Washington Blade - October 6, 2006
Katherine Volin

Once a significant fundraising event that made millions for the Clinic, AIDS Walk participants and the amount of money raised plunged once the 21st century arrived. Organizers say they have turned things around this year, though, with an increase in the number of registered participants for the walk over last year.

The annual AIDS Walk began in 1987, and longtime AIDS activist Cheryl Spector was there. The event took place two years after her gay brother, Stanley Spector, who had AIDS, committed suicide.

"I was very angry and still in a lot of pain over my brother dying and over a government which was, of course, headed by Ronald Reagan, who I completely blamed for the inaction that would lead to so many people dying," Spector says about her mindset during the first walk. "It was a very powerful event."

The 3,000 walkers in 1987 raised nearly $250,000, and organizers staged the event at a cost of $50,000, which was $20,000 less than they'd anticipated spending, according to Blade accounts from the time. As the years went on, more and more walkers raised money for the Clinic.

"Every year we had the AIDS Walk and it seemed to get bigger and bigger and more and more diverse," says Spector, who has participated in nearly every AIDS Walk since the first.

The 1997 AIDS Walk, which raised the event's highest numbers, at $2.6 million, left a particular impression on Spector, who watched the bulging crowd from a platform with a friend.

"It was a ridiculous amount of people," Spector says. "It was crazy, wonderful and then a few years after that, we were also standing on the [National] Mall, and it was this piddly small amount of people."

In 1999, the Walk still managed to draw 30,000 participants and raked in more than $1 million, but in 2000, a mere 5,000 walkers raised nearly $900,000. Costs for putting on the event had risen since 1987, and during the millennial Walk, Whitman-Walker only netted 14 percent of the funds raised.

The event weathered a major controversy a few years ago, when AIDS activists complained that Pallotta Teamworks, a private company that once staged the AIDS Walk event in several cities including D.C., squandered contributions by donors to overhead costs and the Pallotta firm's own profit. Pallotta later went out of business.

The number of participants continued to fall or remain steadily low as the Clinic battled AIDS fatigue after years of the same, dire message. Donor fatigue after Sept. 11, the tsunami and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita also contributed to the declining fundraising response, organizers have said.

"I think the misperception that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is not a problem in this country [has decreased donations to Whitman-Walker]," says Kim Mills, the Clinic's director of communications. "We've been very focused on helping people in Africa, which is important and great, but the epidemic in D.C. rivals that in many, many sub-Saharan nations."

A financial crisis last year forced Whitman-Walker to slash jobs. The city pledged $2.2 million to bail the Clinic out, and for the past year, the organization has been slowly reorganizing, with a new focus on providing increased primary care services for clients.

"It's been difficult for us to rebuild our private fundraising," says Mills "It's taken a great deal of effort."

Part of the solution has been not to rely so heavily on the AIDS Walk, which remains one of the Clinic's key fundraisers, according to Mills.

"We have diversified the ways in which we raise money," Mills says. "We can't depend upon a one-time event like an AIDS walk."

This year's number of walkers and pledged donations have already outstripped last year's figures at this time, and Mills says that the Clinic's website, www.wwc.org, will accept donations for several weeks after the Walk on Oct. 7. So far, 3,000 walkers are registered for this weekend's event and $250,000 has been pledged, Mills said.

Whitman-Walker has devoted a lot of effort to recruiting younger participants this year, Mallory says, and has visited all of the local D.C. colleges and universities. For the first time in the Walk's history, some high school-aged students have formed teams to participate in the event.

The emphasis on the young comes not a moment too soon for some activists.

"People need to wake up," says Spector. "This epidemic is not going away. We did so much to educate people, and I see some of the younger people not heeding the warnings, not being safe."

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