What ‘Heated Rivalry’ Teaches Nonprofits About LGBTQ+ Safety and Inclusion

I spend a lot of time working with nonprofit leaders about serving the whole of community and becoming more inclusion. Most of them are well intended and recognise more work is needed. Many have Pride flags in their windows and diversity statements on their websites. But when I ask about their anti-harassment protocols or how they handle pronoun requests in their database, the conversation gets quieter.

That gap between intention and infrastructure is exactly what the hit TV series Heated Rivalry (on CRAVE) captures so well. The series follows two elite hockey players navigating a relationship they can't make public. Yes, It's a romance, but it's also a case study in what happens when organizational culture punishes authenticity or fails to create culture and space where everyone is welcome.

For nonprofits working on community outreach or any mission that requires trust and safety, the Heated Rivalry story offers practical lessons worth examining.

Data you need to know

The tension in Heated Rivalry revolves around a single question: what happens if people find out? For many LGBTQ+ people in Canada that still remains a legitimate safety concern and is backed by evidence.

According to Statistics Canada, police-reported hate crimes targeting sexual orientation increased by 64% between 2019 and 2021. Hate crimes based on gender identity or expression rose even more sharply. While reporting increased in 2024, the upward trend over recent years remains clear and concerning.

Sport environments, which provide the backdrop for the series, show particular challenges. Research from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport found “Eighty-seven per cent of Canadian participants in the Out on the Fields international study (2015) witnessed or experienced homophobia in sport; more than half (57%) of gay men, nearly half (45%) of lesbians and 41% of straight men said they personally experienced homophobia.” While more current data would provide greater insight, LGBTQ+ athletes are significantly more likely to experience discrimination, harassment, and exclusion compared to their heterosexual peers (CCES, 2019). Many report concealing their identities to avoid negative consequences.

Youth mental health data adds urgency as LGBTQ+ young people in Canada experience depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation at rates significantly higher than their heterosexual peers (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 2021). Key factors to youth mental health is social exclusion and lack of supportive environments.

These aren't abstract statistics. They represent the daily calculations your staff, volunteers, and community members should be making about whether it's safe to be themselves in your organization.

Many nonprofits assume that having a non-discrimination policy is enough. It isn't.

The Heated Rivalry series illustrates more broadly is that harm doesn't always look like overt hostility. It looks like jokes that never stop. Silence when someone needs backup. Leadership that says "keep it private" instead of "we've got your back." Policies that exist on paper but never get enforced.

The characters in Heated Rivalry aren't hiding because of one villain. They're hiding because the entire system rewards conformity and punishes deviation. I hope it makes us evaluate our own organization and how we may be operating the same way without realizing it.

There are hidden costs of managing identity

One of the most revealing aspects of the series is the exhaustion. The constant monitoring of language, interactions, and relationships. The mental energy spent calculating personal and professional risk.

In organizational terms, this is productivity loss you're not tracking. When LGBTQ+ staff members spend cognitive resources managing their identity, they have less capacity for their actual mission-focused work. When volunteers feel unsafe, they disengage or leave. When clients can't trust the organization with basic information about who they are your service delivery and mission suffers.

Suggested Framework for Nonprofits

Based on what I've observed working with organizations, here are some changes that can help move the needle on LGBTQ+ safety and inclusion.

1. Enhance privacy with protection

Many organizations confuse privacy with safety. They tell LGBTQ+ staff "you can be yourself here" but offer no meaningful protection when harm occurs.

Real protection requires enforceable standards:

• Anti-harassment policies that explicitly cover sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression

• Clear reporting mechanisms with guaranteed confidentiality

• Documented consequences that apply regardless of who causes harm (yes, even board members and major donors)

• Leadership follow-through that people can see and verify

I recommend conducting an annual review of incidents reported and actions taken. If you've had zero reports, that's not necessarily success.

2. Make bad behavior costly

In Heated Rivalry, locker-room culture doesn't need to be overtly hostile to be dangerous. It just needs silence. When harmful comments go unchallenged, the message is clear - the behavior is acceptable.

Someone makes a joke. Leadership notices but stays quiet to "avoid conflict." LGBTQ+ staff notice the silence and adjust accordingly.

Your organization needs non-negotiables:

• Codes of conduct that apply to all spaces (physical, virtual, formal, informal)

• Specific examples of unacceptable behavior, not vague language about "respect"

• Escalation procedures that staff actually know and trust

• Training for managers on how to intervene in the moment

Silence is a choice that supports harm. Your leaders and front line staff need support tools and education to make better choices.

3. Distribute the inclusion work

One of the most painful patterns in the series is isolation. The couple has no support network, no safe people to turn to, no infrastructure for their well-being.

This mirrors what happens in many organizations. LGBTQ+ staff become the default "inclusion committee of one." They educate colleagues, coach leadership, absorb micro-aggressions, and carry the emotional labor of making the organization safer, and usually without additional compensation, support or recognition.

This model fails everyone:

• It burns out LGBTQ+ staff

• It relieves non-LGBTQ+ staff from learning

• It makes inclusion fragile (what happens when that person leaves?)

Structural solutions include:

• Compensating lived-experience advisors as consultants, not volunteers

• Rotating inclusion responsibilities across teams

• Training all supervisors, not just the "friendly" ones

• Building inclusion metrics into performance reviews for leadership

• Forming collaborative partnerships with LGBTQ+ organizations to integrate your efforts

4. Build infrastructure before visibility

A Pride statement without infrastructure is marketing, not commitment. A rainbow logo without meaningful policy, training, and reporting procedures is decoration, not protection.

I've have heard to stories of organizations encouraging LGBTQ+ staff to be visible during Pride month without planning or responding to the backlash that follows. Visibility can increase risk and may trigger donor complaints, community harassment, and internal resistance. When nonprofits ask people to be visible without preparation, they create harm.

Practical infrastructure includes:

• Staff training on supportive language and trauma-informed responses

• Privacy controls in registration systems (chosen names, pronouns, preferred contact methods)

• Protocols for addressing harassment (online, in-person, from donors, from clients)

• Crisis support pathways ready before you need them

• Leaverging LGBTQ+ experts to help guide your efforts, such as Pride at Work Canada

5. Treat safety as governance

Safe spaces don't happen because people are nice, rather they happen because organizations design, measure, and manage safety with the same rigor they apply to financial controls.

I recommend treating LGBTQ+ safety as a governance function:

• Assign board-level accountability

• Conduct annual safety audits

• Report on metrics: incidents, response times, training completion, policy updates

• Build safety assessments into program design, not as afterthoughts

Heated Rivalry delivers a clear message - love isn't enough when the environment is unsafe. The same applies to organizational inclusion and acceptance.

The characters in the series shouldn't have to hide to be safe, nor should the people your nonprofit serves. Let’s ensure LGBTQ+ safety and inclusion is part of our mission.

Sources:

• Statistics Canada (2022). "Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2021."

• Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (2019). "LGBTQI+ Inclusion in Canadian Sport Survey."

• Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (2021). "Mental Health and the LGBTQ Community."