AIDS Foundation of St. Louis ‘Meets Critical Needs,’ Letter to Editor Says in Response to Post-Dispatch Editorial
The AIDS Foundation of St. Louis "consistently" has received approval from independent auditors on its grant disbursement and "indisputabl[y]" meets "critical needs" in the community, foundation board President Lisa Bedian, board Vice President Roseann Weiss and Executive Director Thomas Adams write in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch letter to the editor in response to a Jan. 4 Post-Dispatch editorial (Bedian et al., St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1/6). The editorial criticized the foundation for "consuming the lion's share of its own budget," handing out only a "pitiful" amount for grants to other organizations and failing to provide enough direct services to HIV-positive people in the area. The editorial said that the organization needs to develop a plan to provide more funding for "direct help" because it currently is "shortchanging the people it was set up to help" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1/4). The editorial "fails to understand the [foundation's] strategic changes" over the past three years and also does not take into consideration that grant-making is not the foundation's "primary focus," and the foundation is not a service organization and therefore does not provide direct services to HIV-positive people, the authors write in the letter. The foundation should not be "measured" solely by the amount given in grants because "[t]housands of individuals are helped each year through the seemingly invisible work of the AIDS Foundation," the authors write (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1/6).
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