Overview
Gay Gaming Professionals (GGP) is a leading organization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender game industry professionals and enthusiasts from around the world. Their mission is to promote, cultivate, and unite the professional LGBTQ+ community with results-based content and programs focused on three key areas: Empowerment, Expertise, and Entrepreneurship.
Headquarters: Los Angeles, CA
Annual Applications: 100+
Dollars Awarded Annually: $200K+
Year Established: 2016
Highlights
- GGP needed a platform to help them manage their evolving scholarship program.
- The Kaleidoscope platform provided them with easy tools that helped them live out their mission and reach more students in need.
- The Kaleidoscope team established trust with the GGP team, fostering a relationship and giving them the support they needed to manage and grow their program the right way.
- Because of Kaleidoscope, GGP had five times the amount of scholarship applicants this year compared to last year.
Challenge
The Scholars program from Gay Gaming Professionals is for graduate and undergraduate students who are pursuing the game craft, eSports, game development, or content creation and who also do community service in underestimated communities.
“We started the organization because we recognized a need to have a feeling of belonging in our industry,” said Gordon Bellamy, CEO of Gay Gaming Professionals. “Part of belonging is being able to have spaces where you’re a default, where you’re not an outsider trying to change who you are to fit into someone else’s vision of things. And so our work is about creating default spaces— whether that be academically, at events, in the media that we create—so that people can shine because once you feel belonging, then you’re able to be your full self,” he added.
After spinning out from another organization, GGP needed a partner who could help them evolve their program and evolve it to a bigger scale.
GGP wanted a platform that would help their applicants feel welcomed, represented, and understood.
They wanted to work with experts and trusted partners who could help evolve their program the right way, reach more students, create a seamless experience for applicants, and manage the distribution of funds.
Solution
Kaleidoscope worked closely with the GGP team to build and manage a program they could own and operate.
Through this partnership, they worked to address a number of goals:
Acceptance Throughout the Application Process
The first priority was to create a scholarship application process that was mission-aligned and welcoming to all.
“So, we have a number of students who are navigating their gender identity, their name, and their truths,” said Bellamy. “And I would say the single biggest relief has been to be able to smoothly communicate and support those students, with their chosen names, with their chosen pronouns, with their chosen addresses,” he added.
With an understanding of the mission of the organization and who they were trying to reach and support, Kaleidoscope was able to help GGP build an application that asked the right questions of applicants.
User-Friendly & Easy to Manage
The second priority was to leverage a tool that would be easy to use and easy to manage as their organization and pool of applicants grew.
“It’s so easy, manageable, and user-friendly,” said Mason Bailey, Programs Manager. “I can literally go in and customize anything that I want as part of the application, hit enter, and save. It’s so easy to get whatever we want onto the application process into the finalization of the form,” he added.
Kaleidoscope provided training and support throughout and beyond the onboarding process to ensure the GGP team was set up for success on the platform.
With Kaleidoscope, organizations like GGP can easily communicate with and guide students through the application process from beginning to end.
Trust and Respect From Day One
The third priority was to form a long-term relationship with the right partner.
“Our name is GGP, but the acronym stands for Gay Gaming Professionals,” said Bailey. “And so, what takes a lot of time is building trust, right? From the beginning, we have earned a lot of respect between each other as both organizations and we’ve built that trust. To partner with us, you have to be okay with saying gay out loud. With Kaleidoscope, we’ve had that relationship, that trust. And so that time is already a value to us that we don’t have to spend the time to build that relationship,” he added.
From day one, the Kaleidoscope team worked to understand, support, and advance the mission of Gay Gaming Professionals.
Results
1. A Scholarship Platform That Works
Kaleidoscope gave GGP a platform they could use to work efficiently during the scholarship cycle each year.
“People talk about turnkey, but even when something is turnkey, you still have to turn the key,” said Bellamy. “I find the process of turning the key actually works really well with Kaleidoscope,” he added.
In addition to helping GGP manage its scholarship application and process, Kaleidoscope also took on disbursement management, which gave the GGP team relief and confidence, knowing their dollars were being delivered to students the right way.
2. A Supportive Partner Who Gets It
GGP felt supported by the team at Kaleidoscope from the very beginning.
“What brought us to Kaleidoscope was the tool. What kept us here was the people,” said Bellamy. “The experience that we had working with the individuals on the team helped us learn how to deliver the vision of what we want to deliver to the students and to the schools. That support is what has kept us Kaleidoscope users,” he added.
3. More Awareness & Access to Larger Pool of Students
GGP was able to access more students by listing their scholarship program in Kaleidoscope’s Public Marketplace.
“Being part of the larger scholarship pool exposed what we’re doing to a broader audience because we’re saying we’re welcoming, but often when you’re from an underestimated population, you’re sort of self-segregated off somewhere based on your identity,” said Bellamy. “But when we’re at Kaleidoscope, we’re next to Burger King and Taco Bell, and right there in the mix. And that has enabled us to be more welcoming,” he added.
4. Significant Growth of Applicants
GGP saw significant growth in the number of applicants after onboarding with Kaleidoscope:
“We have had the largest turnout of applicants from any year that we had previously,” said Bailey. “Because of Kaleidoscope, we had five times the amount of scholarship applicants this year compared to last year.”
Wrapping Up
As a final thought on the partnership, Bellamy shared, “We’ve never felt anything but trust, safety, competence, and communication with the Kaleidoscope team.”
