AIDS Groups Struggle for Survival in Tough Times : Social services: As large agencies prosper, smaller charities are squeezed out in the fight for funding. Rising resentment prompts call for cooperation.

As the region’s first AIDS organizations mark their 10th anniversaries, recession and “charitable Darwinism” are beginning to take their toll on the crowded AIDS services landscape in Los Angeles County.

While some of the leading private AIDS agencies prosper, many smaller, lesser-known groups are struggling to meet their budgets and cutting back as they try to find a niche in the increasingly competitive world of AIDS fund raising. With an estimated 150 AIDS service agencies in the county, there is a growing sense that there are too many and that the politics of consolidation and cooperation need to replace those of rivalry and territorialism.

“There are many too many agencies in Los Angeles,” said Marcia Smith, executive director of Search Alliance, which funds fast-track AIDS research. “Too many rents being paid, staffing, telephone bills.”

Volunteer boards often armed with more compassion than management expertise are finding that they need increasing sophistication and fund-raising savvy to keep their organizations afloat.

Some are sinking or dropping programs to survive. In January, money problems forced the closure of City of Angels Hospice in Hollywood. Last year, Project Angel Food, a well-known hot meals program for people with AIDS, gave up its counseling services to help regain its financial footing. Last spring, Northern Lights Alternatives, a counseling group, folded.

Activists forecast more of the same. “I think there will be a definite shakeout,” said David Goldstein, who spent a frustrating year as executive director of the Pacific Center for Counseling and Psychotherapy, which cut his job because of budget problems. “Agencies will close and unfortunately, some are agencies that are providing a wonderful service.”

The recession, especially persistent in Southern California, has hurt charities across the board. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported last fall that the typical U.S. household pared its charitable giving by nearly one-fifth between 1989 and 1991.

“The $25 donation has become a $10 donation and the $100 donation has become a $50 or $20 donation,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “Plus, there has been a proliferation of agencies.”

A decade ago, there was a mere handful of groups in the county helping people with HIV and AIDS. Now there are scores, offering an array of services ranging from walking the dogs of AIDS patients to hospice care. An estimated 40,000 county residents have HIV, the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and about 17,000 AIDS cases have been reported since the start of the epidemic.

Public spending on HIV and AIDS care in the county has jumped from $9 million in 1985 to $75 million this year as the AIDS population has grown, but only about a quarter of that money goes to community-based organizations, according to county figures. The rest funds county clinic and hospital facilities.

Consequently, most AIDS groups rely heavily on--and are often intensely competing for--private donations. The director of one West Hollywood agency refused to talk about his fund-raising plans. “I won’t discuss the new projects because of competition,” said Walt Hanna of Aid for AIDS.

The money crunch and the sheer number of AIDS agencies are prompting cries for teamwork.

“So many agencies become very territorial and protective, and they don’t collaborate and they don’t cooperate,” Goldstein said. “There’s too much ‘politicalness’ among AIDS service organizations.”

The turf guarding is at least partly attributed to the origins of groups. “Many started as grass-roots efforts because there was literally nothing else there,” said John Hartman, president of Design Industries Foundation for AIDS, a national organization that makes grants to AIDS services agencies. “There’s a lot of emotion packed into it.”

The result is a sense of ownership--and ego.

“There’s a lot of ego that prevents people from working together. Everybody has their own vision,” said Ed Fabian, development director of Homestead Hospice and Shelter, which operates several hospices in the Los Angeles Basin. “If we could all possibly set our egos aside and focus on the issue, we’d be a lot better off.”

Leonard H. Bloom, chief executive officer of AIDS Project Los Angeles, put it this way: “We expect all organizations to recognize that AIDS can no longer be a competitive sport.”

APLA has in recent years undergone a remarkable transformation, moving from near bankruptcy to riches, making it the object of considerable envy in the AIDS community. The agency has become one of the Hollywood charities, attracting celebrities like an Oscar night. A single star-studded benefit raised nearly $4 million last fall, and APLA expects to end its fiscal year with a $17.5-million budget--about $3 million more than anticipated.

Indeed, talk of collaboration is often made with an eye on APLA’s fat coffers.

“I feel they are gobbling up both the dollars and the major donors,” Goldstein said. “We need an APLA. That doesn’t also mean we don’t need several other organizations. . . . APLA, I believe, has a responsibility to share its expertise and its wealth.”

APLA executives say they are doing that--on a selective basis to ensure that their clients’ needs are being met. The agency is giving $300,000 to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center to help finance an AIDS clinic in the center’s new headquarters. It also donated $25,000 to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and helped the Faith United Methodist Church establish a food pantry for people with AIDS in South-Central Los Angeles.

At the same time, APLA officials say they are not going to become a cash machine, randomly making donations to any agency in need. “They’re an awful lot of groups who think they should be given money because they’re nice people,” said former board Chairman David Wexler, now on APLA’s board of governors.

Noting that there is “a certain amount of charitable Darwinism going on,” Wexler added: “I think it’s a healthy thing. I don’t think groups should exist for the sake of existing. . . . There are a number of agencies in this town that duplicate services that should be folded into others.”

Wexler declined to be specific. But others have cited case management--evaluating clients’ social service needs and referring them to appropriate programs--as an example of a service offered by too many groups.

Not everyone agrees that the service scene needs pruning.

“I don’t think there’s a surplus of AIDS service providers,” said Hanna, whose group helps support people with AIDS while they await government assistance. “I feel each of the agencies has their own distinctive niche and it would be impossible for any one or series of (agencies) to provide an umbrella.”

Some argue that it is important to give clients a choice and that large agencies can be chilly and impersonal: Fund-raising success does not necessarily ensure compassionate care. Moreover, in the sprawling geography of Southern California, only so much consolidation is possible.

Yet it is under way. The Design Alliance to Combat AIDS, a local group that raises money for AIDS care, is considering merging with Hartman’s organization. Hanna’s office distributes grants for three other small AIDS programs similar to his. Two years ago, the Los Angeles Shanti Foundation absorbed a weekend counseling program that was ready to fold.

In the San Fernando Valley, a nine-member consortium of service agencies--including APLA and Shanti--opened an HIV-AIDS center in Van Nuys last September. Under the funding guidelines of the Ryan White Act, the federal government is also encouraging collaborative efforts.

Whatever the appropriate mix of AIDS groups, there is a general consensus that they need to expand their donor horizons.

“It’s almost incestuous that we’re all feeding on the same group (of donors),” said Sue Crumpton, executive director of Shanti, which provides counseling and education.

The same people, often gay men, get invited to benefit after benefit. “A lot of the gay community is tapped out,” said Mary Nalick, executive director of All Saints AIDS Service Center in Pasadena. “We do need to identify new and different folks.”

Bloom said a measure of APLA’s recent fund-raising success comes from knocking on new doors. “I think there’s a charitable world . . . that the AIDS community has not been able to tap into. Our supporters decided it was time to access those dollars . . .”

AIDS activists hope that the Clinton Administration’s vow to devote more federal funding to AIDS will increase not only the flow of government money but also help push AIDS onto the stage of mainstream charity, which has tended to shy away from the disease. The spread of AIDS beyond the gay community is expected to pull in new sets of donors.

As the issue widens it has spawned a number of celebrity foundations. Tennis champion Arthur Ashe, who died of AIDS complications this month; basketball star Magic Johnson, who announced in 1991 that he is HIV-positive; Elizabeth Taylor, and singer Elton John have all established foundations to raise money.

The trend troubles some. “You’re adding another layer of bureaucracy,” said Smith of Search Alliance. “With the best of intentions, it’s working as a kind of counterproductive element.”

When a lesser known celebrity with HIV recently approached Howard Bragman, president of a Beverly Hills public relations firm, about starting her own foundation, he talked her out of it.

“I felt both she and the AIDS community would be better served by folding her agenda into a larger organization, which we’re in the process of doing,” said Bragman, whose firm has represented a number of AIDS agencies.

On the other hand, Bragman said that foundations such as Johnson’s get donations from people who otherwise never would have contributed to an AIDS cause.

“We are intentionally going after people who have not been involved,” said Vincent M. Bryson, president of the Magic Johnson Foundation, which collected about $3 million from 4,000 donors in its first year. “We think that will be one of the strengths we bring to the AIDS community, the ability to attract new donors.”