San Francisco AIDS Foundation CEO TerMeer defends layoffs

Five days after eliminating 34 staff positions in order to address a $5.71 million deficit, San Francisco AIDS Foundation CEO Tyler TerMeer, Ph.D., defended the agency’s actions, taken just before the city’s Pride festivities got underway.

“I understand the timing was not ideal,” TerMeer said in an exclusive July 1 phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “It happens to be that the end of our fiscal year comes at the end of June each year, and that is when our board-approved budget happens each year, in the month of June, and so we made our decision as soon as we could before our fiscal year flipped June 30.”

Nineteen people were let go, including chief of staff Ben Hice and chief program officer Brenda Kiner, effective July 1, while the other positions had been unfilled. TerMeer had announced the decision to reduce the agency’s staff in a guest opinion published June 26 online by the B.A.R. and by the AIDS foundation on its website. 

In it, TerMeer wrote that it was necessary for the long-term survival of the agency, which has faced fiscal headwinds for months. The AIDS/LifeCycle ride it co-hosted with the Los Angeles LGBT Center ended for good last month following years of declining participation, and it’s currently a plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit against the Trump administration over canceled federal contracts.

In the guest opinion, TerMeer characterized the layoffs as part of a “strategic restructure” of the agency. The news came three days prior to TerMeer being a grand marshal at the San Francisco Pride parade, selected for the honor by members of the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Celebration Committee.

Initially, the agency said TerMeer was unavailable last Thursday for an interview due to his Pride Month commitments and had nothing more to say about the layoffs. But after being pressed for an interview by the B.A.R., TerMeer agreed to discuss the matter Tuesday in a phone interview.

TerMeer said that he and Chief Legal Officer Peter Parisot are handling Hice’s and Kiner’s job responsibilities.

“I’m directly supervising all the programmatic roles,” said TerMeer, who is gay and living with HIV. “All the program leaders report directly to me. … The chief of staff previously supervised our strategic team. That team now reports to our chief legal officer.”

Hice didn’t immediately return a request for comment July 1. Tuesday afternoon, Kiner reached out to the B.A.R. via email to state she had filed a complaint regarding her termination with the California Civil Rights Department.

“It is my firm belief that SFAF’s challenges are not due to individual performance, but to a failure of executive accountability,” she stated. “Patterns of excessive spending, diminished fundraising, and the ongoing erosion of community trust reflect deeper leadership failures that must be addressed.”

According to the foundation’s most recent IRS 990 disclosure for the 2023-2024 Fiscal Year, Hice (whose last name is listed as Cabangun) made $237,651 in reportable compensation from the foundation and related organizations. Lara Brooks, listed as chief program officer through September 1, 2023, made $216,107; Kiner is not listed among the employees on the tax filing.

The same disclosure states that TerMeer made $421,557 in reportable compensation from the foundation and related organizations. Asked if he or others would be taking a pay cut, TerMeer told the B.A.R. that “cutting salaries is not an effective strategy that would prepare the agency for the future.”

Doing so would only present additional challenges for the nonprofit, contended TerMeer.

“We believe it would lead to staff retention issues later on down the line, so we didn’t consider cutting or reducing staff salaries, and that goes from frontline staff, to executive staff, to myself,” TerMeer said. “My salary is set and determined by the board of directors each year. There would have been no way to substitute reductions of a $6 million deficit by reducing salaries alone.”

Board Chair Manny Nungaray didn’t return an immediate request for comment for this report July 1. In its fiscal year ending last June, the agency reported revenues of nearly $39 million but expenses of almost $44.5 million.

The foundation moved its downtown San Francisco offices in March 2024 to 940 Howard Street from 1035 Market Street, as the B.A.R. previously reported. It did so with an option to purchase the building, which the agency bought last November.

According to bond documents from the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, the land and building acquisition cost was $12.5 million, with the expected maturity date for the revenue bond financing August 1, 2054. The transaction was expected to result in approximately $2 million in annual lease cost savings for the AIDS foundation from their prior leased space.

The disclosure also said the agency spent upwards of $2.5 million on interior renovation and rehabilitation of the building. It was purchased at an interest rate “not to exceed 5.75% per annum,” according to the bank. 

“We had a short-term lease to lease-to-purchase while we rented the space,” TerMeer said. “I would not say it was a high interest rate. We were on a plan to purchase right away.”

Having pledged in his guest opinion the layoffs will not affect client services, TerMeer was asked how that would be possible moving forward. The agency now has just under 200 staff members.

“We have done essentially a reorganizing of the staffing pattern internally, so we are cross training a variety of our internally-facing staff in our navigation teams,” explained TerMeer.

Prior to the layoffs, the agency had three separate navigation teams that worked in their own silos, said TerMeer, with those being benefits, services, and lobbying. Now, the pared-down teams will be trained in all three skillsets, he told the B.A.R., instead of sticking to one.
“As a result, we actually don’t have to eliminate any of the service division,” TerMeer said.

It’s not the first time the foundation has seen cuts in recent years. Back in 2021, 17 employees were laid off and four leadership positions eliminated, as the B.A.R. reported at that time. 

The foundation’s new building it bought, which houses its main offices, is situated in gay Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s District 6. He framed the fiscal situation confronting the AIDS foundation in the context of the city’s difficult budget year, as it had to address an $800 billion budget shortfall in its fiscal year that began July 1.

“The city is in the same downsizing mode as the AIDS Foundation right now, and hanging over all of us is lingering uncertainty over what the Trump administration may abandon next in terms of federal support for priorities we once shared,” stated Dorsey, who is living with HIV and vice chair of the board’s budget committee