Rodney Davis is the recipient of the Rhode Island Foundation’s 2026 Pride Award. The Coventry resident was honored for three decades of work on behalf of LGBTQ+ Rhode Islanders.
“There is little more at the heart of the American ideal than the belief in equality. Each of us has an obligation to live that truth — and more importantly — to shine a light on it,” said David N. Cicilline, the Foundation’s president and CEO. “There is no better way to put the progress we have made in perspective than to celebrate the work of someone who has spent 30 years on the frontlines of the struggle for equality.”
Davis is a Rhode Island-based community leader, communications strategist and longtime LGBTQIA+ civil rights advocate. As President of Rhode Island Pride, he helps lead one of New England’s most visible Pride celebrations, Rhode Island PrideFest and the Illuminated Night Parade.
“I strive to use storytelling, organizing and public celebration to build community, honor history and create spaces where people can be seen, valued and proudly themselves,” said Davis, who accepted the Foundation’s Pride Award on the PrideFest main stage.
His community work spans more than three decades, including leadership with the former Rhode Island Alliance for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, chairing the Providence Municipal Reparations Commission and serving with the African American Ambassadors Group.
In addition, he graduated from College Unbound as a Diversity Leadership Scholar and is an alumnus of Leadership Rhode Island.
He is the founder of RPD Creative Foundry, a communications and creative strategy studio where strategy and impact are forged, rooted in equity, culture and community.
Davis lives in Coventry with his partner of more than 25 years, Brian Mills, along with their rescue Pit Bull Terriers Beau and Bronx, their cat Jackson and a brook of happy hens.
The annual Pride Award is just one of the ways the Foundation supports and celebrates Rhode Island’s LGBTQ+ communities.
Nonprofits that serve the state’s LGBTQ+ communities have until Aug. 13 to apply for grants of up to $10,000 through the Foundation’s Equity Action Fund. Over the years, the Foundation has awarded more than $1.4 million in grants through the fund to support health care, ongoing youth and civil rights advocacy, youth programs and protecting LGBTQ+ victims of intimate partner violence, sexual assault and human trafficking, among other services.
In addition to support from the Equity Action Fund, the Foundation has awarded more than $2 million in additional funding for services to LGBTQ+ communities just since 2020.
The Foundation also commissioned a multi-year research project on the experiences of the LGBTQ+ communities in Rhode Island, which includes a set of priorities for the future. The study – featuring oral interview transcriptions and a timeline of significant LGBTQ+ milestones – is posted at rifoundation.org/lgbtqinri.
The Rhode Island Foundation is the largest and most comprehensive funder of nonprofit organizations in Rhode Island. Through civic leadership, fundraising and grantmaking activities, together with partners and neighbors, the Foundation is helping to create progress that lasts. For more information, visit rifoundation.org.
— from a RI Foundation press release