This year, AIDS Foundation Chicago (AFC) rolled out its 2022-2024 Strategic Plan with four strategic priorities: ending the HIV epidemic; prioritizing racial equity; uniting to end homelessness; and teaming up for justice and change. The plan was developed over several months in a process co-led by staff ambassadors, staff leaders, and the board. With fewer than two months left in the year, AFC’s staff have completed 90% of the plan’s actions due this year. Learn how we developed our strategic plan here.
End the HIV Epidemic
As part of AFC’s work to end the HIV epidemic and get to zero cases of HIV, AFC provides critical supportive services to individuals throughout Chicago and is leading organizations throughout the state to aligning with the state’s Getting to Zero Illinois plan.
Uniting to End Homelessness
As a people-first organization, AFC works with communities, partners and health systems to ensure all Chicagoans have access to a safe and affordable home.
Prioritizing Racial Equity
AFC prioritizes the work of racial equity to dismantle systems of oppression, racism and white supremacy in support of our common humanity. AFC does this by fostering an intentional organizational culture of inclusion and belonging for community, clients, staff and board members.
Part of AFC’s commitment to racial equity involved an assessment of staff pay to determine if there are systemic differences by race and other dimensions. This year AFC and CHH completed its current pay and benefit compensation market survey and invested $1 million to increase AFC & CHH salaries to market rates. By providing all staff with equitable, competitive, and transparent compensation, including salary and benefits, AFC is one step closer to achieving its goal of racial equity.
To ensure all staff have the same knowledge of terms and concepts related to racial equity, and can put that knowledge into practice, AFC developed a series of racial equity trainings with consultants. The trainings will be rolled out throughout 2022. The first, Foundations of Racial Equity, took place in October 2022.
Increasing funding for Black and Latine-led partner organizations is an important goal in the racial equity plan. AFC benchmarked FY 21 funding to these vital community-based organizations at $2.3 million and will aim to increase that funding by at least 10% in FY 22.
It is challenging for individuals to achieve their full health potential if program forms, and information are not available in their native language. AFC has launched an assessment of the most commonly used forms and will begin to translate them into Spanish.
As part of AFC’s fundraising/development objectives within the Race Equity Action Plan, AFC hosted a fundraiser in support of the Learning Circle Collaborative cohort (all Black and Latine-led HIV organizations) to raise funds and awareness of the agencies within the cohort and to support Black-owned businesses. The event was held at the L1 RETAIL STORE at 319 E. Garfield Blvd. L1 is a new creative business accelerator program, and retail store housing three South Side-based, Black-owned businesses on the Arts Block inside of the historic first “L” station along historic Garfield Boulevard in Washington Park, operated and managed by Arts + Public Life, an initiative of UChicago Arts. The event raised more than $10,000. All net proceeds will be donated directly to the organizations within the LCC cohort. See event photos here!
A keynote to highlight in AFC’s plan for racial equity is the launch of its first ever joint Board and Staff Racial Equity Action Plan Implementation Committee. The creation of this committee will help to ensure the effective implementation of AFCs Racial Equity Action Plan and is a step towards power-sharing between board members and staff.
Teaming Up for Justice and Change
The final priority in AFC’s Strategic plan is to team up for justice and change by mobilizing and developing communities of support and allies to raise up and sustain AFC’s mission-driven work.
In being a bold voice for change, in coalition with community-based partners and individuals from our priority communities, AFC successfully secured $10 million in the FY22 state budget for implementation work of the statewide Getting to Zero Illinois initiative (GTZ-IL).
The organization also effectively kicked off its online portal for eviction prevention and emergency utility payment processing, replacing paper applications and spreadsheets. To date, over $670K has been distributed, benefiting 385 clients.
AFC’s plan to collaborate with partners to maximize its collective impact by expanding the reach of the HIV Resource Hub resulted in 748 individuals enrolling in the HUB between January and June 2022. During the same period last year, 533 clients were served, an increase of 215 clients.
AFC ‘s Connection to Care Learning Collaborative launched, helping six Black and Latine-led health centers increase HIV & sexually transmitted infection screening, treatment and prevention, including PrEP.
AFC acknowledges both its areas of strength and opportunities within the strategic plan and race equity action plan and recognizes that we must continue to try new approaches and innovate to have the greatest success. However, this also means there will be times when we do not achieve our objectives but learn and pivot. While we have made progress, we will continue to strive day by day to be as impactful as possible in ending homelessness and the HIV epidemic.
Thank you to all of our partners, clients, advocates, and supporters. You are a critical part of all our achievements.
By Tyline Burgess, Communications Manager
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