Following the first reported case of AIDS

Following the first reported case of AIDS in the United States in 1981, the first funding
response came not from institutions, but from individuals in affected communities in
the U.S. and Europe. Early individual donors were often the friends of and health and
service providers for those who were ill from AIDS, donating money for emergency
services and AIDS information campaigns in their communities. Because very few
private and public institutions responded to this crisis, new structures and leadership
emerged to take action against the disease. AIDS service organizations (ASOs) and
networks of people living with AIDS (PWA) began forming in Los Angeles, New York,
Paris, San Francisco and other major cities as early as 1982, mobilizing through preexisting
community networks.4
Funding for the first AIDS efforts came primarily from individuals, and was informal,
highly personal5 and often centered around the social and political networks of those
affected by the disease, including gay men, hemophiliacs, immigrant Haitians, and
injection drug users. Public awareness and a broader public funding response to AIDS
were limited, in part due to the stigma attached to discussing, reporting about, and
funding a disease associated with gay men and injection drug use. The staff,
volunteers, and clients affiliated with AIDS service organizations (ASOs) were the first
to actively pursue private grantmakers and to try to mobilize government resources.6
AIDS was initially of little interest to the U.S. foundation world, most likely due to the
small number of AIDS cases outside of the “four H’s” – Haitians, hemophiliacs, heroin
users, and homosexuals. Most foundations were no doubt hesitant to fund the issue
because of the tremendous stigma associated with the disease and, related to this fact,
the long-standing avoidance of any grantmaking on gay issues. Other factors may have
been the urban concentration of the disease initially, making it of little interest to the
many foundations that fund outside of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas, and the very
newness of the disease initially. Also, many funding programs, then and now, do not
support single-disease issues.7
Governmental AIDS funding in the United States and internationally was mostly limited
to epidemiological research and related functions until the isolation of HIV as the cause
of AIDS in 1985.8 Even into the early 1990’s, U.S. government resources and
leadership were considerably lacking, and states, counties, and cities widely varied