LETTER FROM the CEO
Bernard Cherkasov Dear friends, Thank you so much for another very successful year pursuing full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Thanks to your support, our educational efforts reached unprecedented levels. We organized family picnics in religious congregations and educational forums in community centers; we engaged prospective allies at local festivals and geared up for the first marriage equality booth at the State Fair. We helped good employers become even better by adopting inclusive practices, such as gross-up benefits and gender transition guidelines. We held public and private actors accountable for full implementation of the civil union law. Throughout the year, we managed to extend our reach to every single county in the state. Our envied bipartisan advocacy team vigorously pursued nearly 30 state and federal bills, defeating some hateful measures and moving the equality marker forward. And our groundbreaking Chicago Appointments Project identified dozens of well-qualified Chicagoans for service in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Administration. So much still remains to be done. We will need you to continue writing letters, making telephone calls, registering voters, educating neighbors, and raising crucial dollars; an we will need to intensify those efforts the closer we are to our goals. As you leaf through the pages of this Annual Report, I hope you take pride in what your support has enabled us to accomplish. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Let’s keep moving forward!
Annual Report FYI2
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