By Valerie Milano
Palm Springs, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/1/26 – A beloved desert organization created to support lesbians and queer women in moments of real need has entered a new chapter.
The L-Fund is now officially part of The LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert, bringing its grant-making programs under The Center’s umbrella while preserving the mission that has guided it for more than a decade.
For the Coachella Valley, this merger is more than an administrative change. It is a promise that one of the community’s most important sources of direct support for cis, trans, and queer-identifying lesbians will continue, grow, and remain visible.
Founded in 2012 by local Black lesbians, The L-Fund has provided emergency and opportunity-based grants to people navigating some of life’s most difficult circumstances. Its support has helped recipients remain in stable housing, leave unsafe relationships, cover urgent medical needs, continue their education, advance their careers, and pursue artistic expression through The Debra I. Moore Grant for the Arts.
Those programs will continue as The L-Fund at The Center.
The new structure also brings new leadership. Dr. Karyl E. Ketchum, a longtime professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at California State University and an L-Fund board member, has joined The Center as the first Director of The L-Fund at The Center. Former L-Fund board members Mei Ling Tom and Robbin Burr also joined The Center’s board earlier this year.
For Ketchum, the role is both practical and deeply personal.
“As the inaugural Director of The L-Fund at The Center, I get to help carry forward something precious that a visionary group of lesbians started here years ago,” Ketchum said. “It is a project grounded in one powerful and simple truth: we have to take care of each other. The safety nets most people take for granted, like family, religion, and cultural institutions, are simply not there for many lesbians and queer women. So, here in the desert, we are building our own safety nets.”
The path toward the merger began in 2025, when leaders from The L-Fund approached The Center to explore how the organization’s programs could be sustained and expanded for the future. Community response throughout the process was strongly supportive, including from the women who first founded The L-Fund. By December, both boards had agreed to move forward.
The result is a thoughtful blending of legacy and infrastructure. The L-Fund brings a history of direct, community-rooted support. The Center brings a broad network of services across the Coachella Valley, including its Palm Springs home, The Center Coachella, the Scott Hines Behavioral Health Clinic, and the Community Food Bank.
Together, the organizations are strengthening a safety net that many queer women have had to build for themselves.
A community reception welcoming The L-Fund at The Center will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 14, at The Center’s McDonald/Wright Building in Palm Springs.
More information about The L-Fund at The Center is available at thecentercv.org/l-fund.
