LGBT POV

(Editor’s note: Dana Miller, a former chair of AIDS Project Los Angeles and producer of their annual Commitment to Life awards, is a columnist for Frontiers In LA, where this piece originally appeared. As this column indicates, he has proposed re-shaping AIDS Inc in the past to make it more efficient. But given this dire economy and the loss of more funding, this might be a good time to jump-start the discussion. – Karen Ocamb)

AIDS Groups Must Merge

By Dana Miller (malibudana@aol.com)

As we wrap up yet another year, businesses have gone merger crazy. Stanley Tools is merging with Black & Decker. A&E bought Lifetime and NBC/Universal is merging with Comcast’s content assets like E! Entertainment Television. Hell, even IN bought Frontiers, and who saw that coming? There are more congeneric and concentric mergers going on in businesses today than at The Zone at 2 a.m. on a Saturday. Some are a case of big fish gobbling up smaller fish, and some are just smart mergers for all parties.

The reason I bring it up is the further institutionalization of our AIDS Service Organizations (ASO). Twenty-five years into this scourge of humanity seems like the right time to float this again.

With government funding and private donations way down, how do we get these current boards to sit down with one another and talk about efficiencies and infrastructures? It’s pretty clear who does what well. Let’s take the best of what each does and form a more perfect union.

This is not new. When I was board chair of APLA, apla.org/ we secretly met with a few power members of the board of the LA Gay & Lesbian Center. We hid upstairs at Off Vine restaurant to discuss merging and because of egos, it was never pursued.

Michael Weinstein from AIDS Healthcare Foundation, (the smartest guy in the biz of HIV/AIDS) and I have discussed this concept ad nauseam over the years.

There once was a board chair at APLA by the name of David Wexler. His goal in leading the charge to buy a 127,000-square-foot building on Vine [Avenue in Hollywood] was to create one-stop shopping for people living with HIV and AIDS. Collective conceitedness killed that concept. Today that building is the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study.

The problem with this outstanding plan yesterday and today is the same. It’s the staff. There’s the rub! With most mergers in business, there is a financial upside. Most walk with stock or cash. They are paid for their asset. There is no stock to exchange when merging an AIDS Service Organization. There would likely be massive layoffs, and frankly the place to start is at the top. We won’t need four or five executive directors, but alas we have no golden parachutes to offer. We would be asking the brass to help plot their own extinction. Never an easy sell I assume.

In the ‘80s the mantra was, “We can’t wait to close our doors.” Staff and boards all shouted it. Not so much anymore. The disease has changed and morphed into a more manageable evil. With that loss of urgency, all involved have become much more institutionalized, and some likely lackadaisical.

Because of this column, I get tons of mail. A good amount of it comes from clients of various organizations complaining about a service, red tape and staff. In 1985, no employee of an ASO ever dreamed they would still be in the field in 2010. It wasn’t a career. It was a passion fueled by pain and heartache. Today it’s a job that will likely be needed in some incarnation in 2020.

So these various boards of directors need to do the job they signed up for: governance, ensuring financial resources and accounting to stakeholders. Every one who does the AIDS Ride [AIDS LifeCycle] or the AIDS Walk is a stakeholder. These boards need to skip their annual retreats and head off to a summit with all the various boards.

Lord, the staff will be pissed off. But who cares? This is about the long-term survival of various programs that have proven over the years to be vital.

These folks need to join forces to begin due diligence on what each brings to the new organization—what works and what is tired. Eliminate the fat in staffing and infrastructure. Take what works and make it better, whether it be a dental clinic, a pharmacy, a food bank or case management.

This will indeed be painful, and some would say impossible. It’s not gonna be pretty. Yet two and a half decades into this, most of the founders have moved on. I can’t imagine the egos that used to exist still do today. If you take a stroll through the list of the various boards in town, it is pretty clear this is a smart, talented group. So come on gang. Toss a summit. Get together and discuss what is best in the long run for the good of the people. The people we all got in this to help.

If you were publicly traded this would have happened years ago. The jig is up. Get together and discuss board-to-board what is best for the people of Los Angeles County.

There are great minds among the group and it will be a ton of work. But just think, your legacy can be that you truly did close a few doors. And it will be for all the right reasons!