Private Sector Engagement in HIV Prevention Summer 2005 By Kandy Ferree Kandy Ferree, MCP, serves as the President & CEO of the National AIDS Fund. She has extensive experience in designing, implementing, and evaluating HIV/AIDS prevention and care services, community capacity building, group facilitation and corporate training, as well as philanthropy and grant-making at the community and national levels. Committed to HIV/AIDS as a public health and social justice issue, Ms. Ferree's vision is to create innovative, public-private partnerships that empower community-level decision-making and build community capacity. Her professional interests include building strategic philanthropic relationships with corporations and foundations; her research interests include implementing/evaluating community-based prevention interventions and managing community and organizational systems change.

In the face of added challenges in public health, as well as the downturn in the overall U.S. economy, non-profit and community-based organizations across the country are creating unique relationships with corporations and engaging the business world on their own terms in order to create a new model for outreach and philanthropy.

Over the past 17 years, the National AIDS Fund has created unique public-private partnerships. Since its founding, the Fund has relied on its corporate partners for cachet, expertise and resources and, in turn, has provided them with opportunities for education, visibility and leadership. In order to find new ways to maintain the support of its corporate partners, the Fund has learned to use business and business practices to its advantage with very positive results. In this column, Ms. Ferree presents guiding principles to ensure success for non-profit organizations when engaging corporations in new ways.

Department of Health and Human Services

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention