While sponsors fall off in other cities, Tacoma Pride has civic buy-in | Opinion
The Tacoma Pride festival is different, and not just because it’s held in July. Compared to big-city Prides in June, it’s moderately sized and has a decidedly local flavor. Right now, that’s a huge asset.
That’s because the event hasn’t had any budget shortfalls or a lack of sponsors this year. Local businesses, foundations and government agencies have signed up on the rolls of sponsors, organizers said. So what Tacoma Pride lacks in extravagant floats and throngs of tourists, it makes up for with community investment.
This year in particular, some local sponsorship came from people who didn’t want Tacoma Pride, set for July 12, to have the same budget shortfalls reported in Seattle and other cities. That includes Tyler Russell, co-owner of People’s Pilates, a local Pilates gym that is the title sponsor of Tacoma Pride.
“It just makes it even more important to do it,” he said, adding that he was spurred by headlines about corporate sponsors pulling away from Pride events. In a truly local twist, Russell’s mother is connected to the Sebo Family Foundation, which he said made the sponsorship donation in the gym’s name.
Other sponsors include the Tacoma Rainiers, Kitsap Credit Union, and healthcare providers Virginia Mason Franciscan Health and Seattle Children’s. Public agencies like the City of Tacoma, the Port of Tacoma and Pierce County are also sponsoring the event.
Sponsors shouldn’t see Tacoma Pride as political, said Troy Christensen, executive director of the Tacoma Rainbow Center and an organizer of the event.
“The festival is about people coming together to celebrate who they are one day a year and not have to worry about the outside world hassling us,” he said. “The fact that it’s political is really not because of us. It’s because of people and systems that struggle with LGBTQ+ people existing.”
The donations are saving the Tacoma Pride Festival from budget shortfalls like the $350,000 projected to be missing from Seattle Pride’s budget, the $180,000 anticipated absent from San Francisco Pride’s coffers and the reported $750,000 gap in New York City Pride’s funds.
In an era when some organizations are backing away from the gestures of support they previously offered the LGBTQ community, not to mention promises made to people of color, there’s a different kind of pride that comes from knowing the businesses in your region are down for a big, public rainbow party. Sure, they benefit from the name recognition a sponsorship brings. But putting your name on something that publicly supports a celebration of the LGBTQ community as people of equal dignity is currently a bold move.
Tacoma’s Pride festival, held in July to avoid competing with big-city Prides like those in Seattle, San Francisco and New York City, isn’t exactly small. Organizers expect at least 20,000 attendees this year. That number has been growing, prompting it to move from downtown to Wright Park to accommodate the crowd.
The festival is the continuation of a party that’s been happening every year since 1997, except years disrupted by the pandemic. According to News Tribune archives, a one-off Pride festival took place in Wright Park in the mid-1980s before a roughly 12-year hiatus. Since its return, the event has been held at various places in the city, including the University of Puget Sound and Lincoln Park.
Eventually, the Tacoma Rainbow Center took over as organizer, according to Christensen, and the event moved to Firefighter’s Park and along Pacific Avenue. The crowd has officially outgrown that space, so the party is heading over to the spot where it all started.
To be clear, I dislike measuring the safety and acceptance of the LGBTQ community by gauging how badly companies want us as customers. But in the cash-driven world we live in, a special fear overtakes you when companies appear happy to forget your community’s purchasing power so they can keep the favor of the federal government.
In general, corporate America’s support of the LGBTQ community has been part of a strategy to reach an interest group with money and to retain the portion of their workforce that’s negatively affected by anti-LGBTQ policies and bias. Those are smart business decisions. It’s almost definitely why Alaska Airlines is sponsoring Seattle and San Francisco’s Pride events, and Deutsche Bank and Coca-Cola both sponsor New York City’s Pride.
What’s more, I don’t believe the country’s corporations have been holding their noses while offering this support. I also don’t believe corporate decision makers were doing it for any particularly moral reason. It was simply to their benefit, and it fit with the direction of popular sentiment.
LGBTQ people have been insisting on our own worth and beauty since long before corporate sponsorship became a smart business decision. The joy and liveliness of a Pride festival isn’t something you can conjure with money.
But it doesn’t hurt. So excuse me, I have to go get ready to party with my local Pilates gym.
This story was originally published June 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
CORRECTION: Correction: This story has been updated to correct the name of the Sebo Family Foundation.
