SF AIDS Foundation Lists Grants

By: Annette Fuentes

A day after the annual AIDS Walk brought 25K walkers to the city for a six-mile hike to fundraise for AIDS/HIV, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation has its tally of 59 community-based organizations that will receive grants from the $3 million-plus that was donated.

The total of all grants is $229,000, and they range in size, with the smallest being $1,000 and the largest for $7,000. But the majority of grants were $2,500, $4,000 or $5,000 each to nonprofits doing AIDS/HIV related service work in San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Two UCSF programs—the AIDS Health Project and the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies--each received the larger grants of $7,000. So did Tenderloin Health, a neighborhood service provider. Larkin Street Youth Services and Marin AIDS Services will each receive $5,000. Pets Are Wonderful Support and Native American AIDS Services will get $4,000 each.

The total amount of grants divvied up by the foundation represents around 8 percent of the money raised by walkers on Sunday. A column last week in The Bay Citizen by Scott James noted the disparity between the large amount of funds raised by the AIDS Walk and small payout to Bay Area charities doing AIDS-related work. James wrote that most of the walkathon money goes to the foundation, which in turn gives major grants to charities outside the Bay Area—or the country