Foundation Announces $6-Million AIDS Grant Program

In a nationwide project expected to double the amount of money given by foundations to grass-roots AIDS groups, the Ford Foundation announced Monday that it is setting up a matching grants program that will give at least $6 million to AIDS projects nationwide.

Foundation executives predicted that the move by the nation’s largest foundation will shake loose gifts from other philanthropies that have been slow to allocate funds for AIDS projects. Because federal spending for AIDS has emphasized medical research, these funds will be used for preventive education and helping people with AIDS, officials said.

At least $600,000 will go for projects in Los Angeles and another $200,000 to Orange County, said Jack Shakely, executive director of the Los Angeles-based California Community Foundation, which will distribute between $1.1 and $1.5 million in grants over the next two years.

‘Clear, Concise Projects’

“We’re going to go to grass-roots community groups,” he said. “There are some punches that sometimes have to be pulled in government-funded agencies because of the sensitivity of AIDS. . . . But we will be looking for clear, concise, colloquial projects that will help stop the spread of AIDS.”

For example, Shakely said, his group expects to fund projects that use novelas, or Spanish-language soap operas, street theater, and television and radio ads that speak openly about ways of preventing AIDS, particularly among drug-users, minorities and illiterates.

About 60% of local grants will be directed toward educating high-risk groups about AIDS and preventing its spread. The remaining 40% will go to organizations that are helping AIDS patients, he said.

Shakely said his organization, which oversees more than 300 separate funds, already has raised $600,000 for the effort--more, he estimated, than was given by all foundations and corporations in Los Angeles last year. He said he expects to raise another $400,000.

‘That’s the Biggest Need’

“I think it’s great,” said John Griffith, director of health education at the Los Angeles Shanti Foundation, which counsels AIDS patients. “Very little is being done to reach minority groups and IV (intravenous) drug users. That’s the biggest need right now in Los Angeles County.”

A spokesman for AIDS Project Los Angeles, the largest community-based organization serving AIDS victims in Los Angeles, said there is a clear need for more educational outreach.

“Whenever there’s more money allocated for educational outreach, we welcome it. Eight years into the epidemic, there are still some specific communities that need targeted information. It’s one thing to produce AIDS brochures. It’s another thing to produce brochures that target a specific population and are written in a way that the people can understand,” Andrew Weisser said.

Announcement of the new National-Community AIDS Partnership, as the fund is called, was greeted enthusiastically by an overflow crowd at the 39th annual conference of the Council on Foundations in Los Angeles on Monday. In announcing the project, speakers acknowledged that foundations have been slow to give money to AIDS projects.

“None of us will say the philanthropic response (to AIDS) has been as speedy . . . as we would have wanted,” said Joyce Bove, a New York foundation executive who helped found a group called Funders Concerned About AIDS. “It was a very lonely struggle at first. . . . But it has grown.”

More Grants Given

In 1983, the third year of the epidemic, she said, only five foundation grants were given. Last year, she said, there were 250.

According to consultant Michael Seltzer, who prepared an AIDS study for the Ford Foundation, the average AIDS project gets about 5% of its funding from a government source and another 5% from foundations. The remaining 90% comes from individual contributions, he said. The new project should double the amount of money given by foundations, he said.

“This represents a dramatic jump in foundation support” for AIDS projects, said Susan Berresford, a Ford Foundation vice president. She said the Ford Foundation is giving $2 million to the matching grant program, and a total of $4.5 million to address AIDS issues.

Apart from the matching fund, the Ford Foundation will undertake two other projects, she said. The first is “information sharing” by local and state officials across the country to help each deal with legal, ethical and public policy questions. The second is to use Ford Foundation offices in Asia, Africa and Latin America to help build AIDS programs there.

Times staff writer Mark Arax contributed to this story.