Subject: Happy Tax Day! Release from accountabilityproject.com
From: M Petrelis <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 16:54:31 EDT

PLEASE REPOST!     PLEASE REPOST!      PLEASE REPOST!    

                                 THE ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT
For Immediate Release                                                 Contact:
Michael Petrelis
April 15, 1998
Phone: 415-621-6267
                                                                              
Email: [email-masked]
                                                             Internet:
www.accountabilityproject.com

   WEBSITE DEVOTED TO IRS 990 FORMS OF AIDS CHARITIES LAUNCHED

        AIDS Groups Give Generous Salaries to Executives, But Cut Services

San Francisco, CA -- The Accountability Project, an off-shoot of the direct
action AIDS group ACT UP/Golden Gate, has launched the first-ever Internet
Website to highlight IRS form 990 filings from AIDS service organizations.  By
law, all non profit organizations must make annual 990 form reports with the
Internal Revenue Service.  Among other things, the form identifies salaries of
top executives and costs associated with marketing.

Currently, the Accountability Project Website - www.accountabilityproject.com
- posts synopses of the 990 filings of 29 AIDS charities.  The project's sole
mission is to monitor the fiscal expenditures of non profit AIDS organizations
across the nation.

The project reports many AIDS charities have created and maintain their own
Websites, but none has been willing to post its 990 filings on it.  The
Website for the Internal Revenue Service also does not make 990 filings
available for public inspection.

Project member Michael Petrelis said, "Non profit AIDS organizations reap
hundreds of millions of dollars from both governmental sources and ordinary
citizens.  Standard public oversight of how they spend those funds is
essential to ensure implementing the best client services and a quick end to
this epidemic."

Executive directors at many AIDS charities saw their salaries skyrocket during
the mid-1990s, often simultaneously while cutbacks occurred in direct client
services, reports the project.

As an example, Petrelis points to the Washington, D.C., AIDS organization
Whitman Walker Clinic, and its director Jim Graham.  Petrelis notes 990 forms
filed by the clinic document Graham's compensation package rising from
$119,120 in FY 1992, climbing to $140,962 in FY 1993, ballooning to $151,465
in FY 1994, then dipping to $141,521 in FY 1995, the last year such forms are
available.  

During the same years, Whitman Walker Clinic's client service program to pay
for the utility and other bills of people with AIDS dropped from $148,883 to
$113,006, then fell to $78,996, before rising slightly to $82,698.  "We want
AIDS dollars spent on subsidies for people with the disease and for research,
not on staggering salaries for AIDS bureaucrats," demanded Petrelis, a person
with AIDS.

The project is also critical of the Internal Revenue Service for not making
990 filings more easily obtainable.

Don Narbone, an AIDS activist who owns and maintains the Accountability
Project's spot on the Internet, called for changes from several sectors.  "The
IRS Website should electronically post all non profits' 990 forms.  An AIDS
industry has emerged in the world of non profits, and safeguards are needed to
ensure these charities are spending their money appropriately.  This means
asking the press, politicians and the public to become 'voluntary auditors'
and analyze all fiscal documents of AIDS service organizations as carefully as
they do for AT&T, Exxon and Microsoft," said Narbone.

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