Discover Queer Futures - 2025 in review

Queer Futures entered this year with the same clarity that has guided the program since its founding: build spaces where LGBTQIA2S+ people - especially youth, trans and nonbinary folks, and rural community members - can feel safe, connected, and seen. What unfolded was a year marked by deeper community engagement, powerful youth leadership, statewide collaboration, and direct support for people navigating critical moments in their lives.

Even in a political climate increasingly hostile to queer and trans people, Queer Futures not only held steady, it became an anchor.

Impact This Year

In just two years, Queer Futures has supported more than 240 LGBTQIA2S+ community members across the Yampa Valley, with 2025 representing the program’s most significant year yet. Youth continue to rely heavily on the resource center: 73% of all participants this year were ages 24 or younger, and the majority identified as transgender, nonbinary, or gender-expansive. Notably, these populations are often underrepresented or underserved in traditional community spaces.

Access to affirming mental health support remained essential. Queer Futures made possible more than 200 low- or no-cost therapy sessions with an LGBTQIA2S+ therapist, bridging a gap that would otherwise leave many queer and trans people without local, identity-affirming care.

Beyond scheduled programming, Queer Futures walked alongside 21 LGBTQIA2S+ individuals experiencing crises, including housing instability, family rejection, mental health emergencies, and employment discrimination. And across workshops, drop-ins, support groups, affinity spaces, and social gatherings, more than 170 community members participated over 400 times throughout the year; a testament to both need and trust.

What We Accomplished This Year

This fall alone highlighted the program’s reach and creativity:

Queer Futures hosted affinity events to help transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people - and their families! - prepare for complicated holiday dynamics with connection and support. The Youth Leadership Committee committed to planning another Youth Leadership Summit, continuing a tradition of youth-led vision and voice.

Youth engagement extended far beyond Steamboat. In partnership with Partners for Youth, the team supported a Halloween event in Hayden, co-created by the Hayden Youth Council, a group with a large LGBTQ+ presence that effectively functions as the school’s GSA.

Queer Futures also helped launch Colorado’s first statewide rural LGBTQ+ coalition, a collaboration expected to grow and potentially serve as a national model for rural queer organizing.

On the national stage, staff continued shaping conversations around intimate partner violence (IPV). Presentations at the International Bisexual+ Research Conference led to a request for a publication by renowned activist Robin Ochs, while an ongoing partnership with the National LGBTQ+ Institute on IPV is producing a survivor-informed research brief and critical updates to national IPV data.

Meanwhile, daily community work continued to expand. Programs like Revolution is a Relay - an intergenerational affinity space for transgender, nonbinary, and genderqueer people - launched with meaningful participation and heartfelt feedback. Data gathered this year confirmed that Queer Futures is effectively reaching the communities it was built to serve: youth, trans and nonbinary people, and bisexual and pansexual individuals, who made up more than half of all participants.

How We Show Up for Our Community

Queer Futures remains one of the only affirming, identity-expansive, and accessible spaces for LGBTQIA2S+ people in Northwest Colorado. In a year when LGBTQIA2S+ people across the U.S. faced escalating political attacks, book bans, bathroom restrictions, and harmful rhetoric targeting queer and trans youth, the resource center became even more vital.

Participants consistently describe Queer Futures as a place where they feel safe to exhale — a community where they don’t have to translate themselves or brace for harm.

“I felt very accepted at Queer Futures. It’s a place where I can spend time with like-minded people and not have to worry about being harassed or dead-named.”
— Trans-identifying youth

“Walking into Queer Futures for the first time and being able to establish a community quickly was a godsend… I do not know what I would have done moving here and hardly knowing anyone.”
— Community member

These testimonies mirror the stories we see each week: a transgender teen who found confidence and connection through the Youth Leadership Committee, eventually thriving in college; a young adult escaping housing instability after family rejection; a teen discovering their voice after severe bullying; and a trans woman who recognized trafficking red flags because of a Queer Futures workshop.

The Road Ahead

Looking into next year, Queer Futures is preparing to deepen and expand:

• School-based outreach and youth partnership strategies, responding to national declines in youth participation

• The Youth Leadership Summit and other youth-led programming

• Statewide coalition-building to strengthen rural LGBTQ+ support systems

• Ongoing research and national partnerships around bisexual+ IPV

• Signature community events like Pride and Pow, in partnership with the City of Steamboat Springs

With increasing demand and shifting political realities, sustaining this work is both urgent and possible.

Funding Challenges & Why Your Support Matters

Across the country, LGBTQIA2S+ programs — especially those serving transgender youth — are experiencing unprecedented political and financial pressure. Funding streams are shrinking at the exact moment community needs are escalating. For rural communities like ours, the stakes are even higher: without sustained support, affirming spaces disappear entirely.

This year, a significant shift created additional challenges. The long-standing Pride Month Match, historically provided by the Out and Proud Yampa Valley Fund, is no longer available. Replacing this $25,000 gap is critical to maintaining summer programming, youth leadership initiatives, mental health access, and year-round community support.

Your gift ensures that queer and trans people — especially youth — continue to have a safe, welcoming, life-affirming home in the Yampa Valley. You make it possible for us to respond to crises, nurture leadership, build community, and create spaces where LGBTQIA2S+ people can imagine a future for themselves.

A Clear Ask for This Giving Season

Your support this season protects LGBTQIA2S+ youth and adults at a time when safety, belonging, and joy are increasingly under threat.
A gift today sustains therapy access, community programs, youth leadership development, trans-affirming spaces, and the everyday presence of a welcoming home for those who need it most.

Thank you for helping us build a stronger, safer, more vibrant future — together.