Michael Rogers
Michael Rogers
blogACTIVE.com
PageOneQ.com
PageOneEarth.comMichael Rogers is the Publisher of blogACTIVE– the web site that reports on hypocrites in the government who work against the interests of the gay and lesbian community. Via Page One News Media, Rogers operates PageOneQ — a lesbian and gay news site — and PageOneEarth, an environmental news service debuting in early 2007.
Rogers’ work exposing hypocrites in positions of political power has earned him national recognition. Prior to his current work, he was a fundraiser and non-profit executive for a variety of progressive causes.
Rogers’ fundraising career began in 1988 when he joined the staff of Communicating The Future, the capital campaign of a four-station public broadcasting association. At the station, he worked with the station’s programming department to launch a five-night lesbian and gay television film series in celebration of gay pride month, the city’s first.
Rogers then served as the first Development Coordinator at New York’s Hetrick-Martin Institute and Harvey Milk School, a social service agency and high school for lesbian and gay adolescents. While there, Rogers developed the agency’s first major gifts program, managed two major motion picture premiere events, launched a direct mail acquisition program, expanded the agency’s annual awards program and wrote the organization’s first corporate solicitation grants.
From 1992 to 1996, Rogers managed the development and fundraising programs at the Funding Exchange, a national network of fifteen community-based foundations supporting social change. Rogers coordinated fundraising for the foundation’s general operations, Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media, OUT Fund for Lesbian and Gay Liberation and Saguaro Fund.
In 1996, Rogers moved to Washington DC to become Director of Development at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the nation’s oldest lesbian and gay civil rights organization. In addition to his work at the Task Force, Rogers directed marketing, fundraising and corporate sponsorship for Gala Choruses Festival 2000, an eight-day convention of 5,500 singers, representing over 200 lesbian and gay choruses from around the world.
Rogers also served on the staff of Greenpeace, the international environmental action organization as the Senior Manager of Major Gifts, where he managed the group’s portfolio of donors at the $5,000 and above level.
In addition to managing BlogACTIVE.com and PageOneQ.com, Rogers is heading the effort to create a association serving lesbian and gay fundraising and development professionals, The National Association of Lesbian and Gay Fundraisers. The association will provide training, scholarship and education programs.
Concurrent with his career positions, Rogers has been an activist since the mid-1980’s when he was involved in campaigns supporting divestiture from South Africa as a tactic to help bring about the end of Apartheid. Following relocation to New York City, Rogers was an acive member of ACT-UP, Queer Nation and Lambda Independent Democrats, a lesbian and gay political group.
In Washington, Rogers has continued his activism, including his mounting a succesful effort against McDonald’s when the multinational tried to displace workers. Rogers has also been a neighborhood activist and tenant organizer.
Rogers has been appeared on CNN’s NewsNight, Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, National Public Radio, at New York University, and on numerous other television and radio programs. Rogers’ work has been reported on in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune; he was profiled in GQ Magazine. Rogers was named as one of Genre Magazine’s Men We Love.
