Parade

ardson said in a statement. “The Long Beach Pride Parade is an integral part of how we celebrate the diversity of our community. We are proud to step up and support this year's event.”

The 2024 Long Beach Pride Parade will take place May 19, along Ocean Boulevard. This will be the 41st iteration.

Long Beach Pride, meanwhile, will still host the annual Long Beach Pride festival, which will take place May 18 and 19 along the downtown waterfront.

It will cost the city an estimated $130,000 to put on the parade, the Monday news release said. The City Council approved $80,000 in one-time funds to help pay for the parade during its Feb. 13 mid-year budget review. Another $50,000 is set to come from Vice Mayor Cindy Allen's onetime District 2 funds.

Allen, whose district includes the Broadway corridor that has long been the

center of LGBTQ+ communities in Long Beach, was the one who initially brought Long Beach Pride's request for help before the council.

“The Pride Parade is a Long Beach tradition that we have celebrated for the last 40 years,” Allen said in a statement. “This event is enjoyed by folks from all over the region and is very important to our community and our LGBTQ+ businesses. As a mom of an LGBTQ daughter, it's one of my favorite events to attend. It's a privilege to be able to support this year's event! I know it means a lot to our residents and LGBTQ+ communities across the Southland.”

The annual celebration traces its origins to October 1983, when Crow, Judith Doyle and Marylin Barlow founded Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride Inc. in 1983. The nonprofit, which was renamed Long Beach Pride in 2020 to be more inclusive, organized the city's inaugural Pride Parade and festival the following summer, in 1984.

The founders launched

the Long Beach Pride Parade because they thought the city's LGBTQ+ communities were vibrant enough to sustain their own celebration, separate from Los Angeles'.

And they were right. Over the years, the Long Beach march has grown into one of the largest and oldest Pride Parades in the state. Thousands converge annually on Ocean Boulevard for the parade, with even more attending the multiday festival.

But the Long Beach Pride organization has faced multiple financial challenges in the past.

In 2018, the organization asked the city to nix the myriad fees required to put on such a massive event — such as for police and fire services, and parking — after reporting a nearly $100,000 loss during the previous year's festival.

The nonprofit, though, has also been hit financially because of the pandemic, said Long Beach Pride President Tonya Martin.

The organization couldn't host in-person celebrations in 2020 or 2021. But with

the parade and festival as the nonprofit's only fundraiser, that but Long Beach Pride in a bind, Martin said.

“We're losing money,” Martin said.

Martin did not have exact numbers for 2022 or 2023, but did say turnout for the festival was smaller last year than it usually is; turnout for the parade was about the same.

In 2021, however, Long Beach Pride had a deficit of about $208,000, according to documents filed with the IRS. The previous year, the nonprofit had a deficit of nearly $467,000. Filings for 2022 were not available.

The organization, though, did list about $1.6 million in total net assets in 2021. The bulk of that is tied up in Long Beach Pride's Obispo Avenue headquarters, which the nonprofit owns.

This year's festival, meanwhile, will be downsized a bit, Martin said.

“We're restructuring,” Martin said in a Monday evening interview, “to make sure we're more profitable in coming years.”

Susan Brown, senior vice president of patients services and chief nursing officer at City of Hope, speaks Monday to announce the Duarte-based cancer hospital's new mobile prevention and screening clinic in Lancaster. The mobile clinic truck will begin seeing patients on March 19 in the Wesley Health Center parking lot.

As for whether the goal is for Long Beach Pride to resume hosting the parade in 2025, Martin said that still needs to be discussed.

The nonprofit, though, won't make money from the parade this year, Martin said — just the festival.

Long Beach, for its part, said in its press release that hosting the Pride Parade is a “one-time action” to help the nonprofit as it restructures.

“Long Beach Pride is very

proud to be a part of such a great city as Long Beach,” Martin said in a Monday morning statement. “We are truly grateful that the city is stepping up to support this parade so that it continues to be the beacon of light that it has always been for our community.”

Businesses and organizations interested in participating in the parade have until May 1 to do so. The online form is available at longbeach.gov/prideparade.