As grant-making to address HIV/AIDS evolves, it should intensify efforts to work in communities
By Adam Goudjil C' 23
Source: https://revmarksandlin.com/
As the HIV/AIDS global epidemic emerged as a problem in communities during the 1980s, governments and hospitals tracked its movement at the international level. Today, HIV/AIDS remains an important problem, yet is no longer in the global limelight; and the nonprofit sector has been tasked with prevention and community awareness in their localities. In our own city of Philadelphia, groups like AIDS Fund Philly and the Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance have been dedicated to working with Philadelphians affected by AIDS. To fund this community-based defense of the disease, I argue that foundations should be at the frontier of supporting communities and their underlying social issues.
Fortunately, it seems as though this is already happening. One organization of grantmakers centers their philanthropic work around HIV/AIDS — Funders Concerned About AIDS (FCAA). In 2016, the FCAA found that grant-makers began to fund for the “connection between HIV/AIDS and other community needs.” These funds come in the form of grants to the community-based organizations dedicated to HIV/AIDS. In their 2003 report documenting the history of HIV/AIDS philanthropy, community foundations were the first grantmakers to support their localities, with foundations with multi-billion-dollar endowment such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation leading the charge on giving grants in the millions. In 2000, the latter foundation stimulated global HIV/AIDS grant-making by over 300%. These high levels of giving have ultimately found their way to research, care, and prevention.
Fast forward today, and it goes without saying — major foundations have remained at the forefront of HIV/AIDS as a global issue. In 2019, the Rockefeller Foundation, whose mission “is to promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world” according to their website, collaborated with Dr. Anthony Fauci to advocate for more global cooperation towards solving the HIV/AIDS crisis. Today, the global gargantuan that is Gates has donated nearly $5 billion into lowering the infection rate of HIV. In the past five years, Ford has provided $1 million for international organizations combating HIV/AIDS in their areas.
I put particular emphasis on Ford’s giving. As a foundation committed to global inequality, Ford has integrated their mission into the global epidemic’s subtle causes and effects. Similar to what COVID-19 did to our communities in months, HIV/AIDS has highlighted and exacerbated inequalities in our communities over several decades. Scott Campbell of the Chronicle of Philanthropy argued in 2014 that HIV/AIDS grantmakers should fund to fight “the injustice it [HIV/AIDS] thrives upon,” given how factors like race and income play into HIV contraction. Only four years prior, the Ford Foundation committed $25 million to “fight the disproportionate yet largely hidden impact of HIV/AIDS on marginalized communities in the United States.” This brings us to one strategy for giving towards HIV/AIDS for foundations around the world — integrating it with their mission. As the philanthropic sector ought to become more creative with their giving, integration and broadening their strategy has made major strides in the possible partnerships foundations can create.
Creativity remains a theme in recommendations for philanthropy and building community partnerships. A 2020 UNAIDS publication titled “Community innovations” examined global efforts related to HIV/AIDS prevention, from injection facilities in Canada, to mental health treatment in Kenya, to community pharmacies and advocacy in India. These can provide models for not only nonprofits to follow as they implement HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness in their communities, but for the grant-makers that can fund such projects. A 2016 UNAIDS report illustrated the challenges local HIV/AIDS organizations faced interacting with grant-makers: two areas that needed funding were general operations and advocacy. Philanthropic efforts do not even need to be informed by global precedent but by scalability — Carolyn McAllaster of the Southern HIV/AIDS Strategy Initiative claimed that grant-makers could simply fund the expansion of current HIV/AIDS efforts to counties outside of southern cities like Nashville.
"Philanthropic efforts do not even need to be informed by global precedent but by scalability..."
HIV/AIDS is an underlying theme within the Sustainable Development Goals, as UNAIDS argues. If we want to achieve the SDGs by 2030, grant-makers ought to partner with communities to close the funding gap for target 3.3 — ending the epidemic once and for all.