Trans Lifeline

In 2022, Trans Lifelines Hotline Program answered a total of 9,196 calls in total. As a result of the ongoing impact of the pandemic, 2022 was a rebuilding year for the Hotline. In September we hired the first Hotline Director for the program in nearly two years, and this Director immediately hired 6 additional Staff Operators to add capacity to our Hotline program. After the addition of these operators, our call answer rates in early 2023 have gone up by nearly 10% in comparison to the final few months of 2022, particularly in the afternoon and early evenings during the business day. Additionally, under the direction of the new Hotline Director, the Volunteer Operator program is receiving new resources and management tools with the goal of growing our volunteer operator team 50% by mid 2024.

2022 marked the launch of Trans Lifelines standalone Advocacy department, which is responsible for building the national #SafeHotlines campaign to end non-consensual interventions on all US hotlines. In this first year, the program published a Fact Sheet on the impacts of non-consensual interventions (NCIs) on trans people, worked with survivors of NCIs to draft the Crisis Callers Bill of Rights, which gained over 1,700 signatures in 2022, and spoke out about 988s lack of transparency around geolocation and NCIs in SLATE, Buzzfeed, VICE, USA Today and Mad in America. The program also began its research project with American University on the impacts of non-consensual interventions (NCIs) on crisis hotline callers, which covers current policies, practices, and qualitative and quantitative data around calls. The Advocacy program also spoke at three conferencesAllied Media, Yale Womens Mental Health, and Transform 911as well as partner panels with Interrupting Criminalization, IDHA, and Beyond do no Harm.

In 2022, Trans Lifeline's Microgrants program distributed $367,451 in small grants to 475 individuals and $214,000 in grants to 8 small service organizations for updated legal identification documents, legal name and gender changes, and commissary support. For grants to individuals, this represents a 53% increase over 2021's $171,456 in funds distributed. For grants to small service organizations, this represents a 7% increase over 2021's $$199,300 in funds distributed. The program was able to serve 237 more clients than in 2021 and saw increases in grants distributed across the board. In 2022, Microgrants focused on improving our internal systems so that we could more effectively and efficiently process grants, in addition to identifying service areas that would benefit from collaboration with small service organizations.