For 2025’s Organization of the Year, Qnotes is honored to recognize the Freedom Center for Social Justice, a Charlotte based nonprofit now in its sixteenth year of community rooted advocacy, culture shifting education, and intersectional justice work across the Carolinas and beyond. Since 2009, the Freedom Center has helped shape what liberation work looks like in the South, guided by a clear belief that relationships, dignity and collective care change communities. In a year when targeted policy attacks and hostile rhetoric have left many feeling worn down, the organization has remained steady, offering education, leadership development and spaces where people can gather, heal, and organize.
The Freedom Center began with a need Bishop Tonyia M. Rawls could not ignore. When she moved to Charlotte in 2000 to open Unity Fellowship’s first affirming congregation in the Bible Belt, she encountered Black LGBTQ+ people with virtually no safe spiritual or communal spaces. “For Black queer folk, they did not have any spaces that felt safe for them,” she said. What she witnessed beyond the church walls was just as urgent. Charlotte was navigating an HIV crisis, with young Black men disproportionately impacted. “One in three young Black men were HIV positive in Charlotte,” she recalled. At the same time, major education decisions were diverting resources away from under resourced schools. Coupled with the spiritual harm reinforced by long held teachings, Rawls saw a landscape where one church could not address everything alone. “It was impossible to do the faith work and not also understand that there were so many other incredible needs that existed outside the walls of the church,” she said.
Do No Harm, one of the Freedom Center’s earliest initiatives, responded directly to that need. The program brought clergy into honest conversations about the ways churches had contributed to stigma around sexuality, HIV and LGBTQ+ identity. Rawls remembers being surprised by what she heard. “What I found was almost every cleric I spoke with was far less homophobic than they appeared to be in public,” she said. Many simply lacked a place where they could process their questions without fear. Her own journey made her uniquely prepared to sit with them. “I myself could not even accept my own self for many years,” she told us. “Because of what I went through, personally, I have a lot of grace. I have space for those who are grappling.”
These early conversations helped clergy rethink harmful teachings and their real impact on the LGBTQ+ community. The work built trust where there had been fear and opened space for new relationships that became central to the Freedom Center’s long-term approach. “A lot of the wisdom comes from those relationships,” Rawls said. Importantly, those relationships also created a foundation for later work: Faith leaders who began in Do No Harm eventually partnered with the Freedom Center on HIV initiatives, racial justice actions and fights related to public policy. Even those still theologically uncertain committed to Rawls’s guiding principle that “I cannot cause harm.” It was a cultural shift born from patient, persistent engagement.
Executive Director Cameron Pruette, who stepped into leadership earlier this year, describes the Freedom Center’s approach with similar clarity. “Our work really is about connecting people,” he said. “We have made intentional choices to build relationships and to be truly intersectional in how we approach queer rights, immigrant justice, racial justice and economic justice.” That relational foundation, he explained, is what allows the organization to respond with integrity during moments of crisis. “It has positioned us to respond in ways that we would not be able to otherwise.” Pruette also points out that the organization’s consistency is its power. Even when political winds shift or funding climates change, “the Freedom Center being present” remains a through line.
Over sixteen years, the Freedom Center has developed a wide-ranging ecosystem of programs shaped by its founding commitments. The Trans Seminary Cohort, cohosted with the National LGBTQ Task Force and the Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion, is the nation’s only leadership program specifically designed for transgender and genderqueer seminarians. Participants represent Christian, Jewish and other faith traditions and receive mentorship, theological grounding and community support. More than sixty seminarians have completed the program.
“We have an opportunity to do some pretty amazing work,” Rawls says. The cohort also strengthens the Freedom Center’s belief that trans people should shape their own spiritual and theological futures.
The Freedom Center also runs the For Them Too campaign, which uplifts the needs of trans youth and equips communities with guidance, education and tools to advocate on their behalf. This work reflects the organization’s belief that trans young people deserve communities prepared to stand with them in the face of policy threats and cultural harm.
Community centered programming remains at the heart of the Freedom Center. For Trans Day of Visibility, the organization partnered with the ACLU on the Freedom to Be campaign, inviting community members to create quilt squares that were later displayed on the Capitol lawn to help open World Pride. The Trans Faith and Action Network retreat, held near Durham, brings trans people of faith together for rest, connection, and exploration in a space intentionally led by trans organizers. Rawls described it simply: “We bring together transgender seminarians with other trans leaders for a weekend of connection, and it is a space run by trans people for trans people.”
The organization continues shaping theological conversations through its annual Liberating Theologies conference. This year it was hosted at Union Presbyterian Seminary, where the theme, Love Reimagined, invited participants to consider how love must function not as sentiment but as a force for justice. The gathering brought faith leaders, scholars, activists and community members into conversation about tradition, liberation, identity and what spiritual transformation requires in public life. Sessions focused on theologies shaped by lived experience and the ways spiritual imagination can challenge political and cultural harm.
Cultural work and civic engagement also converge in Clack the Vote, the Freedom Center’s nonpartisan voter education and mobilization program. Handheld fans, which hold deep cultural significance in both church and LGBTQ spaces, became a tool for building political engagement. Rawls explained why it works: The fans “build a bridge between the Black mother in a church and a white gay boy who is flamboyant, and both of them are walking around with a Clack the Vote fan.” This year the Freedom Center adopted five precincts and saw an 85 percent increase in turnout for both the primary and general elections. One of those precincts elected the city’s first Latino council member, who is queer, under 30, and a former DACA recipient. “It is impactful,” Pruette said. The program illustrates how cultural practices, when honored rather than dismissed, can become powerful tools for civic engagement.
The Freedom Center has also deepened its immigrant justice work through participation in the Charlotte Immigrant Protection Alliance with partners like Carolina Migrant Network and Indivisible Charlotte. When ICE and Border Patrol presence rose sharply in Charlotte, years of consistent relationship building allowed the Freedom Center to respond quickly. “Probably the first two years of our intentional outreach, that is all it was,” Pruette said. “The Freedom Center being present.” Today the organization helps coordinate Know Your Rights education, supply drops and crisis support for immigrant families navigating fear and uncertainty. The trust built over slow, steady relationship building has become one of the organization’s strongest tools.
The Freedom Center’s collaborative approach has strengthened movements across the region. Its work with the North Carolina NAACP helped establish an LGBTQ+ committee on the organization’s executive board. The Latin American Coalition has recognized the Freedom Center for its consistent partnership and solidarity. These interwoven relationships reflect the organization’s culture shift philosophy: Show up, stay engaged and build trust.
The Freedom Center’s values also guide its internal structure. This year, the organization launched a Trans Advisory Council composed entirely of Black and Brown trans leaders and increased trans representation on its Board of Directors, ensuring accountability to the communities at the center of its work.
A new partnership with the Black Mountain School of Theology and Community reflects the organization’s commitment to developing leaders who can bridge faith, justice movements and community needs. The school brings activists and seminarians into shared learning environments. Rawls said the goal is to train people together. “We expect activists to know how to work with communities of faith, but nobody teaches them how. We also expect seminary students to understand communities, and nobody teaches them that either.”
Leadership transition has also been a significant moment for the organization. Rawls describes her shift out of day-to-day leadership as intentional and rooted in care. “I wanted to make sure people knew Cameron had my blessing,” she said, noting the importance of continuity in funding and relationships. She also named the importance of modeling a healthy transition. “I saw so many of us do it poorly,” she said. “This was an opportunity to model what is possible.” Pruette’s leadership builds on the foundation she laid while expanding the organization’s political education and voter engagement work. “My faith keeps me grounded,” he said. “It gives me context. It gives me peace in moments like this.”
As the organization prepares for 2026, its priorities remain focused on trans liberation, voter empowerment, immigrant justice and faith-based organizing. Pruette stressed the importance of increasing voter turnout and building strong collaborations with labor unions, faith communities and grassroots groups. Rawls spoke directly to the future, saying, “There will always be marginalized people, and it is my hope that we will always be concerned about and find the most cutting-edge strategies to support and liberate them.”
Both Rawls and Pruette emphasize that the Freedom Center’s strength has always come from the people who make up its community. “We have deep talent in our communities,” Pruette said. “It is about making space for them.” Sixteen years after its founding, the Freedom Center for Social Justice continues to build coalitions, grow leaders and shift culture in ways that are reshaping the Carolinas. Its work remains rooted in community, strengthened by faith and driven by a belief that justice begins with the people most impacted. For these reasons and many more, the Freedom Center for Social Justice is Qnotes’ 2025 Organization of the Year.