One of the LGBTQ movement’s most impactful advocates has rejoined the struggle for equality under the law for sexual minorities. Kate Kendell became the next CEO of the Gill Foundation on May 7, marrying her decades of experience on the front lines of the LGBTQ struggle with the nearly $200 million bankroll of one of the LGBTQ communities’ leading and most influential funders, founded by software entrepreneur and top LGBTQ philanthropist Tim Gill. Gill’s husband, former U.S. Ambassador Scott Miller, and Gill currently serve as co-chairs of the board.
During Kendell’s 23 years with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, she was one of the key players behind a wide array of legal and policy victories for LGBTQ Americans including marriage equality, nondiscrimination protections, and equality under the law for transgender people. After leaving NCLR in 2018, Kendell worked briefly as a campaign manager for Take Back the Court and as the interim chief legal officer for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
She comes to Gill from The California Endowment, which she has served as chief of staff since 2021. Kendell spoke to Inside Philanthropy about her decision to switch gears from advocacy to philanthropy, her sense of urgency in rejoining the LGBTQ movement as her legacy is attacked, and what might be next for Gill.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What originally inspired you to change career gears from advocacy to philanthropy?
I felt like we’d won. We’d won many of the major milestones that I set as a leader in the LGBTQ movement and that we set as an organization at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR). I had also served on the board of The California Endowment, and so I saw up close and personal investments in community, people power, power-building in community. California is such a huge and diverse state, and it’s a rich state, but there is huge need, as well. There are many communities that have been disinvested in or not invested in at all. [Working with The California Endowment] gave me a chance to widen the aperture of the change I wanted to help be a part of moving. It deepened my appreciation for the change that philanthropy that centers community can make. It felt like a perfect role — and then I started to witness the erosion of what I thought had been secured, and that was what was the impetus for this move.
In a recent interview in The Advocate, you said that the Gill Foundation “has had the most impact on NCLR as an institution and my leadership as executive director.” Can you tell me more about that, and your reasons for taking on this role at this time?
It is not hyperbole for me to say that the Gill Foundation as an entity has had more impact on my career than any other institution. I started as legal director at NCLR in 1994, became executive director in 1996, and really, a couple of years later is when we began being a grantee of the Gill Foundation. I have known every single chief executive officer of the Gill Foundation, developed relationships with every single one of them, and each of them has been a mentor and a thought partner to me. So Gill provided not just fuel; that is, the funding for us to do our work. They also provided guidance and support and nurturing and mentorship. They also did a thing that was and is most impactful to the movement: They got us all together as leaders to collaborate on strategy and a way forward, particularly as we were trying to figure out how to beat back all the attacks on marriage. Each of these pieces, under each of these amazing leaders who were a part of the Gill lineage of fantastic CEOs, brought something different and added something different; not just to the movement, but to all of us who were grantees of theirs and who were partners of theirs. They made me a better leader. They made me a better thinker.
Much of my career over the course of 30-something years was focused on wins; winning gains for the LGBTQ community and beating back attacks. That was how I spent most of my leadership at the National Center for Lesbian Rights. It was a halcyon moment for the LGBTQ movement. We were winning protections. Of course, we had setbacks with marriage, but we eventually won marriage. We won conversion therapy bans. We won access to care for transgender youth. We had openly trans people serving in the military, and we had notched what felt like a sea change in the civic lives and participation and equality for LGBTQ people.
I have watched in horror as much of what we gained, that I helped to be a part of and to lead — my legacy — was being eroded, targeted for attack or undermined, and I could not sit on the sidelines any longer. As important as the work was — and what The California Endowment does was and is so important — in my role as chief of staff there, I wasn’t in the mix. I wasn’t substantively involved in the issues. When this opportunity presented itself, I was able to blend my passion, drive and commitment to LGBTQ individuals and this community and supporting community organizations on the ground doing this work. So it’s the blend of advocacy and philanthropy that I truly feel has made this a dream opportunity.
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Gill has been fairly silent publicly about the Trump administration’s attacks on LGBTQ — and particularly trans — rights. Given your track record as a very public advocate, are you hoping to move the foundation in a more outspoken direction?
I want results. I want impact. I want to see us make a difference. Sometimes that can happen through public statements and pronouncements, and sometimes it can happen through just doing the work and funding the organizations who are doing the work. I would not be in this role if I wasn’t clear that Gill had a steadfast commitment to continuing to fight for our community, and especially the most vulnerable in our community. That’s what’s most important to me. I have less interest in the mechanisms by which that is done as long as, at the end of the day, we made a difference and people’s lives are better.
Even before Trump took office, but particularly since then, there have been a lot of calls for funders to increase their payout rates and provide multi-year, unrestricted grants to counter the devastating impact of federal cuts to nonprofits. Do you think there are any changes that Gill needs to make to its payout rate or grantmaking practices in the face of current threats?
I know that is an active conversation. However, given that I’ve been in this seat literally 24 hours, I don’t have specifics on that. What I can say is, and Tim has said this in previous interviews, they are looking at potential spend-down strategies and thinking about a spend-down. That is not a secret. I know that how that happens and under what percentages and trajectory is an active conversation, and I look forward to being a part of that conversation and to helping provide the architecture for what that looks like.
Given your background in law, activism and as a philanthropic leader, do you have any advice for moderate and progressive foundations on how best to protect themselves and their grantees given the “anti-DEI” investigations promised by the administration?
I can answer this a little bit, probably more from my experience at the California Endowment, because this was a very, very present, front-of-the-envelope conversation that we were having every day there before I left. I think you can both not retreat from your core values, principles and mission and desire for impact and change, and also be smart about how you avoid making yourself a target or unwittingly stepping right into the traps that are being set. How that’s going to look for Gill might be different than how it was looking for The California Endowment, but we were thinking about it — and not just for ourselves. The California Endowment can survive that. The Gill Foundation could survive it. We’re much more concerned about our grantees, who may not be able to withstand such attacks. So what’s the best kind of free advice and support we can give them to provide some guardrails to protect themselves from the worst that might be coming? That is obviously an important part of what I think will be the Gill Foundation’s agenda going forward.
The Advocate reports that you plan to split your time between your home in the San Francisco Bay area, Gill’s offices in Denver and trips around the country. Given all that travel on top of what’s sure to be an incredibly busy workload, how are you going to ensure there’s time for your own rest and rejuvenation?
I have the joy of living a spectacular life. I have love in my life with my fantastic girlfriend, I’ve got three kids, all grown, and two grandkids. I will spend time with them, and that is always restorative; it’s even better if I’m cooking a meal while I’m spending time with them.
But truth be told, I am more energized this morning after spending the day here yesterday, and more restored and excited for my future here and doing this work than I’ve felt in a long time. I suppose the animation of my career has always been if I’m doing something I am passionate about, and feeling like I’m moving the needle — even a little teeny bit — in concert with amazing people and partners, that in itself has a restorative impact for me. I will do what needs to be done to take care of myself and to not burn out. But burnout is a bit of a foreign concept to me, because being able to do work where I feel like I can look back and say I did everything I could is, for me, self care.
