2025-2026 Annual Report:
Expanding our reach. Strengthening our stability.
We build community through joy and joy through community
A Letter from the Executive Director
At the end of our second year as a non-profit, I find myself writing my final message to you by myself… and loving that I’ll soon have company!
This year brought us beautiful growth and additional stability, and also an amazing connection with Ali Wicks-Lim and ROAR, with whom we will now be officially joining to form the Queer Joy and Justice Collaborative.
This partnership will allow our organization to continue serving the community we’ve established, make more connections, have a greater impact, and broaden our scope in ways that fit our mission and our strategic plan for growth.
This year, I’m proud that we were able to focus on growth and also on the people in our community. We made pot-lucks a weekly way for people to connect (and to have access to food), we had unprecedented numbers of folks register for chorus, and we expanded our programming to include Affirming Voices.
Most importantly, we served as a fiscal sponsor to the amazing ROAR organization, and through that collaboration, saw opportunities to support their work and expand ours. Through this new partnership, the work we do to build community will also lean on an expert community organizer leading advocacy work, and an expert safety organizer building bubbles around us without police. Our entire community will benefit from this partnership.
QJJC will be led both by me and by Ali Wicks-Lim, each of us leading distinct parts of the organization, and continuing to collaborate to bridge the two.
Since I’ll get to co-write next year’s letter to you, I’ll speak for myself this last time and share that I feel so lucky to have found this community with all of you, and I’m so excited for what’s to come!
About QJC
Mission
The Queer Joy Collaborative is dedicated to fostering a supportive and empowering environment for LGBTQ+ individuals in Northampton and surrounding communities, celebrating queer identities and promoting joy, well-being, and community connection.
“This choir has proven to me that there is still a space for queer people to make something that is more than the sum of their parts. In a world so focused on individuality, to participate in creation through a movement is an opportunity that should be afforded to everyone.”
Vision
Community
How we show up for each other, how we share personal resources when they often feel scarce, and how we protect our identities, our bodies, our spaces, our livelihoods, and each other - that’s all connected to finding joy.
When we can share space, regardless of the things that might otherwise divide us, and when we can find joy in that space, then we can strengthen our reserves to make it through whatever the outside world throws at us.
The Year in Numbers
Total Income: $68,647
Income
Total Expenses: $36,436
Expenses
Reserve: $30,000
QJC Programs 2025-26
Queer Joy Chorus
Building Community
The Queer Joy Chorus is the heart of QJC. It’s an adult community chorus where anyone who wants to sing has a place, whatever their experience. This year, 120 singers rehearsed weekly at Hartsbrook School and built a season of music around our theme, Songs of Joy and Resistance. In June, we took that music into the Valley with four performances in one month: Hampshire Pride, Holyoke Pride, Amherst Pride, and our own concert at Bombyx in Florence, where we shared the stage with our youth chorus.
Our sliding scale registration system means that no one is turned away for lack of funds, and as is evident from our registration income, the system worked beautifully. Folks who could pay extra did so, and folks who couldn’t did not have to do so.
For all the focus in this report on finances and stability, what keeps people returning to chorus is the community. For many members, Monday night rehearsal is where they find their people, their voice, and a belonging that’s hard to find anywhere else.
Rhythm & Radiance Kids’ Chorus
Creating Safe Spaces
Most kids in our youth chorus don’t know if they’re Queer in any way yet. The point of a youth chorus run by Queer people is simply to create a space where it doesn’t matter if they are or not. They can see role models in our adult chorus who encompass the full spectrum of gender expression, and they hear us talk about inclusion and safe spaces. Where they end up on that spectrum is not our concern, but that they know there’s a place for them wherever they end up is our mission.
In youth chorus, our focus is on following the kids’ creative inspiration. They choose the music, change the lyrics (sometimes), create dances and skits to help tell their story, and focus on the things that make being in a group fun (whatever that is for that particular group).
Our youth chorus is a place for kids to find joy in creativity and in being themselves. In FY24, we had 17 unique students participate (some for only one semester, and some for both semesters), 7 received some financial assistance, and all 17 had an amazing idea they contributed to our show.
ROAR
We Protect Us
Rainbow Organizing And Response (ROAR) uses creative strategies and the principles of non-engagement to provide a visible presence at public events, where we create a welcoming and celebratory environment while shielding people from any hate present.
This fiscal year, ROAR actively participated in 72 actions, including PRIDE events; stand-outs; resistance rallies; drag story hours; back to school events; school assemblies; and school committee meetings; Queer Joy Chorus rehearsals; and concerts from the Berkshires to the Pioneer Valley.
While actively participating in events, ROAR is building community with over 152 individuals representing the four counties. At each event there have been anywhere from 7 to 48 volunteers joining the action/event.
Although ROAR has not been able to track exact attendance numbers at events, ROAR’s presence has been noted across the counties. To offer just a sampling of the number of people touched by ROAR’s presence: No Kings resistance events have been estimated at 7,000, local PRIDE marches estimated from hundreds to over 10,000, standouts at rush hour are seen by hundreds if not thousands of drivers; drag story hours may be visited by 30 families, and the Queer Joy Chorus features more than 100 members.
Affirming Voices
Technique for Transition
Affirming Voices is a group class led by a voice teacher and a speech-language pathologist to help students better understand their voices, and learn ways to speak and sing that feel more aligned with their identities.
Our capacity to run this program was linked to the meaningful financial support we received during FY25 from donations and registrations.
Affirming Voices is not about telling folks how to make their voices sound like they “should.” It’s about giving them the tools to learn how to make their voices sound more in alignment with what they want them to sound like.
One of our first students said, “Affirming Voices gave me practical skills and knowledge that empowered me both with singing and speaking. Just getting a clearer sense of the path toward my goals was great, to know that they are in reach and actually something that I could achieve. It was also really great to connect with others going through similar (and different!) journeys with their voices, and to build community through discussing the many ways that our voices impact our gendered experiences in the world.”
Our second cohort begins in late October, 2026, and our plan is to run the six-week course once per semester.
Why Does This Work Matter?
Joy and Community Keep Us Alive
The Queer Joy Collaborative offers programs that bring people together, but that’s just the start. Through our sliding scale, our flat pay structure, and our growing focus on advocacy, we are building an infrastructure to help our community members thrive within our programs and also outside of them.
Our focus on Joy sometimes feels like an uphill battle in this political climate, but it’s the most essential ingredient of our community. The work we do builds our capacity to find moments of joy, relief, and connection, no matter what’s happening in the wider world. The connections we make through vulnerability and risk (because creativity requires both) bond us with each other and everyone we perform for.
Everyone who attends or supports our programs is part of the web of support and connection we’re weaving to hold up every member of this community.
“Affirming Voices gave me practical skills and knowledge that empowered me both with singing and speaking.”
“Amid growing division and injustice, I felt compelled to help. Volunteering with ROAR has allowed me to make a difference in my community while rekindling my hope in humanity.”
How QJC Reached Community in FY25
Our work this year touched participants in 8 counties across Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut.
ROAR volunteers were present at 72 actions this year including some smaller events supporting youth, and some major Pride festivals and protests
Our Chorus added a weekly pot luck this year to help build community and to make sure everyone had access to food (and plenty to take home!)
ROAR and Chorus volunteers welcomed students and sang at a local middle school to increase visibility during a time where Queer students were at increased risk
What’s Next?
We are thrilled to share that the Queer Joy Collaborative (QJC) and Rainbow Organizing and Response (ROAR) are merging to form the Queer Joy and Justice Collaborative (QJJC).
Our two organizations have been growing alongside each other for the past year. ROAR began its journey in 2023, and came into the QJC family as a fiscal sponsee last fall. Over the past year we built programs together, showed up for each other's events, shared volunteers and values, and discovered over and over again that our work points toward the same horizon: a world where LGBTQIA+ people can live, organize, create, and thrive.
As our communities have grown closer and our collaboration has deepened, merging felt less like a decision and more like an inevitability — a joyful, deliberate step toward something bigger than any of us could build alone.
Queer Joy and Justice Collaborative
The Queer Joy and Justice Collaborative will carry forward everything you love about both organizations, now unified under one umbrella (pun intended):
Our Artistic/Creative arm — led by Mara Levi — continues the choral and arts programming that has been the heart of QJC and builds upon it with new gender-inclusive programming.
Our Action/Advocacy arm — led by Ali Wicks-Lim — continues ROAR's organizing and community advocacy work. ROAR’s work will expand to include both the traditional event-based shielding work, and other community organizing efforts advocating for safe schools, trans health care and community care models for public safety.
Our hope is that members of QJJC will access the opportunities within the organization in the ways that feel right to them. Some may participate in a single program while others may bridge multiple programs or leadership opportunities. Every member is valued and welcomed as part of the QJJC community.
Mara and Ali will serve as Co-Executive Directors, leading the organization together with equal authority and a shared commitment to our community.
We believe that joy and justice are not separate things — they strengthen each other. When we sing together, we build the resilience to fight together. When we organize together, we create the conditions for more joy. The Queer Joy and Justice Collaborative is built on those beliefs.
If you have read this far, you are part of what got us to here. QJC had an amazing beginning thanks to your enthusiasm, support, participation, or just your love. We are a community of friends looking to bring joy to everyone around us.
Thanks for making space for Queer Joy in your life.
Thanks for being unapologetically you.
It’s not always easy, but a little community and a little joy can help make it possible.