New Day for NO/AIDS
“Go big or go home” guides transformation to CrescentCare
In the summer of 2014 Crescent Care celebrated the opening of its first Family Care Center, marking a rebirth of one of New Orleans’ most respected service organizations, the NO/AIDS Task Force.
The transition might not have succeeded without the guidance of Sage Growth Partners. The term AIDS had barely into the nation’s vocabulary when NO/AIDS began providing essential care.
NO/AIDS Task Force is a community-based HIV AIDS service organization. It started thirty years ago a group of men and women saw the need to come together and do something about men that were are getting sick on to the hospital I many not returning home.
In a city with a critical need for its services, the agency grew along with the demand. But the AIDS epidemic started to ebb in the 1990s, just as community health centers for becoming more popular. Doubts were raised about the viability of a single-issue organization.
The concern was that with so much, so many resources going to community health centers that it might be likely that we would see fewer resources earmarked for HIV services.
Thousands depended on care that only NO/AIDS offered and that care was in jeopardy.
So we started thinking about the possibilities of partnering with community health centers or becoming one as an organization. It was a difficult decision to even think about moving or expanding services beyond HIV.
One of the biggest issues for NO/AIDS, especially for the Board, because we have been in the community thirty years, was to not lose sight of our mission and who we have supported all these years and who has supported us.
The board struggled with the issue for a number of years then August 2005 happened.
NO/AIDS depended on government grants. That aid had been reliable in the past and now there was a greater need
and the funding disappeared.