Deceit and Betrayal at IFGE
See Also This Editorial From 1998
©2011 by Dallas Denny
Deceit and Betrayal at The International Foundation for Gender Education
Twenty years ago the International Foundation for Gender Education was seen by many in the fledgling transgender community as the bright shining star of the universe. I didn’t share that opinion– nor did JoAnn Roberts, who penned an article in Renaissance News titled “The International Foundation for Gender Education: None of the Above”— but many community leaders were enthusiastically supportive.
With IRS 501(c)(3) educational status, an annual budget of $325,000, a headquarters in suburban Boston, a bookstore, a perfect-bound four-color magazine, an annual conference, and an endowment worth some $100,000, IFGE was a formidable entity in a day when every other community organization had an income of $25,000 or less. IFGE was clearly doing a lot of things right.
IFGE’s goal was to educate and provide support to professionals, transgendered and transsexual people, and the general public. This was accomplished with a variety of well-funded educational activities.
First and perhaps most important, IFGE held an annual conference at which all transgendered and transsexual people were welcome, and which allowed budding activists and educators and helping professionals from all around the world to meet one another face-to-face, often for the first time. Encounters in the lobbies, restaurants, and hallways led to any number of friendships, new organizations, publishing and research endeavors, and social justice projects, and played a huge role in making the transgender community what it is today.
Second, IFGE’s house journal Transgender Tapestry provided space for discussion of all things trans. In its perfect-bound pages ideas were floated and terminology discussed, helping both individuals and various subgroups define and consolidate their identities. Resource lists at the back of the magazine steered individuals to support groups, conferences, and helping professionals.
Third, the Congress of Transgender Organizations served a role in setting priorities for the community and allowed trans organizations of every description to work together on mutual projects and address mutual concerns. (The Congress ran out of momentum in the mid 1990s and died a slow death.)
Fourth, IFGE had an actual base of operations: a walk-in center in Waltham, Massachusetts with paid staff and volunteers. It was open every day from noon until late in the evening. Community members could walk in and change their lives. Those not in Boston could phone the IFGE help line and get advice and referrals.
Fifth, IFGE had a bookstore which mailed materials all over the world and was hauled around to almost every community conference.
And lastly, IFGE’s Winslow Street Fund functioned as an endowment that was designed to grow in perpetuity and fund various transgender-related projects and endeavors.
The Winslow Street Fund was named in honor a street in Provincetown, where, in 1989, Joni Chrissman met Merissa Sherrill Lynn for the first time. Out of that meeting the Fund was born. It was fully operational by 1990.
IFGE actively recruited donations for the Winslow Fund, promising the money would never be used for internal operations of IFGE itself (I heard Executive Director Merissa Sherrill Lynn say this in public). The Winslow Street Fund soon grew to about $100,000 and throughout the 1990s and the first decade of this century awarded small sums to community organizations to help fund worthy projects. A Board of Trustees, appointed by IFGE, oversaw the fund’s growth and selected award recipients.
IFGE Today
In 2006, all of IFGE’s services were intact. Today, only one survives— the Winslow Street Fund—and it is, I believe, in grave peril.
IFGE’s annual conference is dead. This year’s conference was cancelled and there will apparently be no conference in 2012. According to a source within IFGE, the cancellation occurred because of heavy financial losses at the 2010 conference.
The esteemed Transgender Tapestry is no longer being published. The last issue appears to have been #115, which appeared in 2009 with a fraction of the usual content.
The bookstore is still listed on IFGE’s dormant-since-2009 web page, but the content is severely dated and it no shows up at only a few community conferences. My IFGE source told me the bookstore is now at back-of-the-van / broom closet status—in other words, for all practical purposes dead.
Most recently, and sadly, IFGE’s long-term walk-in center in Waltham, Mass has been closed, presumably in favor of new and smaller offices in Washington, D.C. Well, probably not offices—think a desk or two in another nonprofit’s space.
That leaves the Winslow Street Fund. I have great concern for its well-being. I fear it is being used or might soon be used to fund IFGE’s internal operations—something IFGE swore to the community it would never do. IFGE has broken this promise at least twice before and I fear it has broken it or is about to break it once again. And if it happens, unlike the previous two occasions, there will be no way to pay the money back, for there is no longer any substantive cash flow. Go HERE to see my press release.
How it Happened
The advent of transgender political organizations and in particular the National Center for Transgender Equality severely impacted IFGE’s budget—primarily by siphoning off high-dollar donors who had previous kept the organization riding high. IFGE’s management had concerns about this as early as 1999, when editing and layout for Transgender Tapestry were outsourced, doing away with two full-time in-house paid positions. The bookstore manager position was also eliminated.
Clearly a change in finances requires organizational restructuring, but this does not seem to have occurred in any coherent way in this century. Instead, the organization was hijacked. Change was forced upon the organization by a single individual, who acted with relentless and deliberate malice to dismantle and destroy IFGE and its services. I watched it happen.
Shortly after IFGE Acting Director Denise Leclair was made Executive Director in 2004 or so, she began to slowly and systematically dismantle the organization. Her initial target was Board Chair Hawk Stone. She slyly undermined the board’s confidence in him, putting pressures on him that led to his resignation in July 2005.
Leclair next got rid of the editor of Transgender Tapestry. That happened to have been me. She did so by overriding me, forcing publication of an article solely for political purposes, to appease the bruised ego of a contributor whose solicited article I had rejected because she had web-published it on the same day she had submitted it to the magazine. Leclair also made it clear I would not be allowed to publish an editorial warning the community about the then-missing collection of the Rikki Swin Institute. And so rather than have my name on the masthead of a magazine that had lost its integrity, I resigned.
Leclair next went after IFGE’s board, forcing through an amendment that removed long-serving members Kristine James, Yvonne Cook-Riley, Alison Laing, and Abby Saypen. They were replaced by a new and naive board with little experience with the organization or knowledge of its history and politics.
The next obstacle was Trans Events USA, a team consisting of Kristine James and Alison Laing, who had been running IFGE’s conference for more than a decade. Leclair fired them in 2008 and took responsibility for the conference.
Having rid IFGE of its Board Chair, editor, and conference planning team, and having expelled long-term supporters from the board of directors, Leclair was free to do as she pleased with the organization. Suddenly IFGE’s focus was on politics rather than education, and suddenly the focus was on Washington, D.C. Leclair relocated the conference and then the corporate offices (if there actually are any) to D.C.
There was only one obstacle to Leclair’s complete control of IFGE: the trustees of the Winslow Street Fund. In April 2011 Board Chair Bree Hartlage told the trustees via e-mail they were fired, retroactively—in fact, they had been dismissed but not informed of that dismissal one year and eight months earlier!
A Trust at Risk
At Fantasia Fair 2011, two Winslow Street Fund trustees came to me—separately—to tell me they were concerned about the fund. They cited a lack of coherency at the IFGE offices and told me they feared Leclair and Hartlage would drain the fund, killing it. They asked me to inform the community. I said I would look into it.
In April one of those trustees told me she had just been told of her retroactive dismissal. Yesterday—24 June, 2011—I learned from an IFGE source that the IFGE Board of Directors held a special board meeting in August of 2009 for the purposes of exerting control over the Winslow Street Fund by dismissing its directors.
There can be only one reason for this—IFGE had its eyes on the monies in the fund and wanted to remove the last obstacle to obtaining them. And so I am doing as requested by Winslow trustees and letting the community know what is about to happen—or perhaps has already happened.
With the Winslow Street Fund bereft of trustees, with a gutted, secretly repurposed organization, and with a compliant board of directors, the Winslow monies are within Leclair’s easy grasp. My fear is she will plunder the fund, if she hasn’t already, using the monies to pay her salary and IFGE’s expenses. If that happens, I’m morally certain the money will never be recovered, for IFGE’s financial status is beyond bleak.
So here it is in a nutshell: Through mismanagement, and by deceit and betrayal, Denise Leclair has single-handedly dismantled the transgender community’s largest educational resource, turning a once large organization with a conference, a magazine, and a walk-in center into a desk in Washington D.C. and a pathetic hope that she will be allowed to play politics with the big girls and boys.
Now, with an imploded budget and with nothing else to plunder, Leclair has turned her eye to the monies in the Winslow Street Fund.
In a press release, I have called upon the IFGE Board and especially Leclair and Hartlage to inform the community about the disposition of the monies in the Winslow Street Fund and to immediately separate the fund from IFGE, establishing it as an entity of its own, overseen by a board of experienced and trusted community leaders.
Will that happen?
Of course it won’t.
I’m afraid the monies are already gone.
Call to Action
I call upon the IFGE Board of Directors, and specifically upon Executive Director Denise Leclair and Board Chair Bree Hartlage to inform the transgender community of the state of the Winslow Street Fund, and specifically to answer these questions via a press release:
- What is the balance in the Winslow Street Fund?
- When was the last Winslow grant to another organization?
- Has IFGE borrowed against the fund in this century?
- If so, was the money paid back? Was interest collected?
- What safeguards are in place to protect the fund?
I moreover call upon the Board to take immediate and decisive steps to fiscally and administratively separate the Winslow Street Fund from IFGE, making certain the Fund has a board made up of trusted and honest community members who will safeguard the Fund’s monies in perpetuity.
If IFGE has withdrawn money from the Winslow Street Fund, I urge the Board to do whatever is necessary to return all funds.
I ask others in the community to contact IFGE and ask these same questions. And please, make sure your donations go some place where they will be honored.
Postscript
The monies in the Winslow Street Fund were solicited in mailings and at IFGE conferences, where envelopes were left on tables at the final banquet. Hundreds or thousands of community members—myself included—stuffed tens or twenties into those envelopes. Many people wrote checks—repeatedly—for hundreds of dollars. And a few folks, perhaps even someone who will read this, gave thousands of dollars. The clear promise was the fund would be used for the betterment of the community—and so any raid into the fund for IFGE’s private good is a betrayal of trust—of yours, of mine, of the community’s. It will be a long time before there is another Winslow Street Fund.
What’s even more tragic is Leclair has destroyed all sorts of valuable educational services: the conference, Transgender Tapestry, the walk-in center, the bookstore, and the website.
There has been, of course, in late years an explosion of web-based educational materials, but they don’t have the warmth, the humanity of a hug to a newcomer at the walk-in center in Waltham. For that’s what IFGE was best at— making frightened transsexual and transgendered people feel comfortable, assuaging their fears, letting them know they had finally come home.
I wrote this article not as a journalist, but as a community advocate—one who unfortunately waited too long before speaking up. And so I made no attempt to contact Leclair or Hartlage for their comments. I merely wanted to get the word out. Too late, too little, possibly, but here it is.
I expect a certain amount of vehemence, character assassination and denial in response to this article, but I’m tough. I can take it. And I can back up what I’ve said. It’s substantively true.
WTFO, how did this happen to peaple I knew and respected?
I gave up a “fun” retirement career ({Producing wine festivals!!) when asked to take the position of the Executive Director of IFGE. It was a 12 to 15 hour a day plus 4 to 6 hours Saturday ans often Sunday afternoons!!!!!!!!
But I felt I was making a difference.
I’ve occasionally sought out information on IFGE over the past few years and found nthing but outdated articles and websites. Now I know what happened, and it’s a shame. IFGE opened the door to the better second-half of my life. In the pre-internet dark ages of the early 90s, where was someone expected to get information about gender issues? Porn shops, mostly, where one found contact magazines and Tapestry. Through Tapestry I read the stories and gained the courage to start my own transition; I found groups of others like me nearby in my backwoods part of the state, and found out how to get the help I needed. I attended lots of groups and some confereces, including a day trip to a Be-All in Pittsburgh with my attorney– I think in ’93 or ’94? — and met many of the movers in the community at the time. I felt I was in good company then. 25 years later, we can all count thousands of TG “friends” on line. But nothing can substitute for a face-to-face conversation over a cup of coffee lasting way into the wee hours of the night.
While I did not cry, my eyes were filled with tears as I read what appears to be the slow degradation of IFGE. I gave up a business I had started on my retirement,and which I loved a lot; producing wine events! But I did it so I could assume the leadership of IFGE. This was a means of getting T.G. person together and informing the world about transgender life! And I think we were doing a good job! I thank so many people who helped make many incredible things happen! WE DID DO some great things; we published a great magazine; we produced annual conferences in many different places; San Francisco, Toronto, Tennessee? I can’t remember…. but oh what a great times, what joys, I was seeing people who were able to come out and celebrate their trans-identity and meet others. We made nat’l t.v. several times. (The one in Chicago was seen by my Mother in Texas! oh my!) We visited Congress! It goes on -but we must not let our community fade away! We must still bond together by electronic means or by personal contact! We must also teach others about our selves to the public. (I found liberal churches tend to welcome us!) The world needs to know that T.G. persons are OK; just as black & white have shades in between,the same exist with gender! And there are variations in the way these differences occur! So we must CELEBRATE OUR VARIATIONS! Let the world know that trans people are every where and they are GOOD FOLKS! Viva la variations!!!!!!!!!
Farewell, I love our community!
WE ARE FAMILY! Alison Laing
p.s. What can I do to help I.F.G.E. , or our community? Do we still have one? RSVP
Terribly sad to see this. I met all the IFGE officers in the early 90s, at the conference in Houston, Tx, under the name Paula Graham. That conference proved to be the most liberating event of my life.
IFGE saved my life. Literally. I found them when I had nowhere else to turn. I flew to Boston and found them with open arms at their suburban headquarters. Yvonne gave me support and assured me there is absolutely nothing wrong with me. I looked forward to reading Tapestry every issue and attending their conferences. Because of IFGE I became strong and helped others. I found your article after looking them up like one looks up a good, old friend. How sad. The community has always had its politics and too much bickering over semantics. But this is just too much.
After having just read “Deceit & Betrayal at IFGE”…
It is a helpless and lamentable ending, I suppose!
We all prefer “Happy Endings” for sure…
However the survival of any organism’s golden rule is that “Anybody can only be as real/true as their money / means & wisdom can afford them to, can allow them to…”
And such applies to individuals on their own and collectively to people and their Businesses, their Companies, their Organisations.
Perhaps IFGE was lacking on money, means and wisdom all along.
Dallas Denny, Bravo! Very good article indeed!
Hello again Dallas! May 05, 2013
I returned to this sad memoriam page for IFGE after a year.
I have been “out” like forever and now I publish daily to
FACEBOOK. I live in the Levittown, Pa area which has always
been macho blue-collar and retirees; also has the heritage
of Fairless Hills..the closed US Steel Plant. I am retired
disabled and doing outreach by my very presence; tough to “pass” in this rough town…you know what I mean. Although
a legal woman on FACEBOOK with my Rutgers Alumni Friends, I feel the need to get our gender message out to the world.
It is a pleasant surprise to be accepted by my male college
fraternity friends. I do appear at Rutgers, in the flesh,
to resume old friendships..in a new body and name. Lots of
this pride has come from belonging to IFGE for over 12 years and having Yvonne Cook as a best friend (BGF). I would like to have Yvonne’s contact information again..she
would be so proud of me.
Just found this on 25 April 2012 when I tried to find the Tapestry Magazine after an awful long time since I last made contact. So very tragic; what a pity this sort of thing happens. Although in the UK I contributed to Tapestry (mainly cartoons) having made contact with dear Merissa, who was such fun to correspond with. So sad also that I lost contact with her some years back.
Very sad; much the same thing happened to the London TV/TS Group; the final co-ordinator disappeared and shut the place down. The assets disappeared as well.
Denise, what say you????
March 10th 2012
I am thunder struck with shock and sadness!
I feel that I just attended a wake and
funneral for IFGE…who I loved dearly
attending 12 annual conventions starting
in 1990.
I enjoyed the Prime and best years of
IFGE and I am personally grateful
to Yvonne Cook and Marissa who both
mothered me in 1990 as I emerged from
the closet called Renaissance in Philly.
Since 2006, my personal fortunes were
as bad as IFGE..including homelessness.
what can I do if anything?
Maryann Kirkland Gerety, legal woman
Sadly, I’m not sure anything CAN be done.
Dalles, go get em woman ! yes, make them account for every penny. this is just wrong.
Thanks, everyone, for your comments. I figured I was going to get my head taken off for writing this piece.
I’m glad there’s interest in re-inventing IFGE. I launched this magazine in a large part because Tapestry, IFGE’s flagship journal, seems to be dead. The conference was always great to go to, but there are so many now, so I suppose it’s not critical. The bookstore? Amazon does a better job, I think it’s heyday was over anyway– although it’ll be missed at conferences. I always bought a book or two from the IFGE table at the conferences I attended.
As a past recipient of the largess of the Winslow Street Trustees, I will really miss the Fund. I know it didn’t have all the money in the world, but I thought it was a sign of the maturity of the community that we had it. I’m outraged that it has apparently been siphoned away. I wish I’d posted this piece in time to rescue it!
The biggest loss, in my opinion, is the way IFGE made people feel as if they had finally come home. There was a warmth there that rescued many lost souls, made them realize they had finally found family.
It’s just sad. I’m just sad.
So very, very true:
“The biggest loss, in my opinion, is the way IFGE made people feel as if they had finally come home. There was a warmth there that rescued many lost souls, made them realize they had finally found family.”
Yvonne saved my life, and the lives of so many others, simply by being present when we lost souls first tip-toed through the door.
It may be true that the need for IFGE is lessened today, because of Facebook, Amazon and other innovations, not to mention the many changes for the better that our society has undergone.
But IFGE played a crucial role in making those societal changes happen in the first place. By the big things the organization did, of course, but also by the personal kindness, warmth and wisdom that Yvonne, Dan, Merissa and all the many others shared with us, one lost and frightened person at a time.
The seeming demise of IFGE is a cause for sadness, but the profound generosity of the people who were its heart and soul can never be erased.
Yvonne,,,yes,, yess! She was a soothing voice of reason to help me survive and MSL took me into her home/commune when Northeastern University refused to allow a transitioning professor to stay on the faculty.
I regret that I lost our fight against the religious bigots in black gowns…but soon it will change and just as they no longer admit to their racist history, these same religions will erase the history of suffering they put on us.
Keep fighting, loving, living!
Dallas, thank you for this long overdue assessment of IFGE’s past, present and future (?) and the impending fate of the WSF. As someone who has been associated with the community for thirty years, I have been concerned for some time that the mission of IFGE and of the Winslow Street Fund has been distorted, if not aborted. I, too, feel nostalgia for the Waltham center and how much it helped so many people. I am wondering why the red flags did not create a call to action long ago. I hope that, if the community wants to resuscitate these entities,voices can be raised and action can be taken.
I have known and worked alongside Dallas for too many years, to have any doubts about the accuracy of the history she presents here. I have had long term personal connections with one of the Founders of The Winslow Street Fund; I concur with Dallas on its founding, purpose, and now on its potential demise. I have recently expressed concerns to several people about it, and that there is no transparency about its current status, as there must be.
While I acknowledge that Denise LaClare is doing some “educational outreach” by posting trans related stories on FaceBook, there are many dozens of other people who are also posting trans-related stories and news items on FaceBook, who do not collect a paycheck for doing so.
Denise, and the IFGE offices and bookstore, may well be a victim of the internet, and Amazon, etc, as well as of much greater public knowledge and acceptance of TG/TS people. In short, IFGE likely has clearly outlived its usefulness, and its original charter, by failing to adjust to the times and technology, and by failing to professionally adjust its Charter.
It is painful to watch that once flagship organization die a slow, painful, and expensive death.
I would strongly suggest that it is time to stop the financial hemorrhage that IFGE has become, and to remove the Winslow Street Fund from IFGE’s purview, as quickly as possible. And that a full accounting of the monies in that FUND be made available, at minimum to those who contributed to it, ASAP.
As a former Chair of Winslow and a director of IFGE, I have been asking for information on the state of the Winslow Street Fund for years and have received no reply. I suspect that both organizations are insolvent and That Winslow’s funds have been used the pay the operating expenses of IFGE. IF this is so, it is a sad state of affairsand the community has lost the only Endowment dedicated to and funded by the Transgender Community.
I’m deeply concerned about the apparent dismantling of IFGE. Merissa and I came up with the general concept of the final organization at Fantasia fair in 1983 before and after THE Winslow Street meeting that year. I was out of the trans community for about 20 years and I’m trying to play some catch-up. As a reference point, I’m the founder of Crossroads in Detroit and a co-founder of Be-All.
—Grace Bacon
I am a former crossroads member and supporter.It played a very crucial role in my life and I was sad to see politics nagatively impact it. I am now looking for a way to leave substantial monies to an organization that truly serves the T community. I would like to converse with you about that . If you like I coould give you my phone number if such conversation would be of interest to you,
I would be happy to speak with you. You can send your number to me privately by selecting Contact Me from the Dallas tab on the Chrysalis page.
If there’s an IFGE revival in the works, I would love to be a part of it. I have no money, but I’m a workaholic.
Pamela, I don’t think there’s much of a chance of that happening– but there are organizations doing a great job that need all the person power they can get!