About Us

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation provides leadership to prevent new HIV infections. Linking community experience with science, the Foundation develops ground-breaking prevention programs and bold policy initiatives to promote health and create sustainable progress against HIV. Established in 1982, the Foundation refuses to accept that HIV transmission is inevitable.

Services for Clients

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation provides vital services and programs designed to improve the quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS and to reduce the number of new infections that occur each year.

• The Client Services Department provides a range of services to hundreds of people living with HIV/AIDS in San Francisco annually. Highly skilled client advocates provide information on essential community support services and medical care, and advocate to help clients negotiate the challenging set of issues related to HIV.
• Financial benefits counselors help individuals understand and link into the complex private and public benefits systems, including the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, General Assistance, Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, Medicare, Social Security, and private disability plans.
• The Foundation's housing subsidy program provides rental assistance to more than 350 individuals. Through the work of our client advocates and the clients themselves, more than 95% of these individuals remain stably housed.
• Black Brothers Esteem (BBE) promotes the sexual health and well-being of African-American gay, bisexual and same-gender loving men through a weekly drop-in group, workshops, leadership-building retreats, and other community-building activities. BBE addresses not only issues of HIV, but also the challenges of poverty, substance use, homophobia and racism.
• The HIV Prevention Project, the AIDS Foundation's needle exchange program, distributes more than 2.3 million syringes annually, helping thousands of exchangers and their partners avoid HIV infection and hepatitis C. Staff and volunteers, nurses, and drug treatment counselors offer free, anonymous exchange and other vital services at various San Francisco locations.
• The Speed Project works with gay and bisexual men who use crystal methamphetamine to assist them in understanding the connections between their substance use and their sexual health and well-being through education, peer support, and alternative social activities.
• El Grupo is one of the longest-running bilingual support groups for Latinos living with HIV in the nation. Open to all HIV-positive Latino/as and their families, El Grupo provides a safe forum to share information on managing HIV and reducing isolation and stigma.
• The Stonewall Project is a harm reduction counseling and treatment program for men who have sex with men (queer, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, or no label) who have questions about speed, want information about speed and want help dealing with speed.
• Magnet, developed by community leaders and activists, provides sexually transmitted infection services -- including HIV testing and screening -- to the Castro, the neighborhood which continues to have the greatest concentration of new HIV infections in San Francisco, along with a space for gay men to socialize.

Education and Information

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation continues to be a leader in educating at-risk communities about HIV/AIDS prevention and in connecting thousands of people to the critical information they need to make informed decisions about HIV-related risk and health.

• The California HIV/AIDS Hotline is a toll-free anonymous and confidential hotline run by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. The hotline answers 70,000 calls a year from all over the state.
• The AIDS Foundation's treatment publication, BETA (Bulletin of Experimental Treatments for AIDS), provides in-depth treatment information and news on the latest advances in HIV care.
• In addition to www.sfaf.org, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation maintains other websites that provide a comprehensive range of information about HIV/AIDS issues and the activities of the AIDS Foundation. These include www.aidshotline.org, www.pgaf.org, Tweaker.org, The Speed Project and www.aidslifecycle.org.

Advocacy and Public Policy Efforts

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation advocates at the federal, state and local levels to ensure that hundreds of thousands of people affected by HIV and AIDS have access to care, treatment, housing, and prevention services, and that they benefit from related research efforts.

• The AIDS Foundation's Science & Public Policy Department plays a leading role in securing federal, state, and local government funding for crucial HIV/AIDS-related programs. Public policy staff members also work to ensure passage of sound HIV/AIDS policies and legislation.
• The AIDS Foundation's HIV Advocacy Network (HAN) organizes and mobilizes AIDS advocates, service providers, and people living with HIV/AIDS to advocate for effective AIDS policies.

Global AIDS Programs

The Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation is an affiliate of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Pangaea's mission is to broaden access to HIV/AIDS antiretroviral treatment and care around the world, with special emphasis on resource-limited settings. Pangaea provides assistance to in-country and international partners in the development of healthcare infrastructure for HIV treatment efforts.

• Since its founding in 2001, Pangaea has played a significant role in developing and implementing HIV treatment access initiatives in several countries, including Uganda, South Africa, and Rwanda.
• Since 2004, Pangaea has partnered with the William J. Clinton Foundation's HIV/AIDS Initiative in China, assisting in the development of national HIV treatment guidelines and training of healthcare professionals. Pangaea is also working with the Clinton Foundation in Ukraine, helping to develop the government's HIV treatment initiative.
• In Uganda, Pangaea partnered with Pfizer Inc, Makerere University and the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa to help create the Infectious Diseases Institute. The Institute, which opened in August 2004, is a state-of-the-art HIV/AIDS training center and clinic that sees more than 250 patients every day.

Get Involved!

There are many ways to get involved and to support the work of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

Join the San Francisco AIDS Foundation Action Center

By joining the SFAF Action Center you can subscribe to various SFAF electronic publications and get involved in advocating for effective HIV policies at the federal, state, and local levels.

Volunteer

Every year, we rely on more than 1,000 volunteers who actively give of their time and talents to make our work a success. There are many ways to lend your time to the AIDS Foundation: volunteer to support one of our endurance fundraising events like AIDS/LifeCycle or the Seismic Challenge, staff the California HIV/AIDS Hotline or one of our needle exchange sites, or help make sure important mailings to our constituents go out on time.

Participate

Our biggest fundraising events--including AIDS/LifeCycle, the Seismic Challenge, >1 (Greater Than One) and AIDS Walk San Francisco--are great ways to raise money for the services of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and build community with others committed to ending the epidemic.

Donate

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation relies on private contributions to do the bulk of our work. As government funding continues to shrink and the number of people living with the disease continues to grow, private giving is more important than ever before.