The organization’s programs have a clear alignment with its broader goal of ending suicide in the LGBTQ youth community. While their primary program of offering phone-based and chat-based support directly works to extend assistance to youth considering suicide, its other programs are also critical to this mission. The public education program spreads awareness about the unique challenges facing the community and provides guidance as to how professionals that work with LGBTQ youth can foster an environment of support and empathy.

The Trevor Project’s community development efforts (such as TrevorSpace) help to reduce isolation and provide a safe community for LGBTQ youth to share their experiences. The advocacy program promotes legislation that challenges practices which may be risk factors or contributors to youth suicide, such as conversion therapy. Finally, the research program, an emerging area of focus for the organization, helps to both understand suicide rates in various communities and to evaluate the effectiveness of various interventions; these are insights that can be used to drive policy decisions.

The Trevor Project does an excellent job of rationalizing why charitable attention is merited in its areas of focus and why its programs are an adequate approach to the problem. According to the organization, LGBTQ youth are 4 times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers, and over 1.5 million LGBTQ youth experience suicide ideation or are in crisis each year. Having one supportive person in an individual’s life can reduce the risk of suicide by 30%. The organization also successfully sets measurable and specific goals for each of its program areas. Its annual report identifies one-year goals for each of its programs. Within crisis services, The Trevor Project set a goal of serving 125,000 crisis contacts in 2019 and of scaling up its chat and text services to 24/7 availability. Within TrevorSpace, the organization sought to grow its user base to 250,000 and roll out new features such as “Ask Me Anything”. Similarly, specific growth goals were outlined for Education, Advocacy, and Research. These goals are easily measurable and were created using the previous years’ performance as a baseline, setting the foundation for strong impact and accountability. Based on the organization’s reporting of its previous years’ program-level impact, it clearly has the infrastructure in place to track its progress towards next year’s goals.

The Trevor Project demonstrates significant outcomes from its programs, answering 75,000 calls, texts, and chats in 2018, offering its TrevorSpace community to 175,000 users, reaching 14,000 youth and adults through its training workshops, and receiving 34,000 responses to its national survey on suicide and mental health. Beyond these program-level outcomes, the organization also had significant impact on its target communities. In a private evaluation conducted by USC, researchers found that 74% of youth respondents either would not have or were unsure if they would have contacted another help service if not for The Trevor Project. Remarkably, the evaluation also found that over 90% of youth at risk for suicide who contacted The Trevor Project had successful de-escalation of their crisis, and this de-escalation was sustained for at least one month following the intervention. Crisis intervention services offered by The Trevor Project clearly have meaningful impact in suicide prevention in the LGBTQ community. Although this evaluation is a strong indication of the organization’s community-level impact, such evaluations should be conducted annually on an ongoing basis (as opposed to a one-time study) in order to demonstrate continued program efficacy. Alternatively, the organization could leverage the data from its surveys with the youth it services to publish information about crisis de-escalation rates on an annual basis (as opposed to using third-party researchers). Within education, the organization launched a partnership with the New York Department of Education to provide teachers and students with LGBTQ-competent suicide prevention tools and training. Again, while this is meaningful, ideally the organization should provide hard data on how its education workshops and model school policy program have translated to reduction in suicide rates or improvements in mental health for LGBTQ youth in partner schools across the country. Within advocacy, legislation was introduced in 37 states to protect LGBTQ youth from conversion therapy practices, with protections being passed in Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, and Washington. The implications of such legislation on suicide prevention in LGBTQ youth in the impacted states are inherently impactful and do not require validation by The Trevor Project.

One of The Trevor Project’s greatest strengths is its comprehensive approach to program implementation. All of the organization’s programs are interwoven and support one another, working in tandem to attack the problem of suicide in the LGBTQ community through separate but synergistic approaches. For instance, the new focus on research as a central pillar of the organization directly supports work in advocacy by providing data and insights which can lead to better-informed and more powerful policy proposals within the advocacy program. Insights from research about effective intervention programs also strengthen the organization’s work in education by improving the quality of training workshops it provides to schools. Also, the annual report indicates that the organization is working to deepen the connection between TrevorSpace and its crisis intervention services so that users of the social network can access crisis help as easily as possible, creating a bridge between community development and crisis intervention. Beyond this, the organization’s leadership has a strategic and comprehensive approach to growth. Proper investments are being made to realize the goals that the organization sets for itself. For example, The Trevor Project transformed the training process for its crisis volunteers into a self-guided process so that it could reach the scale to have 24/7 call support available (one of its 2019 goals). The organization invested in new hires such as a Director of Research and a product manager for TrevorSpace, which are key areas of growth moving forward. Finally, a strategic plan that looks ahead to fiscal year 2023 is available for public viewing on its website which outlines longer-term goals within each of its key programs and the steps required to get there.

With specific and measurable goal-setting, excellent tracking of outcomes, and highly effective programs that work in concert towards the broader mission, The Trevor Project demonstrates clear and unequivocal impact in preventing suicide in the LGBTQ community.