The Southern HIV Impact Fund

Eight Years of Community-Led HIV Impact in the South

Since 2017, the Southern HIV Impact Fund has supported community-rooted organizations across the South as they advanced HIV prevention, care, advocacy, and long-term infrastructure in communities facing deep inequities and persistent barriers to care.

Over eight years, the Fund distributed more than $15.3 million through 274 grants to 105 organizations, expanding services, deepening partnerships, and reinforcing local leadership shaped by trust and lived experience.

About the Fund

The Southern HIV Impact Fund was created as a collaborative response to the disproportionate impact of HIV in the Southern United States. Grounded in the belief that local organizations are best positioned to lead change, the Fund invested in groups working across HIV services and the social determinants of health, with a strong focus on Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+.

Its reach spanned Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, while also supporting regional collaboration across state lines.

The Approach

Alongside grant funding, the Fund provided general operating support, technical assistance, leadership development, technology support, and partnership-building opportunities. People living with HIV helped shape priorities throughout. Together, these supports built grantee infrastructure, strengthened organizational resilience during crises, and kept grantees responsive to their communities, even as the policy and funding environment shifted.

Over eight years, the Fund supported a broad Southern HIV response that combined direct funding, community leadership, prevention and care services, civic engagement, and partnership building.

Data from years six through eight reflects the Fund’s strong reach among Black communities, LGBTQ+ communities, adults ages 25 to 44, and people living with HIV, across nine Southern states.

MIPA was a core part of SHIF’s approach across all eight years. Through focus groups, surveys, town halls, and other community input spaces, grantees created structured ways for people living with or impacted by HIV to inform programming, shape priorities, and guide implementation.

The Leadership Development Program strengthened Southern HIV leadership through sustained mentorship, technical assistance, and practical learning opportunities over time. Across eight years, the program cultivated local leaders, supported their growth through a year-long development cycle, and expanded their ability to lead, connect, and respond within their communities.

Launched in 2022, iFORWARD addressed digital inequities affecting Southern organizations working in HIV prevention, care, and outreach. By pairing flexible funding with technical assistance, the program strengthened digital infrastructure, supported real time problem solving, expanded telehealth and hybrid engagement, and increased organizational capacity without adding administrative burden.

The Fund’s Get Out the Vote mini grants connected civic engagement to health equity by supporting trusted, community-based voter outreach across the South. Grantees combined digital engagement, relationship building, barrier reduction, and rapid response strategies to expand voter access in communities most impacted by HIV and broader structural inequities.

The Fund strengthened the organizational foundation that makes community-led HIV response possible. By supporting locally rooted groups as they grew from early-stage efforts into trusted community anchors, the Fund expanded service capacity, reinforced advocacy, and built longer-term regional pathways for care, prevention, and justice.