Chicago Foundation Fred Says Awards Over $200,000 in Donations, Including Multi-Year Gift to TPAN, Howard Brown’s Broadway Youth Center (BYC) and Lurie Children's for World AIDS Day

In time for World AIDS Day, a private Chicago-based foundation named after a dog and founded by an HIV-positive doctor whose career has focused on helping young people living with HIV has announced donations totaling over $200,000 to 10 organizations locally and around the world that serve HIV-positive youth and young people affected by HIV.

Among the grants is a $200,000 commitment to be paid in $50,000 installments over the next four years to TPAN, a community-based nonprofit HIV/AIDS services organization based in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood that serves youth throughout the city. In 2021, Fred Says is also giving $50,000 to Howard Brown’s Broadway Youth Center (BYC), a community-based program that Dr. Rob Garofalo, a faculty member at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine and a pediatrician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, helped found in 2003.

“Especially during COVID, when the need for services has gone dramatically up and yet finding new or renewed sources of philanthropic support is particularly challenging, this gift couldn’t have come at a better time, and will go a long way to support and secure TPAN programs and services such as the Tea Room and. Paws N’ Effect,“ said TPAN CEO Kara Eastman.

Garofalo has been a member of TPAN’s board of directors since 2016.

Fred Says was named after the Yorkshire terrier Garofalo adopted and who was the source of immeasurable emotional support following Garofalo’s HIV diagnosis in 2010 and throughout his life. Fred passed in August 2021. These gifts are made in his honor.

“Fred may no longer be by my side, but he is forever a part of me. I am grateful for all that he has given, not just to me but to the world,” said Garofalo. “To that end, I have only just begun to fulfill the promise we made in 2013 to together make the world a better place for young people living with HIV. This year’s $200,000 in giving is by far the largest in Fred Says’ history and is the first of many that will honor my little man and help young people around the world who need just a little help to not just survive, but to thrive. Being able to support the work being done by TPAN, and our other awardees, with young people in the U.S. and abroad is a blessing and a gift in and of itself.”

In addition to the gifts to TPAN and the BYC, this year’s giving includes a $25,000 donation to Lurie Children’s Hospital—which will be accompanied by 100 Fred plush toys that will be distributed to children in the hospital on World AIDS Day, December 1.

Among the other 2021 recipients of monies from Fred Says are the Callen-Lorde Health Center in New York, the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital Adolescent HIV Program, Birmingham AIDS Outreach in Alabama, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Adolescent Initiative, Advocates for Youth, the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, and the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Center in South Africa.

“Fred will be missed.“ Garofalo said, “But through this giving his spirit lives on through the youth these monies will help support and his impact will continue to be felt for years to come.”

Contact: Lorraine A. Hayes, TPAN, 773.989.9400 ext. 243, L.Hayes@tpan.com

Julianne Bardele, Lurie Children's, 312.227.4265, jbardele@luriechildrens.org