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Take Action to Force Change at the AIDS Foundation |
Six
Things SFAF's |
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Each of us may feel that the largest AIDS organization in San Francisco can simply do no wrong. But unless our collective voices are heard, change will not occur at SFAF because its board of directors are too irresponsible to fire senior leaders of SFAF. This is a call to action, and your help is critically and urgently needed. If you have ever lost someone to AIDS, or are caring for someone with HIV/AIDS, it is up to you to help force change at SFAF! |
The most important thing each of you can do is to write an e-mail to ten of your friends, colleagues, or family informing them about TheLastWatch.com web site. By sharing this information, you may be helping to preserve services to people with HIV/AIDS by helping to force the San Francisco AIDS Foundation to be more accountable for its mismanagement, and its pandemic waste.
Six Things SFAF's Clients Can Do
If you have been denied services, or have been placed on waiting lists for services from SFAF:
1. Write an open letter to SFAF’s Executive Director, Pat Christen, asking her why the AIDS Foundation has routed $22.4 million to $36 million to Africa rather than providing you with services. Send a photocopy of your letter to every newspaper in San Francisco, and in particular, to the San Francisco Bay Area Reporter; if your situation permits and you are brave enough, ask the media to cover your story.
2. File complaints with the HIV Health Services Planning Council (also known as the local CARE Council), the Better Business Bureau, and the San Francisco Department of Public Health. [The CARE Council can be reached by e-mailing Leah Crask, an administrative support person to the Council, at lcrask@shanti.org]
3. Write a letter to your district supervisor on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors at City Hall, and tell them to stop using City General Funds to prop up this unresponsive AIDS service organization.
4. Write a complaint letter to SFAF’s Board of Directors Chair, Russ Testa, and keep a copy of your letter. If you are subsequently discriminated against by SFAF for having written Mr. Testa, file a complaint with San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission. Ask Mr. Testa to uphold his duty as a board member, and ask him to fire Pat Christen.
5. Write to KRON (Channel 4) TV, and tell them that you are going to boycott watching Channel 4 until movie critic Jan Wahl stops supporting SFAF. Write to other entertainment celebrities, and tell that that you will not buy their music CD’s, attend their movies, or attend their concerts until they stop supporting SFAF. Tell them that it is inappropriate that they use their celebrity status to support an organization diverting money away from Bay Area HIV/AIDS needs in favor of focusing on Africa instead. Only when entertainment stars realize that their support of SFAF is hurting their careers will they stop propping up SFAF and Pat Christen.
6. If you fear that you will risk having your services at SFAF cut back for being vocal in voicing a complaint (believe me, this has happened), e-mail TheLastWatch.com using the link in the bottom frame of this web site, and describe your problem. TheLastWatch guarantees that it will hold your name and identify in complete confidence. But we will track the kinds of problems clients are having with SFAF, and we will periodically update this web site with statistics on the numbers and types of problems that occur. We will summarize the data, and protecting your confidentiality, we will use the information at various public hearings (before the Board of Supervisors, the CARE Council, and at the San Francisco Health Commission) without mentioning names of clients. TheLastWatch promises to present only aggregate data during public testimony and on this web site, not names of individual people having trouble with SFAF.
Three Things Smaller Bay Area ASO's Can Do Now
The smaller Bay Area AIDS service organizations (ASO’s) are held hostage to SFAF’s “grantee model” of sharing fundraising event revenue. SFAF asks you to loan it your organization’s good name to help lure participants to its various fundraising events, and without your participation, they would not raise so much money. Then they turn around and send the money out of state, and out of the country, sharing little of the event proceeds with your organization. Here’s how you can help:
1. Call SFAF’s Board Chairman, Russ Testa, who is vice president for human resources at Mervyn’s. Try reaching him at (415) 921-0888 by asking for him by job title. Demand a private meeting with him, without Pat Christen or other SFAF staff being present. Tell him in no uncertain terms that your organization has had enough, and that you expect AIDS Walk 2004 funds will be shared equitably with your organization, or it will be the last year that you loan SFAF your organization’s name.
2. Form a committee now comprised of other ASO’s in your situation. Demand an immediate meeting with both Mr. Testa, SFAF’s full board of directors, and Pat Christen. Tell them that, collectively, you each expect funds raised in the expectation of helping people living with HIV/AIDS in the Bay Area will stop being diverted to Pangaea, immediately. Tell that that unless they switch to a full, “beneficiary model” — providing you with control over both event fundraising overhead and control over how the funds raised will be shared equitably among all organizations — and agree to it in writing before April 15, 2004 (stress that is tax filing day!) that your organization will pull out of AIDS Walk 2004, and that you will encourage your support base to boycott this year’s AIDS Walk, AIDS LifeCylce (the new bike ride), and the AIDS Marathon until, and unless, SFAF agrees in writing to share funds raised at these events using the “beneficiary model,” not the “grantee model.”
3. If suggestions 1 and 2 fail, form an alternative AIDS Walk, and widely advertise that you have split from SFAF, just as SFAF mounted a very nasty public battle with Palotta Teamworks. Show SFAF you mean business in forming a competing event. You have no idea of how many people have stopped donating to SFAF simply because of Pat Christen’s arrogance and overall mismanagement of SFAF; these disgruntled donors would be only too happy to see an alternative event spring up. Key to the success of an alternative event would be a) Your promise that funds raised at such an event will go first to Bay Area needs, and only when Bay Area needs have been adequately funded would you consider sending any remaining funds out-of-state or out-of-country, and b) That event overhead expenses will be maintained at a level far lower than the excessive spending on event overhead by SFAF.
1. Do not write another check made out to SFAF! Instead, donate your hard-earned money to one of the organizations worthy of support listed below. If you are having payroll deductions forwarded directly to SFAF, stop them immediately.
2. If you really must attend the next AIDS Walk, do not write a check made out to another organization and turn it in at the AIDS Walk. Take it from TheLastWatch, who had sponsored a walker two years ago, forewarned her of what might likely happen, and then had to comfort the walker when we showed her the canceled check made out to another organization that SFAF had cashed anyway, ignoring the donor restriction (see the SFAF Fundraising page on this web site).
3. If you follow the recommendation in item 1 above, then write to the chairman of SFAF’s Board of Directors, Russ Testa, telling him which alternative organization you have decided to contribute funds to instead, how much, and your reasons for no longer supporting SFAF.
4. If you are a member of a corporate “team,” urge your team to donate directly to another organization instead.
5. If your employer contributes to SFAF, write to your director of corporate giving and urge them to stop supporting SFAF, and recommend an alternative organization worthy of your employer’s kindness.
6. Write to the San Francisco Department of Public Health — preferably directly to Mitch Katz, MD, Director of Public Health — and urge it to locate another non-profit organization to administer the housing voucher contract that SFAF now manages on behalf of the City. Send a courtesy copy of your letter to the San Francisco Health Commission’s chairman, Edward Chow, MD; to our new Mayor, Gavin Newsom; and to Board of Supervisors president Matt Gonzalez.
7. After doing all or some of the above, write to Russ Testa again, and demand that SFAF terminate Pat Christen and her senior management team immediately. Tell them that until SFAF resumes its focus on the Bay Area and funds Bay Area needs equitably, that you will not support the diversion of funds away from the Bay Area to Africa via Pangaea.
1. Stop accepting advertisements for SFAF’s Gay Life workshops until SFAF releases to the public the efficacy analysis of the Gay Life program conducted by UCSF’s AIDS Research Institute (see discussion of this issue on the Gay Life page on this web site). When the report is finally released to the public, report on it fairly.
2. File public records requests with SFAF asking to obtain SFAF’s budgets, audited financial statements, annual reports, and IRS tax returns for the fiscal years ending in June 2003, June 2002, and June 2001. Read them, critically analyze information contained in these documents, and then report on them fairly to your readers. Demand answers from SFAF about why it has diverted somewhere between $22.4 million and $36 million to Africa while it has simultaneously cut services to people living with HIV/AIDS in the Bay Area. Failure to do so by the media can only be seen as complicit enabling of a very out-of-touch, out-of-control organization. Failure to do so can also be seen as censoring from your readers’ view what is really going on at SFAF, in San Francisco, and in the Bay Area.
3. Start attending SFAF’s board of directors meetings, and report accurately on what transpires at the meetings. TheLastWatch is tired of being the sole member of the community and the only member of the media who attends SFAF’s board meetings.
4. Write more editorials about the sorry state of affairs at SFAF.
5. If the smaller Bay Area ASO’s form competing fundraising events, provide fair balance in news coverage about the underlying issues of why they were forced into doing so.
Organizations Worthy of Supporting Directly
Below is a list of various AIDS service organizations (arranged by Bay Area counties) that have been on the short end of receiving an equitable distribution of funds raised at the San Francisco AIDS Walk for well over eight years. The list is not inclusive; various organizations — SFAF’s “preferred partners,” those with dubious goals, and other out-of-state and out-of-country organizations — have been excluded.
Before AIDS Walk 2004 is held in June or July 2004, this list will be updated to show the mailing address, name of the executive directors, and phone numbers. Meanwhile, those organizations highlighted in red are highly recommended for their known good works.
But as always, do not write checks to these organizations and mail the checks to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation; they have cashed checks before made out to other organizations in the past, and SFAF does not honor restrictions you place on use of the funds by making the check payable to another organization (see the Fundraising page for further details).
Alameda County
Berkeley Community Law Center, Berkeley, CA
Freemont Mission: AIDS, Fremont, CA
Eden I&R, Inc., Hayward, CA
AIDS Project of the East Bay (APEB), Oakland, CA
Asian Health Services, Oakland, CA
La Clinica de La Raza/Fruitvale Health Project, Oakland, CA
Valley Community Health Center, Pleasanton, CA
Contra Costa
County
AIDS Project of Contra Costa/
The Center for AIDS Services, Concord, CA
Diablo Valley AIDS Center, Concord, CA
Rainbow Community Center, Concord, CA
AIDS Community Network (CAN), Richmond, CA
Neighborhhod House of North Richmond, Richmond, CA
Marin County
Marin AIDS Interfaith Network, San Anselmo, CA
Community Action Marin, San Rafael, CA
Marin AIDS Project, San Rafael, CA
Meals of Marin, San Rafael, CA
San Mateo County
Ellipse Peninsula AIDS Services, San Mateo, CA
San Mateo County AIDS Program, San Mateo, CA
El Concillo of San Mateo County
Santa Clara
County
AIDS Resources, Information and Services (ARIS), San Jose, CA
City and County
of San Francisco
AIDS Emergency Fund, SF, CA
Ark of Refuge, SF, CA
Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center, SF, CA
Bay Area Young Positives, SF, CA
Breast Cancer Emergency
Fund, SF, CA (through the AIDS Emergency
Fund)
Continuum HIV Day Services, SF, CA
Dolores Street Community Services, SF, CA
Home Care Companions, SF, CA
Horizons Foundation, SF, CA
Immune Enhancement Project, SF, CA
Larkin Street Youth Center, SF, CA
Living Well Project/Asian AIDS Project, SF, CA
Lyon-Martin Women ’s
Health Services, SF, CA
Maitri AIDS Hospice/Maitri Residential Care for People Living
With AIDS, SF, CA
Mission Neighborhood
Health Center, SF, CA
Most Holy Redeemer AIDS Support Group, SF, CA
Native American AIDS Project, SF, CA
Positive Resource Center, SF, CA
Project Open Hand, SF, CA
Quan Yin Health Arts Center, SF, CA
SF Black Coalition on AIDS, SF, CA [Note: The San Francisco
Health Commission has had concerns about fiduciary maagement at
BCA)
Swords to Plowshares Veterans Rights Organization, SF, CA
Visiting Nurses and
Hospice of San Francisco, SF, CA
Women’s AIDS Network, SF, CA
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Copyright (c) 2004 by Patrick Monette-Shaw. All rights reserved.
This work may not be reposted anywhere on the Web, or reprinted
in any print media, without express written permission of the
author. E-mail him at pmonette-shaw@earthlink.net.