The Center brings together community leaders

The Center brings together community leaders

The Center is spearheading an attempt to streamline Orlando’s LGBT-focused organizations and activists in an effort to reduce redundancy and increase collaboration. The first step was a roundtable, said Michael Vance, executive director of The Center.

“It went very well,” he said. “We had about 15 organizations represented, and they’re all very excited about the future of the roundtable.”

They simply introduced and listed each organization’s mission and current projects.

“I think everybody at the table learned about at least one other organization that was there that they didn’t know existed in the community,” Vance said. “One of the purposes of doing this is so we’re all aware of what all we’re doing, which will make us all stronger and ultimately, our community stronger.”

He said one of the firm goals of the initial roundtable was to make sure they weren’t creating any extra work for the leaders of those existing organizations. They did create a central community calendar—hosted at GLBCC.org—to encourage organizations to increase communication about their projects and events.

“If when planning an event, we can make sure it doesn’t conflict with another organization’s major fundraiser, that will make everybody’s events more successful,” he said.

Vance said another goal is to continue with increased communication between organizations.

“I think we tend to get so involved in what we’re doing because we’re all so busy making our own organizations successful that we sometimes don’t realize there is another organization doing great work out there,” he said.

The next roundtable is scheduled for Nov. 7, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at The Center.

“It’s the same agenda, and it’s going to stay that way so we don’t create more work,” said Vance. “This is just a discussion of what we’re doing and what’s planned, plus a chance to meet other community groups and find out what they’re doing.”

He said he hopes more leaders, especially those with larger organizations, will make it to the next discussion.

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