunteer@sanantonioaids.org. Sign up here give a sustaining monthly donation, or uncover the many ways to give to SAAF including stocks, corporate matching, and more.
Big event: The Webb Party

Thrive Youth Center
Mission: The mission of Thrive Youth Center is to provide a safe and supportive center for homeless LGBTQ youth so they may become productive, skilled, educated, and successful adults with the opportunity to achieve their dreams. In addition to providing safe and secure housing, Thrive Youth Center provides counseling, life skills classes, and other resources to help youth develop self-sufficiency, secure and maintain employment, pursue educational goals, and secure and maintain stable housing.
Get involved: Learn how to volunteer here. For a list of donations items that Thrive is currently accepting, go here.
Big event:Thrive Youth Center's Annual Fundraiser

charity charity-guide

SPARE ART

North San Antonio gets crafty with new creative supplies shop

Photo by Ismael Rodriguez.

Local nonprofit Spare Parts recently opened its brick-and-mortar center for creative reuse.

One local nonprofit organization has spent years getting environmental accountability and community education down to a fine art. And now it’s getting crafty with a new brick-and-mortar shop in North San Antonio aimed to help locals to go green.

Spare Parts was founded in 2010 by executive director and longtime arts educator Mary Elizabeth Cantú to provide a creative spark for area students and schools lacking arts funding and resources. Through a variety of educational programs, public art exhibitions, events, and the organization’s traveling Mini Art Museum, Spare Parts has enlightened thousands of students and San Antonians, all while fostering reuse practices and sustainability, a key tenet of the nonprofit.

Spare Parts’ latest endeavor is another artistic triumph. Its new center for creative reuse, located at 13451 Wetmore Rd., is nothing less than a crafter’s delight. The shop features an impressive array of “pre-loved” and price-reduced artsy merchandise — from paint supplies and paper crafts to sewing items, beading and jewelry, school and office supplies, vintage gadgets, and crafting kits — all of which has been rescued from area landfills.

Cantú notes that proceeds from the new Spare Parts’ shop will enable the organization to further increase creative and educational experiences for San Antonio students and families. But even more so, she hopes the shop will help locals embrace the concept that one person’s trash can be another’s artistic treasure.

“There really isn’t any more room in the world for this stuff. Buying pre-loved at places like Spare Parts or other stores is a way to reduce the amount of things [people] feel that they need,” Cantú said in a recent interview with the San Antonio Sentinel. “We’re challenging people to rethink things around them, buy pre-loved, and find a way to be creative in their lives.”

In the time of COVID-19, however, getting the creative juices flowing isn’t as simple as popping into the Spare Parts shop. Though the center for creative reuse is open, the store is currently offering only weekend curbside pickup of items ordered through its website. But crafters shouldn’t despair, as Spare Parts is offering private in-person shopping experiences in the new year, with the first planned for January 16 and 17.

jewelry shopping kids charity openings sustainability