The Hong Kong Pride Parade 

Why do we ask for donations from the public?

Hong Kong Pride Parade is a non-profit organization, and requires stable funding to organize the annual parade. Sources of expenditure include designing promotional products, staging, audio-visual equipment, venue set-up, and logistics. The greater the scale of the parade, the greater the expenditure required for organizing the event.

The debut of the first Hong Kong Pride Parade in 2008 was a great start. To foster greater support for equality and diversity, the organizing committee exerts its utmost efforts to achieve new breakthroughs to attract stakeholders in Hong Kong. In the previous Pride Parades, we have garnered the support of different political parties, community organizations, student councils of universities, legislative council members, and local celebrities. There is a year-on-year increase in the number of parade participants. In 2014, there were 8,900 participants joined us to call for equality.

Funding has always been a major challenge to us as the Parade Organizing Committee has to pay the majority of expenditures in advance before the event. The lack of funding in 2010 resulted in an inability to host the Pride Parade that year. Till this day, we have never received any support from the Hong Kong Government, monetary or otherwise, and the operational fees has been painstakingly gathered from the diligent efforts of volunteers in selling promotional products, and kind donations from other LGBT-friendly allies.

We strive to diversify our sources of funding, but the controversy surrounding sexual minorities is an obstruction in getting sponsorship. There have been accounts of ceasing sponsorship during negotiations because of the stance that the Pride Parade takes. Under the efforts of the organizing committee, we are only able to obtain support from a handful of sponsors to smoothen the organization of the Parade.

We estimate that participation in this year’s Pride Parade will exceed 10,000 people, increasing the preparation workload and expenses. Each year, preparation of the Hong Kong Pride Parade takes more than 8 months of work, including setting a theme, getting approval for the procession route, designing the style of parade promotion, ordering for the custom-made souvenirs, training volunteers, mass promotion within Hong Kong, etc. Taking this year's parade for example, we have to host two large-scale volunteer meetings to train over 300 volunteers on how to manage tasks before and on the day of the parade. We also have to set up booths and outreach for over 30 times. The pride parade never had enough funds to hire any full-time staff to take care of the enormous amount of work, all of which are completed by committee members in their spare time.

Funding goals: Stabilizing fund sources to promote equality

We hope that through this channel of collecting public donations, we will be able to cover the costs for running the annual Pride Parade. If this target is met, we hope to collect enough surplus to hire one staff member and rent a site office to handle the enormous workload and materials of the annual Pride Parade.

By stabilizing our funding sources, the Hong Kong Pride Parade will be able to develop steadily and allow more of the mass public to get in touch with the purpose of the Hong Kong Pride Parade.

Our donation target for covering operational costs: HKD200,000

(Extra funds to hire one staff and renting an office: HKD100,000)