Though donated by and named after ACT-UP Golden Gate, a significant portion of the materials are from 1990 and earlier, before ACT-UP GG separated from ACT-UP San Francisco, in September of that year. The largest amount of material concerns ACT-UP actions and responses to the 6th International AIDS Conference which was held in San Francisco in June of 1990. There are also some materials on the 5th and 7th International AIDS conferences, as well as both ATAC (AIDS Treatment Activist Conference) and ATAC² (2nd AIDS Treatment Activist Conference) from 1990 and 1991, and the 13th and 14th AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) meetings December 1991 and April 1992.

While there is some documentation of ACT-UP General meetings and a few documents concerning the City Issues Committee (CHIC) [San Francisco] and the INS (Immigration) Working Group, the majority of the ACT-UP SF and ACT-UP GG materials appear to be from the Treatment Issues Committee and mostly concern drug protocol studies, ethics, and length of time for drugs to be approved by the FDA. There are no formal minutes and only a few agendas and formal reports from either ACT-UP SF or ACT-UP GG

Most of the more formal documents were actually issued by ACT-UP New York. This includes the two ACT-UP AIDS Treatment Agendas (1990 and 1991). The ACT-UP New York folder contains other New York-issued and New York-specific items, including a series of newspaper articles that touch on ACT-UP or AIDS, and fundraising letters from Harvey Fierstein and Keith Haring. The Boston materials focus on a meeting and protest held in Boston in 1988. The Washington, D.C. items are similar, though they also include information on an NIH Meeting in Bethesda, Maryland. The "other ACT-UP groups" file includes both flyers for local non-ACT-UP events or organizations and materials from ACT-UP chapters in Louisiana, and elsewhere, and materials on police brutality in Canada.

The two folders of ACT-UP publications include: 1- AIDS Treatment News (SF), 5- ACT-UP San Francisco newsletters, 1- ACT-UP Reports (NY), as well as several AIDS Action News (Toronto) from 1988. The clippings include a variety of articles concerning various ACT-UP protests or people from around the country.