Donors Flock to Anti-Bullying Groups After Reports of Suicides

Bullying, the bane of children, may have a lamentably long history. But in the wake of several publicized suicides related to bullying, a growing number of nonprofits, corporate grant makers, and foundations are working to end the pain.

Two high-profile anti-bullying startups formed by the singer Lady Gaga and Dan Savage, the author and newspaper columnist, have caused many established charities and grant makers to take notice.

Also drawing attention to the issue is new research that shows bullying is connected to other concerns of charities and foundations. For example, bullying causes many kids to quit school.

“In the last few years, there’s been an explosion over an issue that had been at a slow burn for ages,” says Eliza Byard, executive director of the 22-year-old Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, known as GLSEN.

Online Media

Private foundations are beginning to award sizable grants to anti-bullying efforts, such as Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation.

The charity has benefited not only from the star’s $1.2-million initial gift in February but also from a $1-million commitment from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Half of that grant will go toward supporting online efforts to get young people involved in civic life and to combat harassment among them. The organization’s emphasis on digital media and how to reach and teach youths was pivotal in inspiring that grant, according to MacArthur officials.

Online media are both the key to Born This Way’s strategy and the root of the problem it seeks to combat, suggests Susan M. Swearer, chair of the group’s research advisory board. Kids are often threatened or ridiculed by anonymous tormentors on blogs and social media.

“We have to reach kids not just at school but online, where bullying can be 24/7,” Ms. Swearer says. “The predominant message that bullied kids hear online is everyone has seen an embarrassing video or heard about you. It can be devastating to them.”

1 in 4 Kids Bullied

Those who run anti-bullying campaigns say the need for programs like theirs remains as pressing as ever. One in four children report they have been bullied, the U.S. Justice Department says, and nearly half say they have been mistreated for a year or more.

The percentages are much higher for young people who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, commonly known as LGBT. Kids are declaring their sexual orientation earlier these days, and experts believe that is giving bullies more opportunity.

For some groups that serve gay youngsters, focusing on concerns about bullying is one way to get renewed attention from foundations.

Although the Ford Foundation and a few other large grant makers have long donated to gay causes, foundation giving over all to LGBT organizations has remained flat, at about $100-million per year.

That could change as organizations promote programs that help youngsters fend off bullying and other challenges, says Tim Sweeney, president of the Gill Foundation, one of the leading makers of grants to gay groups. “It’s a really, really exciting time,” he says. “We’re getting responses from mainstream foundations now.”

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is among the established grant makers supporting gay-focused organizations as a way to reach America’s troubled youths.

“We’re not entering the bullying and LGBT field, but we recognize that many of the people in those categories fit our definition of vulnerable people,” says Jane Lowe, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation official who oversees grants for groups that work with vulnerable people

Among the foundation’s recent grants was $500,000 to the Family Acceptance Project, a research group in San Francisco that develops ways to encourage the parents of LGBT children, many of them bullied at school and in their neighborhoods, to keep them from fleeing their homes. LGBT young people make up an estimated 40 percent of all homeless youths.

More Donations

Financial support to fight bullying is still building and has probably not yet reached critical mass, says Ms. Byard of GLSEN. And many of the newer organizations may not be in the best position to get those grants, she cautions.

“There are more campaigns than programs right now,” she says. “Those campaigns are extremely helpful to getting attention for bullying. But it’s not the same as having sustained programs.”

Her organization, which has grown from an annual budget of about $3-million a decade ago to $7-million now, has won gifts from corporations, including the Gap, IBM, and Wells Fargo.

Those “corporate pioneers,” as Ms. Byard describes them, have helped the group pay for anti-homophobic public-service announcements aimed at youths, some co-sponsored by the National Basketball Association, that have run in print and on radio and television.

But as GLSEN and other charities wait for more private foundations to step up, gifts from individuals are on the rise, Ms. Byard says. Donors, often the parents of children who have been harassed while in school, have responded by supporting programs designed to make schools safer.

One of them, Mary Howard, remembers how her gay son and what she calls her “artsy, geeky daughter” suffered at the hands of bullies. Now 70, Ms. Howard donates $1,200 a year to GLSEN and helped lead a fundraising event in June near her home in Lewes, Del., that garnered $10,000 for the group.

Last year, she donated more than $2,000 so that all 129 public schools in Delaware would have copies of GLSEN’s “Safe Space” packets—instructional materials for schools on ways to counter bullies, such as stickers that teachers can put on their doors to announce that they will protect harassed students.

“It’s wonderful that there’s more attention being paid to this issue,” says Ms. Howard. “My kids ended up being successful adults, but a lot of kids who are bullied are affected throughout their lives.”

Getting Better

Leaders of the newest organizations say they have also had more luck seeking money from individuals than from foundations.

The It Gets Better Project, started by Mr. Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, after the September 2010 suicide of a gay teenager, gets thousands of small donations, most of them less than $100, that make up most of its $500,000 annual budget.

The It Gets Better campaign was designed to let gay youths know that life improves after they get through the bullying that too often accompanies adolescence.

Started with first-person narratives by Mr. Savage and Mr. Miller that were uploaded to YouTube, the campaign now includes more than 50,000 videos, including ones by President Obama and dozens of celebrities. The videos have been watched a total of 50 million times. Many donors give spontaneously after being moved by the messages in them, says Seth D. Levy, a board member of the campaign.

Such outpourings aren’t uncommon among anti-bullying groups.

After a YouTube video of Karen Klein, a 68-year-old bus monitor in upstate New York who was verbally harassed by students, was viewed more than 2 million times this year, Ms. Klein received more than $700,000 in gifts from more than 30,000 people. She started the Karen Klein Anti-Bullying Foundation, with $100,000 from those gifts (and announced her retirement from her bus-monitor job).

The group will work to increase anti-bullying counseling in schools and support other organizations, according to its Web site.

But for anti-bullying groups to grow, they need more reliable—and larger—sources of support. The It Gets Better Project plans to expand its video offerings to include full-fledged programs that protect against discrimination of gays, take advantage of its digital acumen to help other anti-bullying organizations, and expand the campaign internationally.

“We’ve decided to make this a project and not just a flash-in-the-pan media campaign,” says Mr. Levy.

He says the group is now seeking more foundation support and bigger gifts from individual donors. “The success we’ve had has surprised us. We’ve been playing catch-up ever since.”

Those who have kept a close eye on the success of new anti-bullying campaigns hope that the issue has staying power, particularly with supporters.

“I’d hate to see this become the flavor of the month,” says Roger Doughty, chief executive of the Horizons Foundation. “I’d love to see foundation support be there for the long term.”