Rev Dr. Brent Hawkes (Founder/ed) and Zak Bailey (former president).
On Thursday, September 12th RFF hosted our first Team Appreciation Event.
The event included speeches from Maria and Ron (Volunteer Team); Joe (President); Brent (Founder/ED); and Kevin Robertson (Special Guest).
It was announced, with regret, that Zak Bailey resigned as President of the Board because of work commitments. The new Board includes Joe Jamieson (President), Amy Hanen (Vice-President), and Brian Brenie (Treasurer).
Some of RFF’s accomplishments in the past year were noted, such as:
Amy Hanen (Vice-president) and Ron van Kempen (Volunteer team)
Bishop Kevin Robertson chats with guests
Our partnership with Egale at a symposium last November on confronting and diminishing religious-based homophobia, and continued partnership with them as one of their programs.
Attained Not-For-Profit status in June. We are currently working on getting Charitable Status.
We are working on MOUs with Egale and Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto.
We now have several teams in place: Board of Directors (which meets monthly), Volunteer Team, Communications and Technology Team, Finance Team and Strategic Partnerships Team. We are also recruiting for Fundraising and Research Teams.
Our website was launched in late June: www.rainbowfaithandfreedom.org
We received government funding (through Egale) for 8 weeks to hire a summer youth person, Lauren Morash, and her contract has been extended through RFF till the end of the year.
Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes has been appointed by the Board as the Executive Director.
Indeed, we have done a lot in the past year, and we expect to do the same in the year to come. We are hoping to receive Charitable Status sometime in 2020, and have some new partnerships that we are excited to announce in the next few months. We will keep you updated as we go forward and you will be among the first to receive news of the next significant steps.
As RFF is growing, we are also hoping to expand our volunteer base. In particular, we are looking for folks who have experience and interest in the following areas: accounting, fundraising, and research. If you are interested in volunteering with RFF, please reach out to Maria, our Volunteer Team Lead (mariagabriel@mail.com), or Lauren, our Administrative Coordinator (lmorash@egale.ca).
Thank you to everyone involved for their significant contributions to RFF. We hope to see you soon!