POZ Community Forums
Main Forums => Living With HIV => Topic started by: Solo_LTSurvivor on February 17, 2013, 03:37:54 pm
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The National Association of People with AIDS (http://www.napwa.org/) (NAPWA) has filed for bankruptcy and will no longer continue its grassroots activism on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS.
NAPWA is heralded as the oldest HIV/AIDS advocacy group lead by people living with HIV/AIDS, and recent numbers estimate their membership at over 1.2 million people.
The organization spearheaded such advocacy mainstays as National HIV Testing Day in 1988 and AIDSWatch, an annual event where people living with HIV/AIDS traveled to DC to discuss treatment, prevention, and the needs of those living with the virus and lobby for policies that improved the quality and quantity of services and programs available. The Gay City News (http://gaycitynews.com/oldest-group-of-hiv-positive-americans-bankrupt-ending-operations/) reports that the Treatment Access Expansion Project and AIDS United will continue to lead AIDSWatch.
NAPWA was founded 1983—the same year as New York State’s AIDS Institute—to empower people living with HIV/AIDS to advocate on their own behalf and ensure that their needs were addressed in the crafting and implementation of domestic HIV/AIDS services and programs.
In a press release on its website, NAPWA gives details of their official bankruptcy filing and ends with this positive note: “Keep up the good fight! With or without NAPWA, we can end new HIV infections in our generation. And if we can, we must.”
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I read their press release too. It didn't give the reason why they had to file bankruptcy. Does anyone know why?
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I read their press release too. It didn't give the reason why they had to file bankruptcy. Does anyone know why?
The following article from the Washington (DC) Blade gives a few more unfortunate details listing why:
http://www.washingtonblade.com/2013/02/15/aids-group-napwa-declares-bankruptcy/
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“These are difficult times for the nonprofit sector,” he said. “This is no less true for local, state and national AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs), which across the United States are struggling to retain services and keep their doors open.
that's not the same thing at all as "missing funds". ;)
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My father was a child psychologist and social worker who became the CEO/CFO for a the nonprofit group, "Family Counseling Services," in Columbus, Ohio in 1971.They were a United Way Agency on a shoe string budget, but they survived all the down turns in the economy through his retirement (boy I can't remember when). The board of directors choose someone they thought would be a suitable replacement.
Within 6 months the guy had nearly bankrupted the agency. My father was brought in and within 6 months he had up and running again. Turns out besides missing funds, the temp CEO bought everybody laptops, new agency vans and increased his and other top therapists salaries. Mismanagement nearly killed a good thing.
I gave these folks lots of money over the years and I want to see their books. I smell something fishy-especially now that we've been told the "missing" funds (as Leatherman points out) would of covered their indebtedness.
In Utah our HIV/STD prevention/ADAP budget has been slashed year after year but somehow the Health Department makes it all work. Yeah they are not non profit but if you know anything about Utah, Health and Human Services and Education get short schrift in our budget.