Four Nashville organizations have been chosen to receive grants from the Brooks Fund totaling $11,333 to go toward enhancing the lives of gays and lesbians in Middle Tennessee.

The Abintra Montessori School, The Nashville Film Festival, Nashville in Harmony and OutCentral, Inc., were chosen as 2008 grant recipients by the Brooks Fund of The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

The Abintra Montessori School is a coeducational institution in Nashville serving 150 students between the ages of 3 and 15. The school will be awarded $2,000 to provide support to gay and lesbian families on how to explain their parental configuration to parents of classmates.

The Nashville Film Festival was founded in 1969 as the Sinking Creek Film Celebration and is one of the oldest such events in the country. The Brooks fund renewed its support to the event with an award of $3,000 to host GLBT films and filmmakers during the annual festival.

Nashville in Harmony is a city chorus for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies which uses music to build community and create social change. The Brooks Fund awarded the group $2,333 to create a chorus performance to be performed at a concert in May 2009.

OutCentral, Inc., is Tennessee’s first GLBTQIF cultural center. The center was awarded $4,000 to develop a community calendar and database of nonprofit organizations serving the GLBTQIF community, partnering with NowPlayingNashville.com, for where to go and what to do in Middle Tennesssee.


The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee oversees more than 670 charitable funds. In the past 17 years, The Community Foundation has distributed $408 million to community programs and institutions.

By supporting and encouraging the development of programs, the Brooks Fund of The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee increases philanthropic options and opportunities within the GLBT community. It was named for H. Franklin Brooks, a Vanderbilt professor of French and Italian for 25 years and an advocate for the inclusion of gays in Vanderbilt University’s anti-harassment policies.

It is located at 3833 Cleghorn Avenue, #400, Nashville, Tennessee  37215. For more information, call 615-321-4939 or visit www.cfmt.org.