Once U.S. foundations were introduced to HIV/AIDS

Once U.S. foundations were introduced to HIV/AIDS
grantmaking, their involvement helped to influence the American public’s perception
that people with AIDS deserved support, and helped to leverage further support from
various sectors.19 Overall, private foundations played an important role in creating and
sustaining AIDS programs until the government stepped in and assumed significant
financial responsibility for fighting the epidemic in the United States.20
Increased national and professional commitment
In 1986, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJ) was one of the first private
foundations to include AIDS programs in their annual budget; this helped to legitimize
AIDS within the foundation world.21 RWJ granted $17.2 million dollars in 1986 to
support a four-year national demonstration program, the AIDS Health Service Program,
enabling health professionals and health care institutions to establish coordinated
systems of out-of-hospital care for AIDS patients.22 In the two years from 1986 to 1988,
RWJ allocated a considerable 16% of its budget for HIV/AIDS efforts. On the heels of
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation also began funding
HIV/AIDS initiatives in 1987.23 Soon after, major AIDS funding efforts by the Aaron
Diamond Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and
others followed.
Many of the early HIV/AIDS grantmakers established Funders Concerned About AIDS.
FCAA was founded in 1987 in part as an effort to share knowledge and develop
creative grants strategy to combat AIDS, and in part to educate and mobilize the rest of
philanthropy to pay attention to this unfolding public health and societal disaster.
FCAA is an official affinity group affiliated with the Council on Foundations, the largest
philanthropic umbrella group in the United States. Since 1987, FCAA has developed
into a respected and effective education and advocacy organization within philanthropy
focused on mobilizing and shaping a more robust grantmaker response to HIV/AIDS
both in the United States and internationally.24
In addition to considerable HIV/AIDS grantmaking, the Ford Foundation played a
critical role in developing what is now known as the National AIDS Fund (NAF). In
April 1988, in collaboration with eight large foundations25, the Ford Foundation created
a national funding pool originally known as the National Community AIDS Partnership