If you followed my personal life, you would know that I organize a local 10K trail run every year.  My wife organizes the army of volunteers we have.  Because of this wrangling, she has been asked to advise on wrangling the volunteers for a local Pride event to be held in a park.

Here is my challenge.  The Pride event doesn't have a clearly stated goal.  I don't know what success looks like for a Pride event.  Raising attention and awareness seems ineffective when it is an insular group of people attending the event.  There are booths, food and such, so there is money being spent.  There is no statement of profits being donated.

Now, if say, there was a local kid who committed suicide after being bullied and they were raising money for rent of an out of school space to have a support group for kids who need to have a conversation.  Then, I could see some strength to holding the event.  A meaning, purpose, stated goal.

We have 3 locally held pride events this year.  Two in pride month.  One in September.  None have a clear point.  Is this the same in your area?  

Yes.

That's the short answer. There is a big LBGTQ and trans community locally and there are countless numbers of events across the year.

To the greater community, these events are on the fringe here in terms of social events and unless you're part of that community, it probably doesn't register highly on your list of things to do and see.

But, more importantly and as small as these events probably look to the greater population, they offer a safe space particularly for younger people to explore and find a community. And that's a good thing. And that's why they're important.

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Although " raising awareness " in itself without a real goal is a joke. Locally they have a magnitude of indigenous events to " raise awareness " and have for the last 20 years. They'll do their thing and " have a yarn " and a smoking ceremony and sell paintings and it services no one else outside of the local politicians, the more prominent business leaders and the middle class indigenous people who have recently found their culture and want a photo op. All while, the greater indigenous community ignores these events and continues being the most marginalised in the country and all of the above avoid the core issues to talk about " culture " and " country "

The point of Pride is for the community to come together and connect. That is it. Awareness is not really the goal, merely to come out and show people just how many LGBT people there are. Awareness became the focus when non-LGBT people wanted to make the events about themselves, but that never was the goal for the LGBT community. But the earliest Christopher Street Liberation Day celebration before it got repackaged just were focused on it is ok to be gay.

To message success, turnout would be the metric I imagine. How many people actually turn up. The money situation gets more interesting and sure you can find all the heated debates on a minority group profiting vs donations during these sort of events, so can weed those that mess using whatever lens works best. Donation amount at the end is something many use as a metric of success though. Sure others also use in group profits but never been part of a group doing that as that is not my jam at all.