Summary.    As a dramatic spike in anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and legislation occurs in the United States and in other countries around the world, there’s a growing disconnect between well-meaning executives and their constituents. Just as LGBTQ+ employees and...

“This organization has long been an ally to the LGBTQ+ community,” an executive stated. “But lately, with the political climate the way it is, things that wouldn’t have been controversial to do or say even five years ago are getting a lot more pushback than they used to. How do we show we care?”

“This organization says it’s an ally to our community,” an employee said. “But lately, in the face of increasing hostility against LGBTQ+ people, we’re at our breaking point, and our leaders are saying nothing. Why won’t they defend us? Is it because they’ve never cared?”

As a DEI strategist, I hear these kinds of comments often from people at the organizations I work with. They’re not unusual. These sentiments represent the growing disconnect between well-meaning executives and LGBTQ+ employees, consumers, and communities as corporate involvement in LGBTQ+ causes has evolved. Consumers and workers are increasingly holding corporations to higher standards, making their patronage conditional on brands’ internal and external treatment of LGBTQ+ people aligning with their glossy marketing, and calling them out for rainbow-washing when they fail. At the same time, the dramatic spike in anti-LGBTQ+ social and political movements, the passage of regressive laws, hate speech, and acts of physical violence in the U.S. — alongside a related increase in right-wing extremism, authoritarianism, and anti-democratic beliefs around the world — has driven a new wave of campaigns targeting LGBTQ+ communities and the brands and employers that support them.

This combination of factors means that now, just as LGBTQ+ employees and communities, civil rights advocates, and socially conscious consumers are looking to employers to take action to support their previous pro-LGBTQ+ commitments, some employers are disavowing their LGBTQ+ partnerships, removing Pride-themed merchandise, and forbidding Pride decorations.

Leaders who worry that taking action to support LGBTQ+ communities is now “too risky” can take comfort in knowing that an overwhelming majority of consumers — 70%, according to a recent survey by GLAAD — expect them to take a clear stance on the side of civil rights, equity, and inclusion by supporting LGBTQ+ people. There are well-documented business benefits as well: A large majority of consumers, whether or not they are LGBTQ+ themselves, are more likely to purchase from pro-LGBTQ+ companies.

Despite these clear benefits, leaders may still feel unsure how to future-proof their commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion in a hostile social and political environment. The answer lies in rooting their actions in their organization’s purpose, value proposition, and values, to embed pro-LGBTQ+ support in their organization’s identity for the long run.

1. Connect LGBTQ+ inclusion to your customer base, operations, and values.

While most consumers now expect brands to take stances on social and political issues, it’s not as easy as making a throwaway social media post or a blatantly profit-motivated marketing campaign. A study looking into brand communication on social issues found that consumers find it most appropriate for brands to take a stance when it relates to the brand’s values, impacts the business, or impacts the brand’s employees or consumers.

Future-proofing LGBTQ+ inclusion will require proactive effort to understand the needs of your LGBTQ+ constituents, as well as your non-LGBTQ+ customers and clients’ perspective on LGBTQ+ issues. You’ll need to then understand how your operations impact LGBTQ+ communities to find the unique overlaps and opportunities to act. If you have LGBTQ+ customers, you might develop products that meet their needs. If you engage LGBTQ+ content creators or artists, you might tap into their talent for mutual benefit. If you have LGBTQ+ users or clients, you might solicit their feedback to develop a more inclusive product.

To lock these efforts in, you’ll need to reframe them in terms of your organization’s deeply held mission, purpose, and values. If your organization is deeply committed to dignity, you can frame LGBTQ+ inclusion as part and parcel to protecting the dignity of all your customers and employees. If your organization is deeply committed to bravery, you can frame LGBTQ+ inclusion as recognizing bravery against persecution and being brave enough yourselves as an organization to speak.

Put together, this means that organizations able to articulate the place of LGBTQ+ inclusion explicitly as it relates to their core purpose, value proposition, and values will build a strong foundation for their efforts that is less likely to waver when the political winds shift.

2. Collaboratively design initiatives that benefit LGBTQ+ communities.

As ubiquitous as brands’ Pride Month campaigns have become, simply putting a product into the hands of an LGBTQ+ influencer and having them read a script doesn’t particularly resonate with LGBTQ+ people. Done poorly, it can come across as a shallow publicity stunt to profit off the LGBTQ+ community without meaningfully benefiting it. In addition, when these initiatives appear to be disconnected from an organization’s purpose or value proposition, your non-LGBTQ+ constituents can feel like your social stances are arbitrary — opening the door for those who might be prejudiced against LGBTQ+ people to criticize your stance as “telling them what to think.” 

The problem you can realistically solve is not the range of beliefs held by consumers, employees, or other constituents, but rather the alignment of social cause, organizational purpose, and constituent needs. When initiatives or partnerships hit all three — say, a Pride Month initiative that was driven by customer demand and designed with customer input to address an unmet need related to the business’s core service — even if constituents don’t belong to the community directly centered, they are likely to support or at worst, feel neutral toward the initiative.

Opportunistic marketing ploys spitballed by a consultant during a 30-minute brainstorm are out. Designing successful initiatives in this vein requires deep collaboration with constituents both inside and outside the LGBTQ+ community to ensure that the initiative creates value for the target community, to align it with the organization’s purpose and identity, and to test if it will land in the intended way with audiences. The more constituents can drive and inform this process — whether through advisory boards, focus groups, or other participatory methods — the more likely that the initiatives will successfully meet an unmet need, create value, and resonate.

3. Take a purposeful stand and defend it.

Once you’ve homed in on the needs of the community and the opportunities available for your organization, take decisive and purposeful action with the full weight of your brand behind it. For every initiative and campaign you run, tell a story that illustrates and reinforces the connections between the social cause you’re championing, your organization’s purpose, and your constituent’s needs. The goal is for any person familiar with your brand to say, “Of course they would champion this cause.”

What if your pro-LGBTQ+ initiative is targeted by detractors, whether through a boycott, social media campaign, or even in-person intimidation? Running through the steps of aligning your inclusion initiatives with your organization’s purpose, value proposition, core values, and constituent needs isn’t meant to prevent critique, but instead to prepare for it. Preparing in this way gives leaders everything they need to stand strong in the face of critique, and respond: “We designed this initiative in conversation with our global community of customers and employees and are confident that not only does it celebrate Pride Month, but also embodies our deeply held convictions and furthers our core mission. We’re proud to be creating this impact and invite you to learn more about why this initiative matters to us. And while we invite respectful disagreement if you feel like we’ve missed the mark, we won’t tolerate harassment or violence against our team members or other customers.”

Of course, it’s possible for organizations to still get things wrong and retract their initiatives with an apology. But if they do, it’s because they made a mistake somewhere along the process of aligning with their purpose, value proposition, and values, understanding their constituents, and meeting their needs — not because they were pressured into it by threats of violence.

Use this approach as a litmus test. As the social landscape changes, the expectations facing brands, organizations, and leaders will change as well. Today’s “best practice” may very well be ineffective or even counterproductive 10, five, or even one year from now. Your DEI, ESG, and other social-issue-related initiatives should adapt with the times, but the strength of your commitment should not. To preserve and strengthen the trust your employees, customers, and other constituents place in your organization, use this purpose- and value-driven approach as a litmus test to create, revisit, and revise your initiatives. In action, all it takes is answering these questions:

• How does this issue impact our purpose for existing, and the constituents we serve?
• How might a stance on this issue strengthen our purpose for existing, and benefit our constituents?
• How do our constituents want us to act on this issue that centers our purpose and creates value for them?

One consequence of answering these questions is that your organization will not end up taking stances on every social issue, nor will it engage to the same degree on every cause or current event. It might even receive critique for its inaction in these cases. But when it does take a stance, it will be in strong alignment with its purpose, its value proposition, its values, and its employees, customers, and other constituents. When it acts, it will be with the full weight of its organizational identity and resources, without wavering even in the face of pushback.

This latest wave of anti-LGBTQ+ hostility is alarming, but if your organization holds steady to its purpose, operations, and the people it serves, you’ll hold true to your commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion every month out of the year.