Giving Compass' Take:

• Kevin Sessums interviews Adriadne Getty on her foundation, life, and the role her children play in her involvement with queer activism.

• Adriadne Getty's children inspire her philanthropy. How can your loved ones drive your giving?

• Read about creating safe spaces for LGBTQ youth.

“I’ve never taken any of this for granted,” the philanthropist Adriadne Getty tells me. “I’ve never pretended that I made a penny in my life. I inherited this money and I’m a steward. I have to honor it. Actually, I have to honor my great-grandmother who set up the trust.

When she was first starting her charitable foundation, she came up with a one-line, two-word mission statement: “Unpopular Causes.” It has since expanded to the more generalized assertion that the goal of the Ariadne Getty Foundation is to “work with partners worldwide to improve the lives of individuals and communities through large-scale investments & hands-on advocacy.”

The focus most recently at  the foundation has been shoring up LGBTQ organizations,  such as the Los Angeles LGBT Center and GLAAD. Getty joined the board of directors of the latter in 2016 and last year at the World Economic Forum in Davos she pledged $15 million to the organization, which focuses on media and how we as a culture can rewrite the script for LGBTQ acceptance.

She is a kind of den mother of the denizen of acceptance that her home has become for this extended LA family.  Does she think she would be so viscerally focused on LGBTQ rights if she weren’t the mother of two gay children and seen as a mother figure for so many of their friends? There is a maternal aspect to her activism. “I always say I am here doing this mostly to support what my children have made me aware of."

“It is really a privilege to be involved with the LGBT Center in LA, which has so many intergenerational programs there. I encourage everybody who has any way of being part of a cause to make the time and become involved.” She says.

Read the full article about Adriane Getty on philanthropy, family and queer activism by Kevin Sessums at Washington Blade.