Washington Blade - January 19, 2007
Lou Chibbaro Jr

The development marks yet another milestone in Whitman-Walker's evolution from the 1970s-era Gay Men's V.D. Clinic to its current $22 million operation that provides primary medical care and comprehensive AIDS-related services to both the gay community and the general population.

"Whitman-Walker Clinic is proud to join forces with such an important community institution as the Washington Free Clinic," said Donald Blanchon, Whitman-Walker's chief executive officer.

"This important development allows us to realize our strategic objective to become the highest quality community health center in the metropolitan Washington area serving the medically underserved; the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community; and people living with HIV/AIDS," Blanchon said.

Many of the Washington Free Clinic's clients are immigrants from Latin America and Africa, officials with that clinic have said. Most work but lack private health insurance and often fall below the poverty line. About 50 volunteer doctors and nurses have cared for them at the Free Clinic's facilities in the city's Mount Pleasant neighborhood.

News of the merging of the two clinics came during the same week that Whitman-Walker announced it was ending its participation in the National AIDS Marathon Training Program, a fundraising event that has yielded about $1 million a year for the Clinic over the past nine years.

Blanchon said the controversial decision to sever its ties with Walk-The-Talk Productions, the private fundraising company that organizes the fundraisers, was based on concern that the overhead costs for the events were too high.

According to Blanchon, the ratio of overhead costs to net income far exceeded the guidelines set by watchdog groups that monitor charities and non-profit organizations like Whitman-Walker.

In addition to high overhead costs, he said the AIDS marathon events did not sufficiently promote the Clinic and its mission.

"Our fundraising approach for 2007 is to offer community events that directly promote Whitman-Walker Clinic and, more important, the needs of the clients we serve," he said in a Jan. 11 statement. "We recognize that runners and supporters may be disappointed by this decision but, in the final analysis, Walk-The-Talk Productions could not accommodate our fundraising objectives for 2007."

The National AIDS Marathon Training Program operates by recruiting marathon runners to sign up for marathon races organized by other organizations.

Runners must raise money from donors to pay the cost of training and travel as well as for the proceeds that have gone to Whitman-Walker and three other AIDS organizations - AIDS Project L.A., San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and AIDS Foundation of Chicago. Officials with the three groups have said they would continue to participate in the AIDS marathons.

George Bowman, a longtime Whitman-Walker donor and participant in the marathon races, called Blanchon's decision "idiotic and shortsighted," saying the Clinic was spurning one of its major sources of income.

Richard Zeichik, president of Walk-The-Talk Productions, said that over the past nine years, the AIDS marathon events have pulled in about $25 million in gross revenue, at a cost of about $11 million, generating about $14 million in net proceeds for Whitman-Walker. Zeichik noted that this comes to about a 44 percent overhead cost.

Blanchon would neither confirm nor dispute those figures, saying only that the events did generate revenue to Whitman-Walker but at a price deemed too high.

"We have a fiduciary responsibility to keep overhead costs down," he said. "Thirty-five percent and higher for administrative costs disqualifies you for certain charities like the Combined Federal Campaign."

He was referring to the federal government's annual Combined Federal Campaign, a multi-million dollar fundraising effort that encourages government employees to donate to charitable groups, including Whitman-Walker, which they may designate as beneficiaries.

Founded in 1968, the Washington Free Clinic became one of the mid-Atlantic region's first free or low-cost health care facilities aimed at serving anyone who walked through its doors. In 1973, the clinic worked with volunteer gay health advocates to help form the Gay Men's V.D. Clinic, which tested and treated gay men for sexually transmitted diseases in a makeshift workspace in the basement of a Lutheran church in Georgetown.

In 1978, leaders of the fledgling gay clinic moved to another location and renamed the operation the Whitman-Walker Clinic. Washington Free Clinic and Whitman-Walker each encountered financial problems in recent years, but Whitman-Walker appears to have overcome a crisis that threatened its own shutdown in 2005.

At the time it shut its doors on Jan. 12, Washington Free Clinic had an operating budget of about $1 million, a small fraction of Whitman-Walker's $22 million budget.

Clinic staff to relocate

The arrival of the Washington Free Clinic's clients and staff at Whitman-Walker's Elizabeth Taylor Medical Center, at 1701 14th St., N.W., comes about two months before nearly all of Whitman-Walker's staff is expected to move into the cramped building. The Clinic's administrative staff, including Blanchon, will be moving out of the Clinic's headquarters building at 1407 S St., N.W., to make way for a multi-million dollar real estate deal the Clinic is about to enter into with a private developer.

Clinic officials announced last year they would sell the headquarters building and the Elizabeth Taylor building - both located on highly valuable land in the rapidly changing 14th Street corridor - to developers to obtain cash to be used for future growth and expansion. As a condition of the sale of its buildings, the Clinic is to own about 30,000 square feet of space in a new, high-rise building expected to replace the current headquarters building at 14th and S Streets, according to information released by Clinic officials.

The arrangement also calls for the Clinic to sell its Max Robinson Clinic building in Anacostia, with the intent of moving that clinic to a new and expanded facility.

"Our goal is to develop new, state-of-the-art facilities that will allow Whitman-Walker to continue to provide access to quality health care in locations that are convenient to our clients," said former executive director Roberta Geidner-Antoniotti, in announcing the plans last year.

Last week, gay D.C. Councilmember David Catania (I-At-Large) introduced a bill that would exempt Whitman-Walker from a city law requiring a "certificate of need" for opening its expanded facilities following the real estate transactions. Clinic officials have said the bill clears the Clinic from a technical requirement associated with the building of new hospitals and health facilities without demonstrating a need for them.

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