Sir.
We indeed have received
your letter date 9 september 1998 where despite the
efficiency of your work, you describe your financial
difficulties.
We have published your letter on our web site 2 week ago,
hoping it could be of any help to you.
Nearly reaching 300 000 connections on
<http://www.positifs.org/> we continually increase
contacts which leads us to believe that internauts (web
surfers) who consult our site will react and that it could
instigate a reaction from the decision making (governmental
?) bodies.
This is the reason why we're published your letter under a
new heading specifically directed to Associations wich are
experiencing the same difficulties as yours.
It is indeed more and more
difficult to get subventions for several reasons.
Firstly, because more and more people tend to think the Aids
problem has been resolved. Besides, there's also the fact
that many associations unse incorrectly the amount of
subsidies received : without mentionning the
misappropriation of funds and other mechanisms. This is the
case in FRANCE, where the associations which gets the more
funds has operating costs which reach over 80% of their
total budget.
We also can mention the economical decline of the rich
countries, but it seems not to be a good reason but rather a
good pretext.
It is now urgent to fond implement solutions to enable us to
better manage the funds we receive in the form of
subventions or donations. It is evident that accounts should
be transparent but it shouldn't increase the work load to
the detriment of the other missions (it is already often the
case when we have to fill in requests for subventions we
could, for example, imagine that both accounts / reports
would be published on a specific web site where they could
be easily consulted by anyone. An other complementary idea
is that subventions and donations may be attributed to
Associations of reasonable size. Consequently, fior large
associations, mainly those which are composed of several
federations, the funds should be directly given to each
federation.
In order to avoid a too rigid system it would be necessary,
in certain cases, that a partial attribution of funds be
made when an action becomes prioritary os is likely to
disappear.
An other emergency
concerns the question of the renewal of subsidies.
The establishment of an obligation of renewal would prevent
the non renewal of subventions for an efficient actual
action for reasons which are external to this action. Such a
clause should be mandatory for all public subventions. As
far as private funds are concerned, the renewal should also
be an obligation but it would probably more difficult to
obtain with a probable result of the amount/number of
subventions going down.
Maybe the solution is to give the opportunity to the
allocating organizations to, whilst being obligated to renew
the subvention, reduce the amount to be given out, for
example, on the basis of tthe amount really needed for an
action to be pursued or on the basis of the financial
situation of the allocating organization.
I h've, in this letter,
written quite at lot about the reaction to your letter
because the problem of subventions is a serious problem
which has occurred to us several times since the creation of
POSITIFS. That's the reason why we had to call on voluntary
workers with all that it entails in terms of personal
involvement.
As far as our activities are concerned, the suspension of
our subsidies for our journal had the consequence of us not
being able to send it to all the people we used to send it
(mainly free distribution).
Our web site and response service can only be carried out
with the help of volontary workers and our personal
financial cmmittment. Il is unfortunately the price to pay
for our freedom action.
On the other hand, the help of voluntary workers will not be
suficient to preserve the FAR's action. Subsidies are indeed
necessary, the FAR's aim being to allocate funds to people
in need.
We are run out of funds a month ago and are becoming
exhausted with filling in requests for subventions again and
again, and with waiting for the subventioning organization's
good will. Concurrently, some of them, especially
governemental bodies, don't hesitate to tell us that the
subventions allocated to some associations (often the most
mediatised) are suficient; wich is completely untrue (the
lettres we've received from the people we're in touch with
including social services, tend to prove it quite clearly).
Sincerely.
Doctor Gilbert
MAURISSON
General Secretary of POSITIFS
and Co-Responsable of Internet-web
site<http://www.positifs.org/>
