By: Lucaiah Smith-Miodownik, News Writer
This August, the Vancouver Pride Parade will look a little different. The event, hosted annually by Vancouver Pride Society, recently lost half of its corporate sponsorships for this year’s celebration. Companies like Lululemon and Walmart have withdrawn. The Peak spoke with Michael Robach, director of development at the non-profit QMUNITY, for more information.
QMUNITY was founded as “a community center for queer, trans, and Two-Spirit people to access low-barrier frontline mental health and social services, and that’s what we continue to do today,” he said. The initiative also “delivers programming all across BC,” and marches in different Pride events around the province.
“We’re one of the oldest LGBTQ organizations in Canada, and so by virtue of that, we’ve always been very involved in the Pride movement and Pride advocacy, ensuring equal and basic human rights for queer and trans folk,” Robach added.
QMUNITY has been involved in the Vancouver Pride scene for decades, helping to facilitate the original Vancouver Pride Parade, which Robach described as a protest, around 50 years ago. Fast forward to 2025, and the organization still plays a significant role in the August celebration. “Most recently, we entered into a partnership with the Vancouver Pride Society and the West End Business Improvement Association to really ensure and secure Pride this year,” he said, speaking to the recent loss of corporate sponsorships.
Like Vancouver Pride Society, Robach shared that QMUNITY also recently lost four sponsors for an annual breakfast the organization hosts. These groups were partners “for almost 17 years in a row.”
“This built up tension and this over-politicization of gender, and trans people, and trans bodies, and trans kids has sort of really been the driving force behind shifts in attitude.” — Michael Robach, director of development, QMUNITY
As to why companies may be shying away from involvement, over the last “year and a half, there’s been a very transphobic and homophobic rhetoric that has been permeating all across North America, particularly outside of larger cities, and we see this in the cases that come through our door, we see this in the news,” he said.
Robach believes that large amounts of anger and frustration towards the government “on the more conservative side of the conversation” were heaped onto the trans community, and have been rising steadily. “This built up tension and this over-politicization of gender, and trans people, and trans bodies, and trans kids has sort of really been the driving force behind shifts in attitude.”
Robach also noted that in precarious financial times, businesses tend to cut down on their philanthropy and social investments.
Returning to the topic of funding for the Pride Parade, Robach considered what it meant to need to rely on large corporations in the first place. He spoke to pinkwashing, when groups or organizations support 2SLGBTQIA+ initiatives as a way to distract from harm or wrongdoing. “We should always hold conversations and be critical about understanding the ways that funding structures work and operate,” he said.
Still, QMUNITY’s services are “so important to people’s livelihoods and sense of self, and ultimately in order for that to happen and for spaces like those to exist,” and the organization depends on the “funding structures that are in place to support it.”
