ABOVE: One Orlando Alliance Executive Director Josh Bell. Photo via Facebook.
ORLANDO | The One Orlando Alliance has launched an LGBTQ-focused, first-of-its-kind survey to gather comprehensive data on Central Florida’s queer community that will assist its coalition of service organizations in their advocacy efforts.
The “We Belong Here” survey — announced July 26, funded by Contigo Fund and facilitated by Polis Institute — will gather information in an array of areas including basic demographic data, sexual and gender identities, housing stability, access to physical and mental health care, religious affiliation, family makeups, citizenship status and more.
“The LGBTQ+ community are not tracked well in terms of data, with some exceptions,” says One Orlando Alliance’s executive director Josh Bell. “We usually have a lot of data around HIV or STIs or health care issues, something in that area, but there isn’t a lot of data around the many other aspects of our lives. So that’s a huge gap, and the Alliance’s job as a regional body is to know our community. The survey is one piece of that work.”
The survey will help the Alliance gather clear, local information on where the needs in the LGBTQ community are.
“We know some of these needs anecdotally but we don’t have hard data for a lot of these pieces,” Bell says. “So when we get the results back it will allow us at the Alliance — a coalition of 40 LGBTQ-serving organizations — to have actual data-based conversations around strategic interventions. What does the data show are the greatest areas of need for certain populations?
What already exists to address that need and what are the gaps where that need is not being addressed? This will allow us to coordinate our work better, it’ll allow us to make strategic decisions, it’ll allow us to know the areas where we are doing well, where our communities are doing well and the areas where we are struggling.”
The information gathered will build on the coalition’s previous work with its Alliance Agenda, an annual report that looks at the needs of Central Florida’s local LGBTQ community in 10 critical issues — anti-racism, coming out, hate crimes, health care, homelessness, immigration, transgender and gender nonbinary individuals, vulnerable populations, workplace equality and LGBTQ youth.
“In our previous work with the Alliance Agenda, we were highlighting issues that are affecting our community but with it we didn’t have recent, local data,” Bell says. “Since we don’t have a comprehensive data set on the LGBTQ+ community in Central Florida, this survey is meant to produce that data to help further our work.”
The Alliance hopes to have at least 2,000 survey respondents by September, which would give them a significant sample size in which to pull the data.
“If you look at The Williams Institute in UCLA, they’re the best source for national statistics for the LGBTQ population, they estimate that 4.6% of the population of Florida is LGBTQ+,” Bell says. “If you just look at the raw population numbers of the seven counties we serve, 2,000 respondents would be about 1% of LGBTQ+ population. That would be our beginning threshold.”
Within those respondents, Bell says the Alliance won’t just be looking at the raw numbers, rather with continuous updates from the Polis Institute, they will be looking to get a true cross section of the communities within Central Florida’s LGBTQ population.
“For example, are we getting enough people taking the Spanish version of the survey? Have we gotten enough surveys from people over 65, or do we have enough from this particular cross section of identities? Then we’ll be able to do more targeted outreach to get those responses,” Bell says.
Those interested in participating in the One Orlando Alliance’s “We Belong Here” survey can visit OneOrlandoAlliance.org/Survey.