Individual | Inducted in 2024
Daniel L. Dever began his lifetime commitment to Chicago’s LGBTQ community in 1984, when he volunteered to participate in a groundbreaking AIDS epidemiological study of gay and bisexual men at Howard Brown Memorial Clinic. Dever broadened his volunteerism at Howard Brown by utilizing his background in journalism and marketing to lead public awareness and fundraising projects in 1985-86, and in 1987 he joined the Howard Brown staff as Director of Development, overseeing fundraising and communications and extending Howard Brown’s financial support beyond the LGBTQ+ community. He also served on the planning committee for AIDS Walk Chicago, first held in 1991, which benefits local HIV/ AIDS service organizations and continues annually under the auspices of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago.
In 1992, Dever became Director of Development at Children’s Place Association, a nonprofit organization that opened a Chicago group home for young children with HIV/AIDS. Dan recruited gay men and lesbians as staff members, volunteers, and supporters, and secured government and private funding allowing the organization to pioneer new services to help additional children and families impacted by HIV/AIDS. When Children’s Place planned a foster care program for children with HIV/AIDS or orphaned by AIDS, Dever was instrumental in including gay and lesbian households as Children’s Place became the first foster care agency in Illinois to openly recruit and license same-sex couples as foster/ adoptive parents. Though Dever retired from full-time service at Children’s Place Association in 2021, he continues assisting on special projects.
Throughout his nonprofit career, Dan was also an active volunteer with various organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, where he served on the LGBT Advisory Committee (1994-1997); Equality Illinois, where he served on the board of directors (2004-2011); and the Chicago steering committee for Rainbow Railroad (2019-2021), an international organization that rescues LGBTQ+ individuals facing violence and persecution in their home countries. Currently, he serves on the board of the Reader Institute for Community Journalism, the nonprofit entity that assumed ownership of the Chicago Reader newspaper in 2022.