Community, Creativity, and Courage: Chicxs Rockerxs South East LA

When we created the Third Sector Fights Back grant program, we set out to stand with organizations navigating heightened obstacles under the current political landscape. Sadly, the pressures facing nonprofits—and the communities they serve—have only intensified in ways we couldn’t have fully predicted.

These are challenging times for those working in the nonprofit world. Yet, the importance of that work has never been clearer. At MonkeyPod, we're proud to continue offering support through this grant initiative, and earlier this month, we opened applications for the next round of grantees.

From April through June 2025, we’re inviting nonprofit organizations focused on addressing educational inequities—whether related to race, income, gender, disability, or other systemic barriers—to apply. If you or someone you know is doing powerful work in this space, we encourage you to apply at https://monkeypod.com/third-sector-fights-back.

As we continue to review applications, we want to keep spotlighting our first batch of grantees. A couple weeks ago, we shared an interview with Keweenaw Queers. This week, we’re sharing information about Chicxs Rockerxs South East Los Angeles. They’ve been serving trans and gender expansive youth and girls in their community since 2013, and are ramping up for the 11th iteration of their annual summer camp this year. Learn more about their work and how you can support them below.

Chicxs Rockerxs South East Los Angeles

Matt Radick (MR): How and why did you start Chicxs Rockerxs?

Vikki Gutman (VG): Chicxs Rockerxs got started in 2013. It was myself and four other musicians who were fed up with dealing with the local music scene and being harassed for being women or being queer. We were tired of going to spaces and shows in our community and seeing lineups of mostly men. We didn’t feel like that represented us.

So we wanted to do something that celebrated us. And then we found these Girls Rock camps that were in different areas, and we thought that was really cool and awesome and was pretty much what we wanted to do, but we wanted to do it here where we live and grew up.

So we started that in 2013, and we spent the next two years recruiting campers, families, and staff. We became a nonprofit in 2014, and then by 2015, we held our first summer camp.

MR: How have you grown since the initial summer camp?

VG: Since the first camp, we’ve launched three other programs. First is our Lxs Sobrinx youth organizing program, which is for teenagers to learn skills that will help them organize. We teach things like public speaking, budgeting, problem solving, and putting events together. We teach all the skills they need to start throwing their own shows or throwing their own events. These are things that could also help them with school or for jobs as they're going to college.

We also pay them for their time because they’re helping us put on events, and we give them letters of recommendation. And since launching that program in 2019, we’ve recruited four of our teen organizers to join Chicxs Rockerxs as adult organizers. Some of them have been with us since our first camp in 2015.

We also host Sonditos Saturdays music workshops, which offer a variety of music workshops on different topics for girls, trans, and gender expansive youth. Each workshop is 5-6 sessions. We’ve done things like an introduction to instruments, setting up and caring for your instruments, and recently we hosted a songwriting workshop and taught participants how to use an online app to make their own music. We also gave them microphones to take home so they could continue to make music on their own.

And in addition to each of those, we also host a variety of other events throughout the year. The primary one is our Queer Prom which we co-host with other LGBTQ+ serving organizations in our community. We put together a youth committee that helps plan the event, and we pay them for their work on that. And we host a bunch of other events throughout the year including a Halloween event put on by our teen organizers and a Swap Meet and Greet. And a lot of times people that have completed the Sonditos Saturdays workshops will help with those events because we teach things like cable management, how to run live audio, how to set up speakers and things like that.

MR: What led you to apply for the Third Sector Fights Back grant? How did you determine you needed those additional resources?

VG: We’re coming up on the 11th year of doing the summer camp, and now we feel like we should take more intentional steps to be organized when it comes to things like our donors. We know that there are people that actually care about uplifting trans and gender expansive youth and girls of color, and we know they are down to put their money where their mouth is.

We knew we needed to be more organized with connecting with those people, because there’s been so many donors over the years that I would just keep track of through Excel or PayPal or Venmo. And it’s just not sustainable.

But with everything going on federally, especially with federal funding, it just didn’t seem like we would have the capacity to pay for software to support that work. In January, it was around Inauguration Day and seeing all the executive orders, I felt like I got slapped in the face, like, this is my reality now.

And that’s around when I saw the Third Sector Fights Back grant. At some point I looked up nonprofit accounting software and I saw MonkeyPod and signed up for the newsletter. And then I got the email about the program, it was honestly awesome to see. It was such a boost to see that MonkeyPod is also one of our partners that’s down to support trans youth, gender expansive youth, and girls.

So I saw the email and I applied, thinking we really need to be more organized, especially with our funding and our donors. And it was awesome to find out that we were selected.

MR: It’s a particularly challenging time for LGBTQ+ folks and people of color. Has the nature of your programming changed in response to that?

VG: A little bit. For example with our camp, we have always done a songwriting workshop and a self-defense workshop, and we’ve been doing that since the beginning. Obviously songwriting is important for the musical process, but self-defense isn’t a music thing at all. But it is really important for youth, especially for girls and femmes, especially in a music scene that isn’t always welcoming to people who aren’t men.

We’ve recently gotten more insensitive comments on our social media, and there was an article written about us in the L.A. Times where people were saying things like “This is Trump’s America now, I can’t wait for this to go away.” So that self-defense portion feels even more important now because it does feel like things are more polarized.

This year we’ve also spent more time talking about gender identity and expression and we’re looking to incorporate a workshop on that. We have families and trans youth and gender expansive youth and girls that understand that, but we also have people who just see camp as like “I want my daughter to go to this camp to be around a bunch of girls like her,” which doesn’t fully acknowledge the trans or gender expansive experience. So we want to use the camp as an opportunity to be exposed to those ideas. We hope kids that attend come away with friends who are trans and we’re going to teach them the appropriate language and pronouns to use and to be respectful of each other.

MR: What are some of the things you’re excited to do with MonkeyPod?

VG: We just sent our first email blast, which was exciting. We’re excited to continue to use that to connect with our community.

But right now I’m really just trying to lay the groundwork for our donor management and contacts. I’m starting to fill in details about people and interactions and thinking about how we can engage our donors more thoughtfully. I’m starting to see how we can really build relationships with people beyond just like “Hey, give me your money.”

We’re also excited to see how we can engage people in other ways too. Some people have money, but others have other resources to share, and I’m excited to keep better track of that. I was tracking all that in Excel before and it just got to the point where it didn’t make sense to do it in Excel anymore. So I’m excited to move that into MonkeyPod.

I’m really interested in the financial side of things too, and getting better at tracking our accounting and our grants. We’ve been using Quickbooks, and it’s okay. It’s fine for our financial docs and stuff for our taxes, but when it comes to grants, it’s terrible. So I’m really interested in taking advantage of that.

MR: How can folks support Chicxs Rockerxs South East Los Angeles and the work you’re doing?

VG: Definitely check out our website, which is crsela.org. We have different ways to plug in with us listed there.

Financial resources are always great, but we take in musical gear and equipment as well. We’re always looking for volunteers too, our volunteer and staff applications for the summer camp just closed, but we’ll definitely need volunteers for Queer Prom. And then helping spread the word about us is always great too, following us on social media or just talking about us with people you know.

And I mean, just support trans youth, gender expansive youth and girls in every way you can. Uplift their voices any way that you can, especially Black, indigenous, and people of color.

Third Sector Fights Back

As a reminder, we are currently accepting submissions for the next round of Third Sector Fights Back grantees. We’re currently looking to support nonprofits that are addressing inequity in education. You or a nonprofit you know can apply by visiting https://monkeypod.com/third-sector-fights-back.

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis through June 2025. We will announce our next cohort of grantees and the next call for applications in the next few months.