Statement of Reassurance from the San Mateo County Pride Center
June 27, 2025
Dear Community,
We want to share an important update and address the growing concerns about the future of StarVista and the San Mateo County Pride Center. As you may be aware, after facing significant financial challenges StarVista (parent agency of the Pride Center) is pursuing a merger with a larger, more financially stable nonprofit organization.
We want to assure you that the Pride Center will not be closing. We remain committed to supporting you, our community, and are dedicated to prioritizing your needs as best we can.
We want to acknowledge any worries, feelings, and questions surfacing around the center’s stability. The concerns already expressed for the Pride Center tell us how much you value the programs and services we provide. The current StarVista executive leadership team, our primary funder (SMC Behavioral Health and Recovery Services), and the County of San Mateo, could not agree more.
It’s because of their deep investment and commitment to the Pride Center and the LGBTQIA+ community of San Mateo County that we can assure you our doors will not be closing.
Sadly, however, the Pride Center will be operating in a reduced capacity. As such, we will unfortunately need to shift and limit some of our current programs and services. Currently, we are strategizing on how best to meet the needs of our clients and community as the details about the merger and the impact of the losses to our center become more clear.
We honor the added difficulty of receiving this message during such a difficult time for the LGBTQ+ community. We need more services, not less. Our ideal goal is to ensure that clients have pathways to affirming support we can no longer directly provide. We will always keep our community informed when these details are finalized.
If you feel empowered to directly support the future stability of our programs, and thus, the lives of those dependent on our services, donations of any amount are instrumental in saving our essential programs and services from being cut. Any amount you can spare will help fill the rainbow bucket we desperately need to fill! Together, we can expand our reach even further. Please also consider sharing this message of hope and community with others that are invested in the Pride Center’s services and sustainability. To donate, please visit: https://sanmateopride.org/donations.
Thank you for your continued compassion, support, and dedication to our Center. Our community’s outpouring of love and appreciation is an incredibly powerful and important reminder of why the San Mateo County Pride Center was created in the first place. And we’re determined to stay.
For the love of Pride,
The Community within the Community Center
aka The Team