MARCH 25, 1994

COMMUNITY FORUM

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

Continued from facing page

clones of myself, an idea which causes many to shudder. The good news is that I don't have to be in complete agreement to benefit from Center activities.

I hope that we, as a community, can put our own personal agendas aside long enough to unify against the "Right." I hope the next time your readers pick up a Chronicle they read the articles first, instead of turning directly to the [Community Forum] to see who is bickering with whom.

Pat Robertson doesn't need to raise money to fight homosexuals: we are fighting ourselves. Maybe he'll make a donation.

Dallas Owens

Personal attack is appalling

To the Editors:

I have been writing about art, including performance art, for several years, mainly for Dialogue, a regional art journal published in Columbus. Recently, I began writ-

ing for the Free Times as well. Part of my job is to look critically at the techniques and strategies employed by artists. Criticism is not cheerleading. Sometimes the commentary is positive, sometimes not. Since I view the relationship between art and criticism as a dialogue, it was in the spirit of dialogue that I commented negatively on certain aspects of Keith Hennessy's performance work.

I find it appalling that Barry Daniels felt the need to attack me personally for my comments in your last issue [Mar. 11]. It's interesting that he doesn't report what I said, let alone address the issues I raised. My characterization of Hennessy's strategy (a white man enlisting a black man to help push his own agenda in the black community) as colonial and paternalistic is not exactly reactionary. I know many artists of color and white artists-who agree.

Rather than arguing with the substance of my remarks, Daniels writes: "Was Green, who is a gay performance artist from Cleveland, trying to make himself acceptable to the fairly straight Free Times by discrediting a gay artist, or was his attack based in

FUNDING IT

Foundations and AIDS

by Betsy Tabac

AIDS programs have a new fundraising tool-as

-a survey by Funders Concerned About AIDS (FCAA). Formed in 1987, FCAA is an affinity group of the Council on Foundations. With the assistance of the George A. Gallup International Institute, FCAA surveyed its members in 1993. As reported in the last "Funding It" column, 20 percent of FCAA's 1,157 members responded to the survey questionnaire.

Among other things, the survey identified apparent barriers AIDS programs face in getting funding from foundations. This is important information because knowing the barriers positions grantseekers to figure out how to overcome them.

Survey respondents identified barriers to AIDS funding within their own foundations but some put the problem squarely on AIDS grantseekers.

Barrier #1-Foundation boards were not interested in HIV/AIDS. Strategy

A) AIDS activists should implement public education programs that reach members of foundation boards of trustees, especially those in family and corporate foundations.

B) Write good proposals that include a clear, thorough and persuasive statement of need.

Barrier #2-AIDS did not fit in with a current program priority. Strategy

A) If AIDS is not a current funding priority, maybe social service is, or housing for the homeless, etc. PWAS need social services; they need housing. Position programs so they fit with the foundation's current priorities. To do this, AIDS grantseekers have to do their homework. They have to understand a foundation thoroughly before submitting a proposal. (Other columns will talk about how to research foundations.)

B) Public education campaigns about the realities of AIDS, such as the one mentioned above, can help move AIDS programming up on foundation funding agendas.

Barrier #3-Some grantmakers had a perception that there is a lack of fundable AIDS projects. This is especially true among foundations that make AIDS grants out of their health funding category.

Strategy

What constitutes a fundable AIDS project is a moving target, but one that AIDS grantseekers need to pin down.

A) It appears that funders don't understand AIDS issues very well and so cannot recognize a fundable project. An open, noholds-barred talk with appropriate founda-

professional jealousy?" First of all, this description of me is inadequate. I am an interdisciplinary artist with a national reputation who sometimes works in performance and who, as a gay man, occasionally, but not always, addresses "gay themes." Furthermore, I am at least as successful as Keith Hennessy, so there's nothing to be jealous about. It is not unusual for artists to double as critics. Nor do I feel any need to make myself "acceptable” to anybody. Perhaps

downtown Cleveland, but I have for the first time in my 32 years in Cleveland heard so much talent. It's hard for me to believe they are not on record labels.

I do know one thing, I intend to take my tape recorder next time. Just thought I'd like to share this with you.

Diana K. Tabor

Band together and

Daniels has not noticed that other papers in forge ahead

town besides the Chronicle employ openly gay writers.

The fact that I'm gay doesn't mean that I have to like everything that other gay artists do. That Barry Daniels felt the need to attack my integrity says more about him than it does about me. Come on, Barry, this isn't high school. Believe it or not, there are artists who do what they do not to further their own careers, but because they care enough about art to take a stand.

Barry Daniels responds:

Frank Green

I regret that we are publishing Frank Green's letter, not because of its attack on me, but because it repeats in our paper Green's unwarranted accusations about Hennessy's work. Had Green carefully read my piece, he would have seen that I chose oblique ways to respond to his statements in the Free Times. My article was personal and used a method of unanswered questions, some of which are considerably important to me. I have been attempting in my writing-not always successfully—to avoid using the kind of paternalistic discourse that Green, in fact, employs. I still question Green's motives for writing his articleand the way he wrote it-without questioning the artist about his intentions. That is what I call engaging in a dialogue.

tions is called for. Find out what they want You oughta be on CD

to fund. If any of it fits with an organization's mission and goals, put a proposal together ASAP.

AIDS organizations providing healthrelated services ought to run, not walk, to appropriate local foundations to discuss submitting a proposal. One argument that might work in selected proposals is that community-based health care delivery programs developed by AIDS activists are models that can be applied in other parts of the health care delivery system. The model needs funding to be refined, expanded to serve the ever-increasing number of PWAS and infused in other parts of the system.

B) Some AIDS activists do not have much nonprofit management or fundraising experience and do not know how to put together a project worthy of foundation support. See the "Funding It" column in the November 12 issue of the Chronicle for a discussion of things a grantseeking organization needs to have in place before asking for foundation support. If you don't keep back issues of the Chronicle, call GrantMaster at 216-932-8003.

Other barriers the survey identified were: Foundations did not have enough money to fund AIDS,

● Foundations' perception that they do not have enough resources to make a real difference and that the government is responsible,

tions,

Poor quality of grantseeker presenta-

Grantseekers' inability to collaborate to avoid duplication of services.

The FCAA report suggests that there is a lot of work to be done on the issue of foundation support for HIV/AIDS programming. Some of it needs to be done by AIDS grantseekers. The strategies outlined above are good places to start.

Betsy Tabac is the president of GrantMaster, a division of Tabac and Associates, Inc. in Cleveland. GrantMaster specializes in grants funding research and proposal writing.

To the Editors:

I read your newspaper all the time and I have been enlightened on each occasion. I really enjoy reading the Gay People's Chronicle and am happy you are there for the gay community. Believe me, we need you! You have no idea how much it means to be able to pick up a newspaper and find not only important information about gay rights, laws and current events, but also a list of helpful services and hot night spots.

I sat at the 5¢ Decision Saturday night listening to some of the most talented men and women I have ever had the privilege to come in contact with. At first I thought they were pantomiming till a fellow patron set me straight. The woman who sang "You Light Up My Life" should be on a label. I've been to the Front Row theater when it was still around, Blossom Music Center, the Coliseum, lots of places in the Flats and

To the Editors:

I think it is about time that a letter is written on a positive note in regards to the Lesbian-Gay Community Center of Cleveland.

All we have heard in the last few months are negative comments about the Center and its operation.

We want to take this opportunity to congratulate Judy Rainbrook, staff (Linda, Jeannine, Greg, Aubrey) and the volunteers, for the excellent job they are doing under adverse conditions.

More positive things have been going on at the Center in the last five months than in the past three-and-a-half years. Each day I hear about exciting changes being inaugurated.

Having traveled all over the Midwest and the East, in the last four years, I have come to the conclusion that we in Cleveland are very fortunate to have a Community Center. Most communities are lucky to have a hot line.

We are getting tired of hearing about the negative comments and action being taken by individuals and groups.

What has happened to positive action, caring, loving, compassion and understanding. As the old saying goes, more can be accomplished with honey than with vinegar.

Let us all band together and give our support to the Center, in volunteering and the donation of money.

Put the past behind and forge ahead for the lesbian and gay community of Greater Cleveland.

With love and understanding,

Bruce E. Horn Jeff Plato

Community Forum

The Chronicle encourages everyone to write and express your opinion about the community or the paper. Please, however, keep letters constructive, and avoid namecalling and personal attacks. Please be brief. We reserve the right to edit letters. We will print your name unless you specifically ask us not to.

Address letters to the Chronicle, P.O. Box 5426, Cleveland, Ohio, 44101, or fax to 216-621-5282 (24 hours). Include your address and phone number so we may contact you to verify the letter.

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