Getting people together to celebrate, mourn, pay tribute and experience joy: It’s all part of queer culture, and it’s all part of food culture.

So, how can folks connect the two? The Queer Food Foundation (QFF) is a place to start.

In July 2020, Vanessa Parish, Jona Beliu, Mavis-Jay Sanders and Gabrielle Lenart founded QFF as a mutual aid resource. Though lavish and joyful dinner parties have been a known part of queer history, several studies have found that LGBTQ+ Americans today experience food insecurities at significantly higher rates than non-LGBTQ+ folks. Feeding America says it’s partially due to increased poverty rates within the community, which make its members twice as likely as others to face hunger.

What began with these four industry professionals — majority based in New York — wanting to use their culinary prowess to address the inequity has since grown into a not-for-profit hub with a 25-person board of directors. (Sanders and Beliu are no longer actively involved with the foundation and Lenart currently serves as an advisor.)

“We started during the George Floyd movement,” Parish, now QFF’s executive director, tells TODAY.com, adding that their origin story is something the team takes a great deal of pride in.

Then, in 2021, the foundation started to form a board of directors, which Parish says is when things really took off. “We started making project plans,” she explains, citing the Queer Food Directory as one of the first major endeavors. The directory is an online database for LGBTQ+ folks in and around the food industry to find talent, restaurants and more within the community.

“People want to know what businesses to patron, who to hire,” she says, adding that connecting them is “the fun part” of what they do.

Parish says the idea came about when the team realized they were learning about so many people in the industry though the early days of the foundation and learning that many of them didn’t know each other. They thought, “Let’s make somewhere people can find each other.”

The Queer Food Fund was their next big project. “Every Black History Month, we do a mutual aid project that services Black queer and trans folks,” Parish says, adding that the money goes directly “into their pockets.”

In its first three years, the fund raised and distributed around $45,000, with $10,000 raised in 2021 and $20,000 raised in 2023. Each recipient gets $100. This year, the fund raised significantly less — $5,000, according to Parish — but was still able to reach 50 people. Parish believes the current political climate and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has played a part.

“Additionally, companies are firing their DEI staff left and right,” Parish says. “The DEI staff that would typically find us and send support to our causes.”

She also says many of the smaller LGBTQ+- and food-based organizations that have donated in the past closed this year due to lack of funding. And when it comes to individual donors, their wallets have been hit, too.

“With inflation, mutual aid is difficult,” Parish explains via text. “The simple answer is because the folks that typically send mutual aid (middle class) can barely afford groceries themselves now.”

Still, mutual aid remains a large focus for QFF.

“I think big nonprofits forget smaller deeds,” Parish continues. “We didn’t want to get rid of that — our grassroots of being a mutual aid.”

James Beard Award-winning chef and restaurateur Telly Justice says mutual aid is an “essential” part of queer community.

The co-owner of New York City fine-dining restaurant HAGS incorporated pay-what-you-can Sundays into the business plan, adding it felt “natural” for the team to offer their skills to their community and East Village neighborhood in an accessible way.

“Mutual aid is a natural impulse to look out for, and care for the folks around you knowing full well that if and when you need a helping hand, aid will be available to you also,” Justice tells TODAY.com via text.

While small-scale fundraising is the backbone of QFF, Parish says corporate consulting — “we are very intentional on businesses and corporations we align ourselves with” — and community involvement have become equal parts of the mission.

The organization has partnered with the James Beard Foundation to host virtual education panels for niche groups within the industry like LGBTQ+ cookbook writers, food photographers and more. For panels, Parish says she tries to feature people from various U.S. regions (Midwest, South, Northwest) — “that way, we’re getting a nice perspective from different places.”

They’re also working on expanding into food policy, collaborating with agriculture organizations like Black Farmer Fund. “We’re meeting other organizations with aligned goals and missions, and we are kind of joining forces,” Parish says, adding that they would rather help organizations with programming already in place than create their own.

“It’s more of, ‘How can we support your programming and integrate queer folks that need that support in that programming as well? How can we find statistics to add onto your statistics?’” she explains.

Working with community fridges and soup kitchens, and helping restaurants finds donation centers for their food surplus are all part of the foundation’s mission, too. They’ve also helped to spread the word about community events and aid opportunities, like Queer Soup Night, where people gather, pay what they can and enjoy different soups from chefs in cities around the country.

If an organization or business is looking to get into mutual aid, it’s not as intimidating as it may seem, according to Parish.

“Start small,” she says. “I think when people hear ‘mutual aid’ and ‘donation,’ they think a lot of money because they see these big nonprofits and they’re making announcements like, ‘We raised $5 million with our fundraiser.’” She wants folks to understand that those numbers take time, and that they should be thinking small instead. “That’s kind of where the community comes in.”

Parish calls HAGS’s Sunday program a form of mutual aid, and says other small businesses can use it as an example of how to operate in the space. “I think people have a hard time recognizing where their place in that community giving can be, but it can be something just as simple as what works in your model,” she says. For small businesses that “don’t have the opportunity to just donate money all the time,” figuring out how they can help is more important than they think.

The most important part of mutual aid, Parish says, is a concept she only recently learned.

QFF board member and mutual aid activist Superior Murphy has provided insight on the unspoken protocol in the space. When it comes to giving, “Don’t ask,” Parish explains what she learned from Murphy. “They say they need $100, they need $100. That’s it.”

For Parish and her team, leaving demographic and identity information out of the process for mutual aid distribution was an adjustment. So for the annual Black History Month fundraiser, they don’t ask for proof of race, gender or whether the money will be used specifically on food that month.

“Most people that have food insecurity, they have insecurities other places too,” Parish explains. “So maybe this week they may not need the hundred dollars to have groceries, but they may need $100 to put somewhere else because they bought groceries.”

When the QFF team would get asked the age-old question “Where do you see yourselves in five years?” their answer used to be: “We would like to not have to exist.” But now, she sees the longterm value in the work and how it can shift forms. “I would like to exist, but more as just a supplement — not as a necessary resource.”

Today, QFF board members are spread out across the U.S.

“Everyone’s got a different need,” she says. In New York City, for example, she says it’s not so much a question of finding the LGBTQ+ folks in the industry — “everyone knows where we are” — instead, it’s a question of how to keep their support systems going. “Whereas in the South, they don’t know each other,” Parish continues. “A lot of them aren’t even out. A lot of places are friendly but they’re not supportive,” so it’s about creating that ecosystem and getting them started.

How can folks get involved with QFF?

Parish says volunteering and making small donations are great places to start, but it’s spreading the word that makes an even bigger impact.

“Tell people that we’re here, that we’re available for them,” she says. “That mutual aid isn’t coming out of thin air. It’s coming because people are talking about it and they’re raising awareness for it.” Having people “utilize the power of social media is exceptionally helpful.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com