A Year Full of Change
2025 was an eventful year for POZabilities. Some of the changes were by choice, some were driven by changes outside of our control - but overall it was a very good year.
A year of celebration.
2025 represented the 25th Anniversary of the founding of POZabilities and the 10th year since it was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Since it’s formation as a way to escape the stigma in the bar scene, POZabilities has grown into a respected organization not only locally, but nationally, as an innovative provider of social and educational opportunities for San Diego county HIV community to gather in a stigma free environment to combat the loneliness and isolation so prevalent in the community.
To celebrate our anniversary, we gathered at the home of 2 of our supporters in Mission Hills, overlooking the city lights, for an evening of music, great food and fun. Nick Serrano from the Mayor’s office and Nicole stopped by to present POZabilities with a mayoral proclamation celebrating our anniversary.
We elevated our profile.
Over the years, POZabilities has done its work relatively quietly, focusing on a few small grants and the annual AIDS Walk to fund our programs. With the passing of time since the days where AIDS was an automatic death sentence and becoming more of a chronic, treatable condition the level of interest in the community has waned. In 2023, we saw the last instance of the AIDSwalk fundraiser and so we had to find other ways to ensure we were able to continue our programs for the community.
We decided to raise our profile in the community to increase the visibility of the work we had been doing quietly for years. We established a more aggressive online presence, our volunteers took highly visible positions in the community and used those positions to promote the work we do. We appeared in national and local publications to introduce our work to the community at large and have now become one of the most recognizable HIV service organizations in San Diego.
https://www.thebody.com/article/san-diego-hiv-social-group-still-thriving-twenty-years
We became more financially independent.
With the end of the San Diego AIDS Walk in 2023, POZabilities had to rethink both our programs and how we pay for them. As an all volunteer organization who was mostly dependent on volunteer fundraising through the AIDS Walk event, we needed to begin to develop alternate ways to reach out to the community to raise the funds we needed. In 2024, we were able to apply for and received enough grant funding, in combination with our reserves, to continue to deliver programs while developing the capability to raise funds in new ways.
In 2025, we held our first dedicated fundraiser, A Sweet Affair, which cleared almost $9,000 after expenses. We brought on Terry Summer as a board member and Events Director to ensure this event could grow and mature over time. We received a grant from the Human Dignity Foundation to fund our Healthy Living Program. A series of smaller group events added to our operating funds. In December, our partnership with Impulse San Diego grew to present the Red Ribbon Gala, which through their generosity and that of event sponsors, provided funding for the remainder of our programs, raising $10,000.
We made some investments in expanding our visibility as an organization, promoting the work we do within the local community. We updated our web presense, added limited social media reach and our volunteers promoted us through numerous other groups across the county. We also set out some direction on how we would approach funding.
We will retain a one year reserve to allow us to continue our programming and shut down gracefully over time, transitioning key programs as needed.
We only pursue funding based on the programs we have designed. We don’t design programs based on funding, we find funding to support our programs.
We keep our overhead costs as low as possible. We have no paid staff, no offices or other assets. We do pay for our web site, a storage space for event material, insurance and licenses, and a PO Box used as our mailing address of record. This ensures over 90% of the donations we receive go directly to services.
We acquired software packages to manage donations, ticketing and auctions, website and newsletters, Google Workspace and Quickbooks to track our spending. Most of these are free or at a greatly reduced cost to nonprofits.
These changes have provided us the freedom to operate and deliver the programs designed and operated by members of the San Diego HIV community.
We made changes to increase our diversity.
Over the course of 2025, we added a number of new faces to the leadership of the group.
We worked with Christie’s place to add more women to the group, including Jen Lothridge to our board as Treasurer.
We Invited Roger Al-Chaikh to join us on the board and as our Education Director. He will also work to establish a new group for younger members of the HIV community in 2026 as part of our outreach efforts to sponsor and fund important startup groups.
We added Terry Summers to the Board as Event Director to help us find new ways to fund our programs.
We rewrote and adopted changes to our Mission Statement to ensure we were more inclusive in how we describe our efforts to ensure ALL are welcome.
We Listened and Adapted.
Throughout our history we have striven to provide the services and events that the community asks for and will support. This means that every program we run is sponsored by at least one volunteer champion who ensures the program continues to operate and is responsive the needs of the community. All new programs or events start with an idea from a champion volunteer. They kick off the event and POZabilities will support and market it to the group. If the event is an ongoing success, it is added as a formal program on our calendar, but remains “owned and operated” by the community.
This also means that some events, while they may have been popular at one time, may sunset due to either a lack of sponsorship or a lack of support through attendance. In 2025 we saw the end of the monthly Bike rides, T’ai Chi and the addition of Yoga as a part of the Healthy Living program and the end of Movie Night. We saw the strength training classes move to operate on a drop in basis with no requirement for attendance and changed to a year round schedule. We saw the expansion of the Performance Ticket offerings with a new dedicated champion of the program. We saw the Thanksgiving and Holiday parties move from Jerry to Donald as the lead champion.
We expect to see more change through 2026 with the return of movie night, additional outdoor events and much more!
All in all, this was a year of change and sets us up for many more fun and successful years!
