SQSHBook Resource Guide

Boosting queer community access to resources.

Our SQSHBook resource guide catalogs 1,200+ St. Louis resources, consolidates vetting information from queer-led organizations, and connects users to LGBTQIA-affirming services. Unlike national directories, SQSH can connect you with grassroots community wisdom and culturally competent local resources. Use the SQSHBook to find queer-vetted, identity-affirming resources across a range of categories, including housing, food, healthcare, support groups, and more.

Disclaimer: Resources in the SQSHBook can change at any given time due to funding and/or resources. We cannot guarantee that every single piece of information in the SQSHBook is accurate at all times. We encourage you to check the resource’s website or call their phone number to make sure the information you are getting is up-to-date.

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Submit a Resource

Know a resource that would be helpful to add to the SQSHBook? Submit that resource and we will work hard to incorporate it into the SQSHBook.

Edit a Resource

Know a resource in the SQSHBook that you'd like to suggest edits or updates to? Submit your edits for that resource and we will work hard to incorporate your updates into the SQSHBook.

Leave a Review

Good News: As of April 2024, we’ve launched Community Reviews! You’ll now get the chance to rate and review local resources on SQSHBook based on your experiences as a queer person – sort of like a Queer Yelp.

Know a resource in the SQSHBook that you had personal experiences with? Submit your review for that resource and we will work hard to incorporate your review into the SQSHBook listing. We especially invite in-depth reviews from queer/LGBTQIA+ St. Louisans with multiple marginalized identities and intersectional experiences with a resource.

By empowering queer community members to submit feedback on service providers, we can combine our forces to create democratic, queer-centered narratives around local resources and increase the pressure for providers to be queer-competent.

Search for a resource in the SQSHBook and Leave a Review directly on the listing.

Feedback for SQSHBook

Have an idea for functionality you'd like to see incorporated? Found a bug? Have a question about the program? Share your feedback with our team and help improve this community platform.

The SQSHBook Team is working hard to make the latest version of our resource database as user-friendly and accessible as possible – and your feedback is critical to that process!

Vetting Process & Partners

  • In general, there are several ways we try to assess if a resource is queer-affirming:

    • Whether other queer-led groups have vetted the resource previously (i.e. MTUG, Trans Education Service, PROMO, STLAVP, PFLAG, TransParent)

    • Whether they have undergone training with SQSH or any of our partners

    • Whether we have received positive community feedback from our volunteers, callers, and other community members we come into contact with

    Learn more about our Vetting Partners!

    Please note that not all SQSHBook resources are vetted to be queer-affirming or trans-affirming, as we’re currently still developing the “Vetted By” and “Community Reviews” features.

    • No, not all resources on the SQSHBook are vetted.

    • The SQSHBook is a database of community-crowdsourced resources, but not all resources listed in it are queer-affirming.

    • Keep an eye out for “Vetted by” badges – they show up if a resource has been vetted by one of SQSH’s Vetting Partners.

    • Use a mixture of the “Vetted by” badges and “Community Reviews” to differentiate between resources that are or are not a good fit for you.

  • If there’s a specific resource you have in mind, we recommend looking it up on SQSHBook, and checking their tags to see if they are queer or trans-affirming.

    We also have this list of most commonly used helpline referrals we use, if you’re looking for something faster / more like a cheat sheet.

More About SQSHBook

Our team at SQSH understands the importance of word-of-mouth referrals within marginalized communities. That’s why, since founding, we’ve been working hard to create the SQSHBook, which we hope will serve as a roadmap for users seeking identity-affirming services.

SQSHBook works by:

  • Crowdsourcing resource recommendations from queer St. Louisans

  • Highlighting queer-vetted resource entries

  • Connecting users with grassroots community knowledge 

  • Facilitating vetting and community reviews that are intersectionally considered along lines of race, gender, sexuality, and more

    • LGBTQIA+ populations experience disproportionate violence, job insecurity, homelessness, and substance use, but face compounded barriers to accessing the identity-affirming resources needed to heal from those injustices.

    • YET… Traditional nonprofits often gate-keep resource information by implementing proprietary policies around their resource guides, contributing to queer St. Louisans’ lack of trust and familiarity with the local service ecosystem.

    • Traditional nonprofits also record resource information in an identity-neutral way, without regard to the specific infrastructure that queer people need to feel safe.

    • Queer St. Louisans often rely on word-of-mouth recommendations from trusted peers.

    • Those who lack these social connections are left on their own to navigate a queerphobic resource ecosystem.

  • Boost queer and other marginalized communities’ access to resources by using technology to:

    • catalog thousands of St. Louis-area resources,

    • consolidate vetting information from queer- & BIPOC-led organizations, and

    • connect users to queer- & BIPOC-affirming services.

    • Create queer-centered narratives around local resources

      • Increase pressure to serve queer St. Louisans effectively

    • Strengthen our community’s connection to vetted resources

    • Improve LGBTQIA+ access to health and well-being

    • Transform systems that have rendered queer experiences invisible

  • Our SQSHBook Team is working hard to develop more user-friendly search & review functions for SQSHBook V2.0, including:

    1. Attribute Filters: Allow users to filter resources against key attributes

    2. Search Results: Improve Homepage Search, Filter Results, Advanced Search

    3. Suggested Edits: A mechanism for suggesting edits to a resource entry

    We’re currently sourcing for funding to help us resource the long-term vetting work that we want to do with our partners.

    • 2019 – Resource lists and vetting records from various organizations compiled into Word document

    • 2020 – Info migrated from document to Google Sheet

    • 2021 – Public version of SQSHBook spreadsheet published on SQSH website

    • 2022 – All Google Sheet entries migrated to Contentful database

Volunteering for SQSHBook

Do you have data entry skills or experience? Help us clean up our resource entries as a SQSHBook Data Volunteer!

Join the SQSHBook Team by applying here. We will set up a tutorial with you to teach you how to work with the back-end SQSHBook data using a content management system called Contentful.

Get Trained On Resource Referrals & SQSHBook

Want to learn how to search for resources and connect marginalized community members to identity-affirming services? Check out our slidedeck on how to navigate the St. Louis resource ecosystem using an intersectional, mixed-methods approach – originally developed by and for our Peer Counselors!

To receive a personalized tutorial on how to use this spreadsheet, request a SQSHBook training from our SQSHBook Team! Case managers, social workers, and hotline operators would particularly benefit from this training by:

  • Improving your understanding of resources in the St. Louis region

  • Improving your ability to search for and identity relevant, identity-affirming resources for your clients

  • Improving your responsiveness to clients’ identity-specific concerns when recommending resources

  • Bringing back relevant resource referral tips to your organization, enabling skill-building and knowledge-sharing within your team