Author: Gary Hart

The organisers of Brighton Pride have broken all fundraising targets this year, raising over £100,000 for local LGBT/HIV organisations and good causes.

Legends are once again the largest contributors to this year event having donated £5,000 to sponsor the Cabaret Tent and raising £1,542.27 at the annual Sunday Pride Cabaret Fundraiser for the Rainbow Fund which included a personal donation of £1,000 from Tony Chapman, owner of Legends.

The Rainbow Fund, will receive £90,000 making the total donated by Brighton Pride to the fund over the past three years to more than £200,000. A further £10,000 will be donated to a new Community Impact Fund.

Pride 2015 cost over £1.2 Million to stage. Security costs alone topped £162,350 with additional costs of £24,000 for Police support. The security alert on the Pride parade added an extra £12,000 to overall costs.

The Pride Village Party cost £166,404 which included security costs of £45,141.60 and additional Police support costs of £12,000.

Contributions from venues benefitting from the Pride Village Party (this equates to £250 for small venues and £500 for large venues) raised £7,750 towards Pride’s Social Impact Fund which will benefit areas in the city inconvenienced by Pride.

Paul Kemp, Director of Brighton Pride CIC, said: “We would like to thank everyone who helped us raise this record amount to benefit local LGBT and HIV organisations providing effective front line services to the LGBT communities in Brighton & Hove.

“While Pride’s sole aim is to provide benefit to the community there is a misconception that Pride makes huge profits from the Pride weekend. All ticket revenue raised goes directly to the operational and running costs of producing the Pride Festival, Pride Community Parade, Pride Village Party and Pride’s community fundraising campaigns.

“We’d like to thank our volunteers, Pride sponsors, local businesses and our statutory partners that help us deliver Pride each year, however, Pride faces significant challenges over the next few years with anticipated extra costs for Cityclean, security and policing, and big decisions will need to be made on the type of Pride we’d like to see in future and how it’s funded.

“We are disappointed that more money has not be raised from collection tins towards the new Social Impact Fund and that so many shops and venues along the parade route and City declined to take collection tins, publicity posters and help with our fundraising, but we still managed to raise almost £10,000 towards this years fund which is a great start.

“We hope in future that more local businesses and corporate organisations that benefit from the bumper weekend of business Pride brings to the city will help to contribute to our fundraising effort rather than just reaping the financial rewards.”

As we go to print the only LGBT business that Pride could tell us had raised money towards Pride’s fundraising total other than Legends, was Charles Street who raised £1,000 from a door charge on the Thursday and Friday night of Pride week and Charles Street, The A-Bar and Andy Tull all made a donation of £50 each to help towards the cost of helping the LGBT Community Safety Forum make Pride accessible to disabled people.

Pride will publish a full breakdown of venue fundraising contributions in their annual review document later this year.