Sager Fund

Sager Series

The Sager Series presents high profile and prominent speakers who serve and represent the needs of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities funded by the Sager Fund. Previous events have explored sexual politics in the bedroom, boardroom, and classroom; queer media; coalition building across queer differences; queer people of color; the intersections of race, religion, and gender; queer activism; same-sex marriage and queer families; and transgender movements. Students, faculty, alumni, and other community members gather to attend lectures, engage in discussion, and reconnect. 

The Sager Fund was created in 1988 by Swarthmore College alumnus Richard Sager '73. The purpose of the fund was to provide programs of interest to the gay and lesbian community that helped to overcome homophobia and related discrimination. The original Sager Fund Committee organized a symposium which became, over time, the longest running uninterrupted annual academic symposium in LGBT studies. In 2009,the operating guidelines of The Fund were amended to say that the Sager Fund Committee shall have as its first priority the development and production of "The Sager Series," presenting high profile and prominent speakers, who shall be public figures who serve/represent the needs of the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/queer communities and whose presence will attract the broadest audience. Co-sponsors are also welcome to contribute, along with the Fund, to events that are part of the Sager Series.

Sager Summer Social Action Awards

The Social Impact Summer Scholarship supports students to spend 10 weeks, full time (35 hours per week) pursuing unpaid positions with host organizations that empower them to add dimension to their undergraduate course work while advancing the organization's mission, goals, and objectives. Learn more.

About Richard Sager '74

Richard Sager '74

In 1988, Richard Sager '74 established the Sager Fund to combat homophobia and related discrimination, and to support events that focus on concerns of the lesbian, bisexual, and gay communities and promotescurricular innovation in the field of lesbian and gay studies. 

Sager earned a B.A. in economics from Swarthmore and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.  He moved to San Diego after graduate school and became involved with several LGBT organizations, ultimately chairing the San Diego HIV Funding Collaborative. Sager also co-founded the San Diego Human Dignity Foundation, an LGBT community foundation, and is a past board chair of ARTS - A Reason to Survive, which provides arts-based programs for at-risk youth.

"Swarthmore taught me that there are many directions from which to look at a problem," Sager says. "I think I understood that a creative approach, different from the obvious, was often the most effective and satisfying. Doing my first estate plan after my HIV diagnosis in the mid-1980s, I wanted to give to the LGBTQ community, and wanted to do it through an entity with a proven record of shepherding, protecting, and growing resources. Swarthmore seemed a natural."