OutServe-SLDN Re-brands its Mission Statement and Officially Creates "Members"

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Change is inevitable, and in order to stay current, stay relevant and continue to be tuned in to our members, we too must change. In a series of strategic meetings over the past six months, the OutServe-Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) Board of Directors has taken a serious look at our organization. We are excited to announce that OutServe-SLDN has a new mission statement that completely changes our focus, while remaining true to the people we serve. We are excited to share it with you:

OutServe-SLDN represents the U.S. LGBT military community worldwide. Our mission is to: educate the community, provide legal services, advocate for authentic transgender service, provide developmental opportunities, support members and local chapters, communicate effectively, and work towards equality for all.

We have fundamentally changed our organization to be more member-focused while still being faithful to the promises we have made in the past. You can see our complete new organization posted here. This will be evolving as we fine-tune our organization.

By forming committees, each with its own strategic initiatives, our future becomes more connected to each of you. The updates and future plans in each of our new committees are described below.

Education

• Develop training materials for the DoD and DHS to provide to commanders, chapels and equal opportunity offices, just to name a few

• Develop partnerships to teach the entire community about transgenderism and how it affects military service.

• Support pride events worldwide so OutServe-SLDN can pass along information to the greater community  

Advocacy & Legal Services

• Starting in February, we hired the New Orleans law firm, Delaney and Robb, to take on the legal services portion of what we provide. Since then, they have processed 109 clients on a variety on LGBT military issues. Read more about how we gave a marine his dying wish here.

• Developing partnerships to determine a path to authentic transgender service and work to achieve that.  

Professional Development

• Mentor our members to better themselves

• We are in the final stages of determining the location for our annual leadership conference. Be on the lookout for more information soon.  

Chapter and Member Services

• The OutServe-SLDN Board of Directors voted to amend the bylaws to allow members to join the organization. A member is simply defined as someone who supports our cause.

• Just last month the OutServe-SLDN Board of Directors voted to hire Your Membership, a back-end software company. We will be completely redoing our website and for the first time will allow you to join as an official member. There will be ways to connect with other members along with finding online resources and more at our completely redesigned website! We hope to launch this new website by 1 August 2014.  

Public Affairs

• Communicating effectively is key to any organization and we are committed to doing just that. We want to give our members beneficial and timely information. 

How can you help?

Volunteer your time. Right now we have no paid staff and the all-volunteer board of directors, military advisory council and chapter leaders are doing all of the work. If there is an area that interests you, contact the committee chair and get involved! To inquire how you can help please contact us by clicking here.

Become a member. Once we roll out our new membership campaign, become a member. Anyone is welcome and it is FREE! Look for updates on this in the coming months!

Donate to our cause. This can be through optional membership dues, a one time gift or a recurring donation. Please click here if you wish to donate. What does your donation go towards you ask?
Fund our team of lawyers at Delaney and Robb that provide key legal services.
Fund Pride for our local chapters so that we can march in the parades and have booths to pass out information, meet people, answer questions and engage our local communities. Our goal is to be able to fund pride at ten key locations this year. Some of these pride events cost upwards of $1,500 to march in the parade and to have a booth. Banners cost about $85 a piece. As you can see, having a presence at pride is not cheap.
Fund education and training modules to better prepare our military and government to successfully handle LGBT-specific questions and incidents.

Hire a full time staff that can be dedicated to preforming OutServe-SLDN’s missions

This is an exciting time for OutServe-SLDN and we hope you will be as much a part of our future as you have been our past.

Never Giving Up,

John and Jeff

OutServe-SLDN co-chairmen of the board