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The Basinger Leadership Scholarship is managed by the CMU Foundation. Your tax-deductible donation will help develop LGBTQ+ youth leaders in western Colorado. To give, click the link below to visit the CMU Foundation website.

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Jeffrey Alan Basinger Leadership Scholarship

The Basinger Leadership Scholarship Committee and the Colorado Mesa University Foundation are pleased to announce the dedication of a scholarship, named for our colleague, mentor, advocate and dear friend, Jeff Basinger. We invite you to remember Jeff, his life’s work and to help ensure his work and legacy will continue to be an inspiration to future LGBTQ+ students.

“The gay community is as important and as strong as any part of our community… and when I think of gay and lesbian people, it transcends race, it transcends religion, it transcends class, it transcends nationality, it transcends ability, it transcends country of origin. We’re talking about the human race.”

Jeff Basinger

from a Western Equality radio broadcast / Family, Friends and Neighbors

By any standard, Jeff’s contributions to the LGBTQ+ community can only be described as epic. His leadership with the Western Colorado AIDS Project became his life’s work and even extended throughout our state for over 21 years – but – through it all he also became an essential activist, manager, spokesperson, teacher, and advocate as he lead us all on his life-changing mission.

“Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, when I give I give myself.”

– Walt Whitman

Though Jeff’s career began in historic preservations, sales and retail, he found his true calling in 1996 and began his long and successful career with WestCAP. He discovered that a huge factor in this new position was the vital education and instruction for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. Today, he would be proud and delighted to know that this aspect of his legacy – to educate, advise and inform – would be continuing long after his passing. The Basinger Leadership Scholarship will perpetuate this legacy.

Finally, it is apropos to recall that Jeff loved history and would often share detailed stories of significant events and local people at anytime – little realizing that through his tireless work, and indomitable spirit, he himself would become a “historic” figure of significant achievement for the LGBTQ+ community of Colorado.

“When I was young I never thought I was going to be part of gay history – I didn’t even expect that gay history would be in existence.”

– Silvia Rae (Ray) Rivera, 1969/Stonewall Activist

Jeff Basinger also made history. He stood up, spoke up and courageously got to work and through his “gentle, but relentless” efforts became the catalyst of needed change, advocacy and education that the LGBTQ+ community desperately needed in western Colorado. The Basinger Leadership Scholarship Committee now invites you to help us with as generous a gift as possible, to honor his memory, and to ensure Jeffrey Alan Basinger’s legacy will “live on.” Our ultimate goal is to see this scholarship permanently endowed so awards can be distributed yearly, in perpetuity, to deserving LGBTQ+ students. This project may take years to fully endow and this may be the first of many letters asking for your help. But, when faced with a formidable task, Jeff, ever cheerful, would often joke, “I’m just the janitor.” Then, he’d roll up his sleeves and get to work! So, won’t you please help the Basinger Leadership Scholarship Committee continue Jeff’s life-affirming work by making your tax deductible gift today?

Yours,
Jeff Basinger Leadership Scholarship Committee Members

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