Ideas to Show Off Your Company's Pride

As a queer person working in the LGBTQ+ marketing space, the idea of Pride 365 has always meant a lot to me. I always look to push clients to make the LGBTQ+ community part of their outreach every day of the year. But coronavirus, BLM, pride parade cancellations, and other 2020 happenings have me thinking even more about how companies can truly embody Pride year round.

Surprise your employees with a box of Pride swag. If you’re unsure where to get one, I recommend contacting Brand|Pride - an LGBTQ+ owned promotional materials vendor who specializes in custom boxes of swag for companies. Just contact them, and they will help you with picking the right items and designs for your employees!

Sponsor an Event (Not in June)

Find a local LGBTQ+ event or group that is not your city’s Pride event and sponsor them. Pride is by far that most visible LGBTQ+ event, especially for non gay people, which leaves other organizations severely underfunded. These orgs include lesser know queer festivals or non-profit groups such as ones for trans people, people living with HIV, and queer youth to name a few. One other benefit of sponsoring a non-Pride related group is that it’s a much less saturated market. If you're looking for someplace to start, try checking with your local LGBTQ+ community center.

Start An Employee Resource Group

For medium and large sized businesses, starting an ERG dedicated to LGBTQ+ values and equality is a great way to show commitment to the community. It allows employees to meet in a safe space and advocate for policies both in and out of the company. For more information on starting an ERG, see HRC’s guide here. If your company is smaller and creating a whole group would not make much sense, consider seeing if one or more employees would want to help organize events for the LGBTQ+ community or spend some office hours volunteering for a community group.

Show Support On Social Media

Have queer people represented in your social media feed year round. Don’t necessarily make the post about queer issues by calling attention to it in the caption. Instead, depict queer people using your product like anyone else would. With that being said, there is also a lot of power that comes from posting about lifting up queer voices in months outside of June when this message isn’t on most brands radars. Try mixing up your posting and using both of these strategies.

Run a Pride Campaign

Come up with a Pride campaign and launch it during Pride off season. Release a Pride clothing line, change your logo to rainbow in January, speak up for equal protections in October. You will stick out if you run this messaging when others aren’t and the community will notice.

While adopting all of the above initiatives would be great, I know that it’s not realistic for everyone - at least not all at once. Try starting with one or two of the ideas and see how they work for you! If you’re looking for other ways to reach the LGBTQ+ community, download our guide below.