Outfest has postponed its upcoming Legacy Awards ceremony to 2024 and pushed pause on all other programming for the near term, also initiating “leaves” for the majority of its staff, citing the severe impact the recent “financial climate” has had on the organization.
In a statement released on Thursday, the LGBTQIA+ org’s Board of Directors said that “the difficult decision” was made “to scale back our operations for the next several months,” given the fact that “like other nonprofit organizations, Outfest has been severely impacted by the financial climate of the media and entertainment industry.”
Their goal, going forward, is to step back and “humbly focus on creating a financial model that prioritizes programming that serves our community, a supportive environment for our staff, and ultimately protects the organization.” The hope, the Board stated, is to ensure “that Outfest endures and thrives for the next 40 years in its core mission to champion LGBTQIA+ storytellers and create opportunities.”
The Board went on to note that it “proudly supports” the right of staff to unionize, as they recently moved to do, “and has provided the staff with a letter recognizing their union, including having reached out to find a date to meet. It is our continued priority to honor the staff as we forge a productive path forward. We are optimistic this will provide the best position for the organization to ultimately ensure Outfest’s festival and programming are able to continue to support LGBTQIA+ filmmakers.”
News of financial turmoil at Outfest has emerged in recent weeks, as has word of layoffs affecting Director of Artist Development Martine McDonald, Senior Programming Coordinator Gabi Grossman, Development Coordinator Alex Gootter, Marketing Manager Hansen Bursic, Senior Programmer Daniel Crooke and more. As we told you first two weeks ago, the org’s Executive Director Damien S. Navarro has stepped back from his post for a 45-day leave of absence, the cause of which is unclear, with Zackery Alexander Stephens stepping up to serve as Acting Executive Director.
Sources familiar with Outfest’s situation had questioned the assertion that recent layoffs have had nothing to do with union activity within the organization, amidst ongoing tensions between the Board and the 12-person group of workers looking to be voluntarily recognized as Queer Filmworkers United. But Outfest is just one of numerous Hollywood organizations to institute layoffs in a year of double strikes, which comes on the heels of a pandemic that had already brought the town to its knees. Anonymous Content on Friday announced that it had cut 8% of staffers across divisions, joining a list of recently impacted companies that also includes Blumhouse Television, Amazon, Entertainment Partners, Buchwald, Max, and CAA.
Since its founding by UCLA students in 1982, Outfest has established itself as one of the leading organizations working to promote equality by creating, sharing and protecting queer and trans stories on the screen. The organization’s largest fundraiser, the Legacy Awards, was previously set to take place October 22 at NeueHouse in Hollywood, with Shirley MacLaine and Trace Lysette being feted.
Read the Outfest Board’s full statement below:
To ensure that Outfest endures and thrives for the next 40 years in its core mission to champion LGBTQIA+ storytellers and create opportunities, the Board of Directors has made the difficult decision to scale back our operations for the next several months. We will be postponing our Legacy Awards into 2024 and pausing our programming.
Like other nonprofit organizations, Outfest has been severely impacted by the financial climate of the media and entertainment industry. This means the organization will unfortunately also have to initiate leaves for the majority of our staff, while we humbly focus on creating a financial model that prioritizes programming that serves our community, a supportive environment for our staff, and ultimately protects the organization.
The Board proudly supports the staff’s right to unionize and has provided the staff with a letter recognizing their union, including having reached out to find a date to meet. It is our continued priority to honor the staff as we forge a productive path forward.
We are optimistic this will provide the best position for the organization to ultimately ensure Outfest’s festival and programming are able to continue to support LGBTQIA+ filmmakers.
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Source: DLine
