Petrelis Files

Project Inform
to Post 5-Years of IRS 990s

The executive director of the HIV/AIDS treatment advocacy organization Project Inform, Dana Van Gorder, today agreed to my request to post five-years' worth of their most recent IRS 990s on their web site.

I told him about the term I coined, the Kendell Standard, so-named for Kate Kendell who's the executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. When I reached out to her in 2010 about getting NCLR's 990s up to their site, and to post the newest one very soon after it's submitted to the IRS, she had her group's returns on their site within 24-hours.

Project Inform will soon meet the Kendell Standard, when five years of tax returns for the organization are posted to their site. Van Gorder sent me this note:

I've always believed that, because AIDS service organizations work on behalf of the community, we have an obligation to be transparent about sources of our revenue and the manner in which we are spending funds entrusted to us. 

While our 990s have always been available on GuideStar, community members may not know that they can be found there and so it makes perfect sense to place them on our website, as well. 

We weren't influenced to do so by other community groups that also post their 990s on their sites, so much as fundamentally believing that it is the right thing to do. 

Sorry we haven't done so before, and thanks, Michael, for encouraging us and others to do it. The posting of our 990s is underway and they will be up early next week on our website.

Many thanks to Van Gorder and Project Inform for taking an extra step to make themselves more transparent and account to people living with HIV/AIDS, donors and the general public. Thank you, Dana!

I hope the ten other organizations who are my list of gay and AIDS advocacy organizations that presently do not share a single IRS 990 on their web sites, join Project Inform in remedying this situation and are soon meeting the Kendell Standard.