Highlights from Atlanta 2001

MS. MELISSA ROGERS: My name is Melissa Rogers. I'm executive director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It's a grant project of the Pew Charitable Trust, looking at the intersection of religion and public affairs, and I'm very pleased to be with you here today.

Before the very tragic events of September 11th, the issue of religious social service providers was one that was really at the top of the national agenda. As we know, September 11th changed everything, including this issue.

But this area has often been characterized by quite a bit of misunderstanding and myth, and some of these myths are important to discuss at this point in time. One is that President Bush's creation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was really the entry point of religious social service providers into either the sphere of government funding of the sphere of seeking wider support from private foundations and corporations.

Of course we know that President Bush's initiative did open the door wider and call greater attention to the funding of faith-based organizations, both private and public, but before the time of the creation of the White House office, there was quite a bit of activity in terms of religious social service providers seeking public money and seeking support from charitable foundations.

Another myth is at this point that the faith-based initiative and everything that relates to it will suddenly disappear from the scene because of the events of September 11. I know that you all know that we're seeing, really, religious organizations playing a very strong role in the rebuilding of the American infrastructure, both literal and spiritual, after September 11th, and so this issue of the role of faith-based organizations in society will continue to be a very important one, even in the wake of the tragic events of September 11th and in the midst of the nation being at war and dealing with home front issues as well as issues abroad.

Now the Bush initiative, as many of you know, has dealt with two aspects of funding for faith-based organizations. Probably you've heard the most about the part of the initiative that deals with government funding for faith-based organizations. That's tended to grab more of the media time, and secondarily, an issue related to the governmental process of regulating faith-based organizations.

As many of you know, President Bush commissioned an audit of five federal agencies to look at how they regulated faith-based organizations, and whether there were, in the Bush administration's terms, barriers to the participation of faith-based organizations and government-funded social service provision.

But the Bush initiative has also called upon greater giving from the private sector for faith-based organizations, and this has been a very important part of the discussion as of late.

So, today, what we're going to focus on is this notion of private funding for faith-based social service providers. This issue, blessedly, does not touch on these thorny church-state issues that we've been struggling with when we're talking about government funding for faith-based organizations. That's not to say it doesn't have challenges of its own but it should be understood that it's distinct from that issue of government funding for faith-based organizations.

We have with us today a very astute and diverse group of people to discuss the issue of grantmakers' perspectives on the strengths and weaknesses of faith-based organizations. They each have a great depth of experience in this area and I will give you a few introductory biographical notes now.

As you know, the larger biographical profile is in your material, so I'll just say a quick word about each of them.

Sarah Cheney is with us. She is deputy director of the Faith in Action program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and she has much experience in the social service area. She had previously worked on another national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation involving adult day services, where she learned a lot about technical assistance that's now becoming a very helpful background for her work, presently, in the Faith in Action program.

Also with us is Fred Davie. He is vice president for national faith-based programs of Public/Private Ventures. He previously worked as a program officer with the Ford Foundation and developed a great degree of experience in working with faith-based organizations in both of these capacities.

With us also is Isaiah Madison. He is with the African American faith-based initiative of the Foundation of the MidSouth. Reverend Madison is actually a lawyer and a minister. He comes very well-qualified to this discussion and many others. He worked as a pastor for a period of time and now does a lot of educational work with ministers as they try to build capacity to provide social services in their communities.

Bill Schambra is also with us. He is vice president for Program of the Bradley Foundation. He has previously worked with the Reagan and Bush administrations and has been at the Bradley Foundation for about ten years, working in this area of civil renewal and religion's role in civic renewal.

I'd like to turn to the panelists now for some questions of my own, and then, a little bit later, I want to encourage you to have questions that you voice, and that our panelists can field at a little later point in the discussion.

First, I'd like to ask Sarah Cheney, who's worked with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Sarah, what about this question of the strengths and weaknesses of faith-based organizations?

What are some of the strengths and weaknesses that you're familiar with, and what kind of faith-based organizations have you worked with through your work in the Faith in Action program?

MS. CHENEY: Let me start I guess by defining what we call faith-based organizations, the second part of your question. We define a faith-based organization primarily as a church, a congregation, a synagogue, a mosque, any congregation of faith. But we also know that there are other religious social service agencies and we encourage the individual congregations to collaborate with the religious social service agencies as well.

That is one aspect that I think is a real key to our model and that is the inner faith coalition. For us, we encourage coalitions, different churches as well as help organizations, civic organizations, and social service organizations, to unite and work together.

We also encourage that the religious organizations that participate on the coalition represent the diversity in the community. So that it truly is an interfaith effort.

One reason that we have found that to be so helpful is I think one of the weaknesses of faith-based organizations is that sometimes the religious mission of the faith-based group can be put ahead of the social service goals, and so for us, by having an interfaith coalition, the focus can be on the social service goals, and by having a coalition with everyone having a seat, all the various religious representatives having a seat at the table, it can kind of serve as a check and balances, if you will, so that no one single faith agenda is put ahead of other agendas. So that the focus can be on the social service goals.

Another strength, I think, of our particular model, is that it is a grassroots initiative. We believe it is so important for there to be local ownership and so our model encourages a local governing board, either through the coalition, or representatives of the coalition, not from any one faith-based organization, one congregation, but that it truly be representative of the community.

By having that local governing structure in place, it also gives flexibility, and a sense of community ownership, so that the community can help determine priorities for the type of services that should be provided.

MS. ROGERS: Thank you.

Reverend Madison, have you had similar experiences to Sarah's, or are they different in some ways, in terms of the strengths and weaknesses?

REV. MADISON: Yeah. Well, I think that faith-based organizations, that they, if they are true to their faith, they come into this whole area of public service, social service, from a transcendent position, from a consciousness that there is an imperative that's larger than politics and business, the things that we can get our hands around, that requires us to be in relationship with one another as we strive to create a higher quality of life for everybody. The rich, the poor, the black, the white, the young, the old, male, female, et cetera.

Secondly, if religious institutions are true to their faith, they are coming at these issues not from an abstract institutional, and even, I'd say, theological or doctrinal perspective. They are coming to these issues from out of concern for the practical needs and circumstances that human beings, who find themselves in a state of want, or a state of bondage, or a state of alienation from themselves, each other, trying to be a vehicle by which people can connect with that which is real in them, at any moment in time, and situation, so as to bring reality, comparability, concreteness, realness, to this whole area of social service. 

One of the things that pains me, deeply, when I hear a lot of the discussion around the reaction to Mr. Bush's initiatives, is that, you know, folk talk, we speak of the First Amendment, separation of church and state, and, you know, these abstract, constitutional, legal, philosophical, and I keep feeling somewhere down inside, that the law killeth but the spirit giveth life.

What I often do is to say if you want to resolve the issue, come, go with me to Fordyce, Arkansas, and let us sit down and talk with Pastor McGee of the Horizon Church, that's working with federal money and state money, and not imposing on anybody, being very effective at being a vehicle that the entire county and city embraces and supports.

I think what we have to do is to get back to reality in these discussions, and I find that when we involve a series of faith-based folk, who are truly coming from a genuine faith perspective, we do bring folk together, and we bring folk back down to the real deal.

So I just want to speak to those two issues, in terms of the concreteness, and the fact that we're all in this thing together.

MS. ROGERS: Let me ask both of you, Sarah, especially. You talked about working with some small congregation, although including them in interfaith groups. What kind of technical assistance do you find that those groups need, or individually or collectively, and has the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation played a role in helping them have the technical assistance that they need to provide effective service.

MS. CHENEY: I think, again, a strength of our model is that concept of the interfaith coalition and by having a local governing board, you can help bring in an array of expertise from the community. So what we encourage the local coalitions to do is to think of providing their services, although the Faith in Action services are volunteer, so there's no fee, but in thinking of their services as a business. So to think about the financial responsibility, the governing responsibilities.

Those are the kinds of things, the financial responsibilities, that will all ensure that the program has long-term sustainability.

So we provide a variety of technical assistance measures through different media to organizations, that look at board development issues, things that are fairly common in nonprofit organizations, but which a lot of times your local churches just don't think about.

So it's your common business principles and practices, that we encourage the local faith-based groups to think about.

MS. ROGERS: Are there any experiences that you've had—you mentioned that the churches, for example, had, you know, often weren't in that mindset. 

Are there any other things that are sort of peculiar to the faith-based organizations that you've worked with, that are particular challenges or maybe even opportunities as regards technical assistance?

MS. CHENEY: We haven't seen anything unusual yet. I think one thing is leadership. You know, leaderships often, in churches and congregations, can turn over, and so, again, the idea of the coalition is to provide a stable model of leadership. So that's what we do to hopefully overcome some of those barriers.

REV. MADISON: Can I speak on that one issue?

MS. ROGERS: Sure; absolutely.

REV. MADISON: I find that—and I'm from Mississippi and work with folk in Louisiana and Arkansas, and a lot in the Delta, so it may not be maybe so much different from North Carolina. But I find that the faith-based people where I work are resistant to—many of them are resistant to the basic and most fundamental requirement for infrastructure development, or organizational enhancement, and that is planning.

Planning in a structured way that enables them to put down and put before them what it is that they are trying to accomplish, and how they're going to do it, and then to implement that in a way that keeps everybody on the same page, in lockstep.

I find that our folk like to be free to sing. We [inaudible]. We like to dance and sing, and use our imagination, our creativity, and that's wonderful, but this planning piece, unless we can get more of our pastors and the leadership—and our pastors—and I'm going to tell you the truth, and I work with the African American faith-based initiative at the foundation, so it's probably different with the European Americans. But the pastors are very, very—they don't want to be "boxed in." So what I use, all the time, to get them to pay more attention to me, is to talk about the fact that what we want to help them do is to be able to have a very serious external prison ministry, and avoid an internal prison ministry with the IRS.

[Laughter]

REV. MADISON: We usually get their attention.

[Laughter]

REV. MADISON: That planning piece is so key, it is so foundational, and yet I think for what? spiritual reasons, lifestyle, tradition, the African American faith communities generally accept—now we have some flagship churches that do an excellent job. They have lawyers and business persons, and stockbrokers, accountants, and all those kind of folks who are on the deacon board and everything. So they do it. But 90 percent of the churches don't have those kind of people. So the planning piece, in terms of—we need your help on that.

MS. CHENEY: I would actually agree that you're right, that is essential for the planning, and when we are looking at proposals for funding, those are some of the things that we look and attempt to assess, that has there been careful planning with regard to governing structure, and particularly funding? Is there broad-based community funding and support? Is the congregation solidly behind this effort, and one minister told me once, that they know if a congregation truly supports a cause—if the program has access to the kitchen and the parlor.

[Laughter]

MS. CHENEY: So if the group can truly use the organization and if the congregation will support the program in its budget, then that is evidence of truly supporting the effort.

MS. ROGERS: As a Baptist myself, that rings very true. The parlor and the kitchen. What could be more important? I'd like to switch gears, just a little bit, from the practical to the research aspect of this.

Fred, I wonder if I could ask you, I know you have some data on this. What does your data say about the effectiveness of faith-based organizations and where do you see the holes in the research, and what do you know about the future of, you know, filling in those holes in the research?

MR. DAVIE: Let me just talk about, there are lots of areas that we could discuss in terms of what the data's showing relative to effectiveness. But let me talk about just three areas, if I might.

The first is faith-based organizations are effective in that they are really good generators of social capital, and by that we mean that they simply create a level of trust in communities, trust on the part of parents, for example, who will send their kids to a faith-based institution for programs; trust in communities and among neighborhood organizations because the faith-based organization can speak to the centers of policy and political power on behalf of the communities.

As a result of that, social capital is a result of creating that trust. They are then able to develop programs that come out of that, programs that deal with a variety of issues from youth development to programs that focus on hunger, et cetera.

So social capital is one of these sort of effective measures, or effective aspects of faith-based programming, of faith-based organizations involved in this kind of work.

A second one would be that faith-based programs have proven to be a real source of volunteers. We know that for centuries, faith-based organizations worked on a variety of primarily charitable but other social issues with scant resources, and the reason that they were able to do that is because they had this sort of free source of volunteers.

That continues to be a great measure, as we see, in our data, of their effectiveness in community work.

Third, and a final piece, would be that the faith-based organizations are actually there in communities and they have physical space, and they often make that physical space available for a variety of community programs for use, and the value of that space cannot at all be underestimated.

In New York City, where I've done most of my work, many of our more youth programs and effective youth programs, whether they're secular or faith-based, find their locations in churches, in faith-based organizations that are there in the community.

Now an agenda as to what we should look at in terms of research actually grows out of those three areas and there are many more that we could talk about. But let's just go back and visit those three again. 

So if we go back to the whole notion of social capital and program creation, what we'll see is some of what Sarah and Reverend Madison have talked about already.

That faith-based programs have a social capital, they create trust, and out of that they create programs. But the level and the sophistication of the programs is awfully lacking, and what we have seen and what we've decided is that we need to do a great deal of research on best practices and how to bring these programs up to a level that funders, government entities, and others would require.

So that's one thing. If we look at the issue of volunteers, a great source for volunteers. But our data shows us that when it comes to not recruiting, but training and retaining volunteers, faith-based organizations have a very, very difficult time doing that, particularly when volunteers are recruited to be mentors, and particularly mentors for at-risk and high-risk youth.

The level of turnover there is quite considerable, and so what we are hoping that we will be able to do is put together a research program that will help us understand what makes for effective training and retraining of volunteers, particularly mentors, in this work, and there are some models out there. It's just that no one has bothered to really codify that data and then to apply it to these situations.

So that's a second thing, the whole notion of understanding this training and retaining volunteers better.

So we then look at the third piece of this and that is physical space. The question becomes, well, if you look at the physical space of many of the churches, primarily in urban areas and other places, the space is, in many cases, in disrepair. So then the question becomes how do you use philanthropic dollars, corporate dollars, and public dollars to fund capital budget projects for faith-based organizations? You know, Partners for Sacred Places in Philadelphia has done a lot of work on this.

But there's still a great deal of work to be done. There are examples, I've been involved in them in my work, of public dollars going to improve the physical spaces of churches, particularly where youth programs or day care centers or soup kitchens are managed and are publicly funded.

But we need to have that information in a central repository, and then be able to share it in a sort of systematic way, across the board, with organizations that are looking to improve the physical conditions of these faith-based organization and communities.

So that's just a piece, then, on areas of effectiveness, and then some possible places to study how to do this work better. A research agenda sounds a little sort of grandiose, but it might provide some of the basis for a research agenda.

Let me just then say a word about—what was the last thing?—oh, the difficulties of evaluating faith-based programs.

Again, I'll talk about three things because I like to organize my thoughts in threes. It helps me that way. I think a first thing would be, that we've found in our work, is data collection. It is really hard to get—it's what Reverend Madison was talking about in terms of planning. It's the same phenomenon. It is really difficult to get our sites—we have in our national faith-based program for high-risk youth, we have 16 sites around the country, collaborations with congregations, about 500 congregations involved, all-told.

We have about 42 high-risk kids, on average, per site, who are formally involved, 116 that are informally involved, and these are kids who've been to jail, or have, in some ways, been involved with the criminal justice system.

It's a research project. We want data. We want to know about the kids. We want to know about the conditions out of which they come. We want to know lots of things, and getting that data from our sites has been a very difficult thing, a very difficult process.

But what we've tried to do is to show the sites the connection between data collection and evaluation, public education, and the most important thing for the sites, fund development.

When you talk about generating resources based on data, then our sites kind of "get it." When we say that we're able to go to the Bradley Foundation or RWJ, or the Department of Justice or the Department of Labor with data in hand, that funds the actual operation of these sites, that has provided more incentive for the kind of data collection we need.

But data collection becomes one of the issues involved in trying to evaluate faith-based programs.

Another issue that's involved there is the participation level of the clients, or the target populations. I think our data show that if you have a program that runs five days a week, most kids, on average, only come about 2.5 days per week.

High-risk kids come even less. So it's really hard, then, to evaluate a program if the participants are coming at that rate. It's really hard to evaluate outcomes and what impact is having, et cetera.

So we need to, and we are thinking about this, how to—and I'm not a researcher by training. We have staff there that think about how to restructure research designs that take into account this fairly low participation rate on the part of the populations that we do work with, because it just presents a unique issue for us.

Then, finally, in terms of sort of challenges in evaluating faith-based programs, I would say it is the role of faith itself. What difference does it ultimately make and how do you know? How do you figure that out?

Our programs go across the spectrum in terms of how they incorporate faith into the programming.

Some start with prayers, some invite participants to come to church, some take participants to church. For example, we have mentors who have youth assigned to them, they will take them to church. But absolutely none, on the basis of our data, require any kind of faith-based behavior in exchange for services. We just don't do that. But still the question becomes what difference does faith make, and we want to spend some time, I think over the next couple years, trying to talk about that in a way that the public can better understand it.

I mean, there's some preliminary data that shows, for example, drug dependency and drug involvement gets reduced, if you're involved with a organized faith community, or young people who attend church on a regular basis tend to do better in their academics.

Or being involved in faith communities generally leads to a decrease in a propensity for antisocial behaviors. So that preliminary data is there, but we need to be able to really evaluate the role of faith and then talk about it and communicate it a little better.

So that's some of the stuff that we're looking at on the research side and maybe we'll have more to report out later.

MS. ROGERS: Okay; great. I know the research part of this is a very hot topic right now, and a lot of people in foundations are looking at it. So we're sure to see more helpful information about this in the future.

I wonder if I could turn to Bill Schambra now and ask, the Bradley Foundation I know has a particular philosophy about civic renewal and religion's role in civic renewal. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about that philosophy and then tell us how that philosophy shapes the particular, you know, programs that you are funding and working with right now in this area.

MR. SCHAMBRA: Sure. Thanks. Perhaps the best way to to begin to describe the Bradley Foundation's approach to this issue of faith-based initiatives is to tie it to a recent incident in one of Milwaukee's neighborhoods.

Several weeks ago, the city's Merrill Park Neighborhood Association, located in a low-income area facing a particularly vicious outburst of crime, rechristened its community Resource Center, the Fred Green Community Center. Fred Green, who is described in news accounts as a tree trimmer, had died a little over a year ago after falling from a ladder while cutting tree branches for a friend.

But according to neighbors, Mr. Green was a great deal more than a tree trimmer. He had been active in the neighborhood organization, in his local church, he pruned shrubbery and cut grass for free when residents couldn't afford it. He faced down drug dealers in the streets, in spite of death threats, and having his garbage fire-bombed.

Above all, he looked out for the community's children, recruiting them for a local karate school and taking them on camping trips. His Merrill Park neighbors sorely miss this man of faith and action, you can be sure.

At this point I'd like to say that the Bradley Foundation supported this pillar of civic commitment who labored no more than five miles away from our headquarters in downtown Milwaukee. I'd like to say that but I can't. We only heard about Mr. Green when we read an account of his wonderful life written by Eugene Kane, a local columnist, and published on the day of his funeral.

This was a failure on the part of the Bradley Foundation's grantmaking program. Mr. Green is precisely the sort of person we wish to find and support under what we call our New Citizenship Agenda.

The agenda arises from our mounting concern that Americans today play an ever-smaller role in public life. The everyday local civic institutions by which they once governed themselves, associations rooted in religious affiliation, neighborhood, ethnicity or voluntary impulse, have gradually been displaced by experts sporting scientific credentials and public policy located in the remote bureaucratic reaches of government or corporations of the nonprofit sector.

Americans today, in our view, are encouraged to consider themselves not as self-governing citizens, actively shaping their daily lives, but, rather, as passive consumers or clients of social service providers.

Major American foundations haven't done much to discourage this tendency. In spite of the professed commitment by many grantmakers to civil renewal, we nonetheless continue to direct most of our grantmaking toward complex, large-scale programs aimed at testing out the latest social science theories, designed and run by academically credentialed experts.

Foundations increasingly tend to dictate precisely what those programs will look like through painstakingly specific requests for proposals, advice-dispensing program officers, exhausting application requirements, elaborate design specifications, burdensome outcome measures, and our most recent means of co-optation, venture philanthropy in which we load up a successful project with so much technical assistance, funding, and board involvement, that it becomes basically a wholly-owned subsidiary of the funder.

Only the largest and most sophisticated nonprofit can hope to even begin to compete in this complex and demanding funding environment. Clearly, for most of our major foundations the word is amateurs, everyday citizens tackling immediate problems need not apply.

Our view at Bradley, on the contrary, is that a solid foundation of amateurs is the indispensable condition of a healthy civic life, one in which everyday citizens organized in their grassroots associations come to have a significant say, once again, in the public affairs that concern them most.

A great many of those civic association, usually in low-income neighborhoods, are rooted squarely in religious faith. At Bradley, we open the doors to faith-based funding not because we were promoting a particular faith agenda, but, rather, because we considered it the most effective way to cultivate a stronger civic life.

As long as such a large number of citizens become civically engaged because they understand themselves to be answering a call from God, or Yawah, or Allah, then foundations wishing to cultivate civic renewal, while refusing to fund faith-based organizations are simply spinning their wheels.

Perhaps I can best illustrate our approach to faith-based funding by constructing a hypothetical grant, by imagining that we had in fact found Mr. Green and begun to assist his battle against crime in Merrill Park before his untimely death.

Usually with crime mounting in a neighborhood the first thing city agencies, major nonprofit and foundations do is to gather themselves into a consortia and solemnly vow that nothing less than a comprehensive collaborative community-based coalition, those magic hard C words, will do to solve the program.

So they pool their resources and open program sites in the neighborhood announcing that they thereby fully intend to seek lots of community input. In truth, of course, the program site isn't really about listening to the neighborhood but ensuring that the neighborhood listens to the program staff, who are bent on testing out the latest theory in social intervention. Not entirely coincidentally, it usually turns out that this theory is one that a major national foundation is now promoting and funding handsomely in the six city expanded demonstration project.

[Laughter]

MR. SCHAMBRA: That's not typically our approach. We take as our first task figuring out what's already going on in the neighborhood that's good, by conferring quietly with the rather eclectic but thoroughly street savvy group of community organizers, storefront preachers and neighborhood elders whose judgment we've come to trust over the years.

Had we asked them about Merrill Park, sooner or later they would have pointed us to Fred Green. We would have called Mr. Green and asked if we could drop by and talk to him.

Initially, no doubt, he would have been quite suspicious. After all, Bradley's the largest foundation in Wisconsin, and if he had previously entertained any hope that the major foundations downtown would take an interest in his lonely battle against crime, he would have long since been disabused of that notion.

But we would have persisted, asking him to show us what he does in the neighborhood, maybe by driving us around and pointing out his handiwork. As the newspaper article suggested, for Mr. Green this would have comprised an idiosyncratic mixture of free tree trimming, trips to the zoo, and pizza for kids, keeping an eye on the street corners where the drug dealers had set up their latest markets. Hardly the basis for a new social science theory or a multicity demonstration project.

At some point we would have asked him, "What makes you do this? What makes you persist in the face of what seems to be overwhelming odds?"

When we become this direct with grantees, the responses are always a bit hesitant and vague, at first, but often we catch the shy, barely audible suggestion that faith makes them do it. At this point reassurance from us is often necessary and it's forthcoming. It's okay to talk about God, we say. Usually that moment of permission triggers the most passionate and insightful explanation of what drives these neighborhood activists, what compels them to up their lives on the line day after day. 

Asking them to describe what they do and why they do it, without talking about God, would be like asking them to make bricks without straw. When it comes to the actual grant proposal from the qualifying nonprofit, all we ask is a very brief and straightforward description of the activities the grantee already has underway in the neighborhood. We are neither surprised nor dismayed when, as it often turns out, the application contains more references to the Bible than to the latest issues of the leading social policy journals.

Our reporting requirements are likewise designed to be as unburdensome as possible with a fairly simple semiannual program and financial reports requested. Grants in this new citizenship program area are typically modest, say, 20- to $50,000 a year, but are usually very flexible, directed to general operating support. We give away some $3 million a year to local neighborhood groups under this rubric and we're open to renewals as long the projects continue to do solid work in the community.

In short, our new citizenship project is designed to locate those neighborhood leaders like Mr. Green, who have quietly, patiently carved out enclaves of peace and hope, even in the most troubled neighborhoods, usually without the slightest notice or assistance from the larger society.

Perhaps because they're so busy doing the next right and necessary thing, they really don't have time to sit down with that collaborative coalition downtown to assemble, to discuss the problem, even if they were invited, which of course they usually are not.

As we look for these neighborhood leaders, we try to abide by these principles. We try to listen to their goals and dreams. We don't lecture them about our plans and theories. We aren't troubled when this often seemingly random collection of undertakings fails to fit neatly into the preexisting program category so convenient to program officers, but alien to everyday neighborhood life.

We understand that they're usually most inspired and most energetic when working on their own self-designed projects, and so we don't insist that they join coalitions that may end up requiring them to spend more time in committee meetings than on the streets.

We believe that it's a waste of time to ask neighborhood leaders to describe efforts to meet the unpredictable daily crises of an inner city neighborhood by artificially jamming them into Powerpoint presentations or outcomes-based evaluations or bulleted benchmarks. We try to find grantees whom we trust enough to spend general operating support wisely, to tackle the unanticipated emergency roof repair, or post bond, or buy the used van advertised in today's classified, without worrying about getting advance permission for shifting funds between line items.

We do not regard our grantees as temporary three-year demonstration projects, but, rather, as stable, enduring institutions of neighborhood life meriting our consideration as long as they continue to contribute effectively to the life of the community.

Finally, we do honor the fact that many of our grantees do what they do because their faith demands it of them, not because they carry credentials in some social science profession.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this approach is that it sounds so simple and commonsensical. Find grassroots leaders who are bringing life to the neighborhoods and give them money to do it. But in fact it's so rare, it's so easy to become distracted by peripheral issues.

Putting it bluntly, when the goal is to cultivate civic activity at the grassroots, what results is by no means neat and tidy from the obsessive-compulsive program officer's point of view. Neighborhood efforts instead appear to be amateurish, duplicative, inefficient, professionally understaffed or unstaffed, overly ambitious, vaguely defined, inadequately budgeted, insufficiently documented, poorly reported, and justified in language involving spirits and angels and souls and other absurd intangibles.

But those qualities are in fact key indicators of a vigorous civic life sustained by everyday self-governing citizens. As foundations, we should accept, we should embrace and celebrate the messy, inefficient, chaotic, glorious, amateurism of civic life. 

While we so often say that we do value civic vitality, nonetheless, we almost immediately throw ourselves into vigorous efforts to suppress it, to force it into the mold of a neater, cleaner, more amenable professionalism.

We say of course we want to fund faith-based neighborhood projects, but just a few things first. First, they must attend endless leadership training seminars, so they can get beyond a shaky reliance on personal charisma and reach the high plateau of routinized managerialism.

First, they must fill our workshops to learn how to write slick grant proposals studded with all the right social science buzz words and accounting terms.

First, they must replace the neighbors on their board of directors with impressive but only ambiguously committed outside directors.

First, they must merge their unique visions and identities into the vague banalities of a foundation-mandated collaborative coalition and learn to follow the lead with professional staff.

Above all, first, they must douse their evangelical fire in the lukewarm bath of ecumenicalism.

By the time neighborhood leaders have attended to just these few details first, before the funds are forthcoming, they're usually no longer recognizable in their own neighborhoods.

When the Bradley Foundation didn't find Fred Green before his untimely death, our new citizenship program, as I say, failed. The fact that we failed, the fact that this good and decent man was active every day in his community, a mere 10-minute drive from our offices, without being aware of it, is itself an indication of just how difficult it is to construct a grants program truly devoted to grassroots faith-based civic renewal.

Even the most determined foundation, it seems, faces an uphill struggle to escape the cultural predilections of the philanthropic world, in order to build instead on the local knowledge…

MS. ROGERS: Thank you. Well, we have a lot to "chew on," and I want to, at this point, I think, go out to you, and to get some of your questions and thoughts. I have a lot of questions of my own but I'm cognizant of the time and want to make sure that your voices are heard. So I believe we have a mike floating about. If we could get the mike to this lady in the blue jacket at the front table and then to the gentleman in the brown jacket behind here, that would be most helpful.

QUESTION: This question is for Bill. Thank you for that. I really enjoyed that. It is very enlightening, and I have a question about the response of the neighborhoods when there's an infusion of money. That change can change, and what have you found has been the response and how the community has handled that?

MR. SCHAMBRA: Well, as I say, the program typically gives small grants, you know, 20- to $50,000 a year, and so it's not the case—we're a fairly small foundation, we're the largest foundation in Wisconsin, but that's like being the tallest building in Dubuque. I mean, it's not much of a distinction. But it is, by national standards, a fairly small foundation. So we in fact are unable to infuse massive amounts of money into the neighborhoods, even if we were so inclined.

We tried very carefully to gauge the ability of a group to absorb the money that we do give them, and if a group expresses a desire, of course, to improve its management capacities, we have various ways, various people that we can refer them to. I think it's the more typical practical to insist that folks go through a fairly elaborate amount of training and technical assistance before they qualify for the money, and our concern there is, as I say, that so much of our money then ends up going into funding what really are secondary things. You know, really secondary issues.

Funding the technical capacity without funding the programs themselves. But if a program turns out to have the technical capacity to absorb larger amounts of money, we certainly are prepared to go—we made a grant, recently—and this kind of speaks to a number of the issues that are floating around in this area. We recently gave a million dollar grant, capital grant, to Holy Redeemer Church of God and Christ, not to a 501(c)(3) associated with Holy Redeemer church of God and Christ, but, you know, the church itself to build more program space for the various, the many outreach ministries that it has underway in the city.

But, you know, I daresay it's probably one of the largest capital grants ever given to a church of God and Christ, which is, as you know, an inner city Pentecostal congregation, by and large. That's something that not enough foundations are prepared to do, and I guess my point is I wish more would be prepared to do that sort of thing.

MS. ROGERS: Can I slip in something right there? For those of us newer to this grantmaking world, I think I intuit what some of the barriers and some of the nervousness is about giving to a church, as you just described the grant. But can you talk a little bit about what are the particular things that cause some charitable foundations to be very nervous about giving to A, a religious organization that is a separate nonprofit, or B, you know, a house of worship itself. What are the barriers for grantmakers there, in the mindset of a grantmaker, that you perceive?

Even in your own organizations, was that an issue, that you fought through and then came out on the other side to be in a position to fund these types of groups? I throw that out to anyone. You brought it up, Bill, and I was interested in that.

MR. SCHAMBRA: Well, you know, this area is so fraught with misconceptions, it's hard to figure out which barrier to settle on. I know that it has actually been necessary to have attorneys reassure foundations that it is okay to give to a church. I mean, people actually, even in the foundation world, assume that the church-state separation, which, you know, there's some question as to how strong that is in the area of government funding. There's no question that it doesn't prevent faith-funding in this area, but, nonetheless, you know, it's perceived as a barrier.

But I think the larger question is the profound cultural difference between the world of foundations and the world of Holy Redeemer Church of God and Christ. It's hard to imagine two worlds that are further apart in every—

MS. ROGERS: One heavily academic and social science oriented and one being very practical, grassroots—

REV. MADISON: I want to say, in response to your question, that it really depends on the nature of the ministry that a church is engaged in, as to whether or not a foundation may be justifiable in being nervous about, you know, fiscal management issues, program accountability issues in terms of implementing what they got a grant to implement. I think we're talking about affordable housing production, which requires immense sums of money, and a significant level of credibility to other players, other stakeholders, public and private. In order for a church to be successful at this kind of work, then a foundation I think is a good steward, who demands that that institution, that that church who receives that money sets it up so that there's no danger that it's going to be commingled with the pastor's money, discretionary fund, because of the credibility issues and the importance of the foundation seeing itself as a catalyst in terms of making those kinds of projects happen at the scale that they are happening through the leadership of many churches around the country.

Another issue is that the Foundation for the MidSouth has a real strong—I'd say our number-one concern is coalition building, networking, partnershiping, because we feel that all the grant money in the world, all of the training and understanding that we bring as funders to a community, to a grantee, prospective grantee, cannot substitute for that institution growing in its credibility and in its ability to operate in a cooperative way with other institutions, without appearing to impose God's will on other folk, or the other constituency, the community that's targeted. So those are reasons that go beyond.

They go to questions of what the foundation's trying to do. In the case of the Foundation of the MidSouth, all of our money is really capacity-building, because we're trying to get people to the point that they go elsewhere, that they go to the public sector, and we know that in going to the public sector, that the reporting requirements are tremendous, the accountability, IRS. I mean, that they don't play. So we are very concerned about setting a standard for them, that is not going to backfire on us when they get, you know, dealing with a HUD grant, or a Labor Department welfare-to-work grant.

So let me just say that I think that this whole area of funding for faith-based institutions is a very, very diverse area of funding, where, depending on the kind of ministry, the kind of social service, the kind of community development, economic development, work that's going on, that a different set of criteria come into play in terms of what the foundations extract and exact, and expect, and what they ought to exact, extract and expect, because it is in the interest of the churches, and, ultimately, the people who are the beneficiaries of what they do, which again becomes the whole community that we understand that we're stewards, and that we've got to look at what they're trying to do, and make sure that we help them to facilitate them, achieve them in a way that maximizes the effectiveness, and the credibility, and that, ultimately, and I go back to this old Baptist preacher, that does not bring reproach on the work of the church and the kingdom of God.

We are dealing not with another nonprofit organization. We're dealing with people whose stock in trade, whose whole sense of worth, capital, is grounded in another place, and we have to approach it with a great deal of humility, sensitivity, and make decisions in the light of, ultimately, the community itself, and in the church, and the pastor, and whoever else. So it's not easy and I heard the struggle there, Bill. It's hard. But I'm going to tell you. I believe that faith-based institutions are some of the most—even though it's so hard, because you've got to deal with God, number one, and then we've got to deal with folk who use God to say I don't want to work with him, I [inaudible].

But notwithstanding all of that, I believe that faith-based institutions offer the most "bang for the buck" because they are able to, when they are genuine and real, and are serious about what they're doing, mobilize, galvanize, catalyze folk to get up and take control of their situations, and start looking after their communities, their neighborhoods, watching out for each other's children, investing in the community and returning something back to the society in a way that I don't see other folk having the capacity to, not at the level that they do in faith-based institutions.

That is, if they take faith, the fact that they—the faith factor seriously—and it's not [inaudible]. There are a lot of folk who come to me, and they want a grant, and they're sounding like they are from the West Side Community Development Corporation, and I told them, I said, well, go back and submit a proposal from the West Side Community Development Corporation, because I want to see a grant from the New Hope Baptist Church. I want to see your faith. I want to see how this represents the best in what I know faith-based institutions in our society has brought to bear in terms of lifting the substance and the fiber and the quality of our consciousness, and how we deal with each other, what we think about ourselves, and the rest of humanity. I want to see that in the grants that we propose—we make.

MR. DAVIE: Just let me say quickly, that both Bill and Reverend Madison are very unique when it comes to their approaches to funding faith-based organizations in the philanthropic community. It generally just does not happen that way. I'd rather give other people a chance to speak, and I can talk more about it later. My experience as a program officer was very different.

QUESTION: Hi. That was very interesting. I'm Al Page. I've worked with community leadership groups and community-based development for years, and I'm interested, and I hear a lot in my sector about this is a shift. We hadn't heard a lot about faith-based, especially since over the last couple years with the, this past election, and I'm worried about the shift in resources from community-based groups, and also an influence at the same time. I think someone spoke about having foundations usually follow the suit of government and I think there's some interest on the part of the President in having foundations max money, or other kinds of ways.

I think we're shifting that, and I know that religious groups, especially in the black community, the civil rights movement has been very, very involved. Is this a effort to shut up some of that giving, the whole tax thing, if you will, with churches, and other kinds of things? If this is an effort to shift away from that community-based building that I know so well, that has also worked well, you know, and we're very concerned if this is that ploy, to do something like that, and that would kill whatever development there is. Thank you.

MS. ROGERS: Would anybody like to respond?

MS. CHENEY: Yes. I can respond from the perspective of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and that is the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has been funding local community, faith-based organizations for almost 20 years. We like to think that we were funding faith-based initiatives before faith-based initiatives were "cool." That's what we kind of like to say.

For us, we believe it is about building communities and building the capacity in communities, and that's why our local coalition is so important. We hope that the coalitions, by the collaboration of churches and civic organizations, and other community groups, by working together, we hope that it will a community infrastructure that will go on serving the communities, long after the grant dollars have run out.

Again, from our perspective, the grant is just a seed grant. I mean, is a start-up grant. We want to take the risk for the communities, so that they can get established and get the programs in place, and the services in place for those in need, and then the community can come in with broad-based support to continue the program, again, long after the grant.

MS. ROGERS: Yes?

MR. SCHAMBRA: I'll just try to address that, the question of whether or not there's a shift going on of public dollars from secular social service agencies, community development corporations, to faith-based organizations.

What I would say to that is that I think probably what the Bush administration has recognized and the Gore campaign was wrestling with was to say, look, we've had secular social service agencies in communities for a very, very long time. We had them in Dorchester and Roxbury and Boston during the '90s. Yet we had crime rates that went "off the charts," and we want to try to then take seriously why it is that Reverend Eugene Rivers could galvanize a group of pastors and come into a neighborhood and work with the police in Operation Cease Fire and effect a reduction in crime that had not been seen in the history of the city.

What is it that Reverend Rivers and those clergy were doing, that the secular service providers was not doing? Can we capture that and can we support it, and can we do that kind of analysis around the country, where, in many cases, in sort of burned-out and hollowed-out neighborhoods, the faith-based organization, a local church, is the only thing that's left?

I think that's sort of the philosophy behind this, which I obviously strongly support. Not to do away with effective social service infrastructure that exists in a community but to say, you know, this infrastructure was there while these communities were falling apart, or, in some cases, the infrastructure got up and left, and left nothing but the church and the liquor store, and then it was the church trying to do the business of transforming the community, in many cases did, and I think that this administration—I'm a Democrat—this administration and I think Gore-Lieberman sort of recognized that, and they've tried to sort of "put their money where their mouth is."

I'll just say one more thing about this and then I'll be quiet. The study that DiIulio and company did on various faith-based programs basically shows that there's been little to now evaluation by the Federal Government of whether it's government by proxy, as John DiIulio calls it, funding organizations to do the government's work is even effective.

Most of that money is just sort of earmarked money. It just sort of happens, year after year after year after year, with no one really looking at whether or not it's going to affect them or not. I think the fact that that entire sort of inertia has been disrupted is ultimately going to be a good thing, and then I think the faith-based institutions have a very positive role as long as they've held accountable, and all those other things, to play in that regard.

REV. MADISON: I just want to say in response to your question, I think you are "right on." I think that there are some great secular community-based organizations that are doing some awesome work, particularly around community development, economic development, job training, and so forth, that I don't really see a church doing any better, and if we are talking about shifting, then I think we may be doing the people a disservice.

The other thing is, I want to say, that we also may be doing the churches a disservice, because the point that Fred just made about Reverend Rivers, churches are great at motivating people, ordinary folk to do extraordinary things. That's what the faith-based will do. That's our stock in trade. If we focus on those areas around, you know, restoring families, and saving kids, and crime, and areas where faith and love and compassion are so powerful, and demonstrate over and over again, and invest in that, we will do our society and these institutions a great service.

If we try to make every church into a community development, housing "Chodo," we are going to do the faith-based institutions and society a great disservice, and we're going to set back the whole area of social change, and restoration back. I wanted to say that, and I'll shut up. I ain't going to say nothing else.

QUESTION: [inaudible] where brick and mortar from foundations, major foundations right in Atlanta, have given money in the name of faith, that has turned to private schools, that has sent children that the black kids couldn't go to. The same thing with nursing and other kinds of things. Day care centers and other kinds. Brick-and-mortar giving has not, by and large, been receptive to community-based development and that kind of thing.

I've seen other organizations, in the name of faith-based, resources been trickled from foundations and government, for that matter, state and national government, and I think this is just another part for more of that kind of thing, that keep the resources away from needy communities.

MS. ROGERS: Okay. Let's collect a few other questions. Yes, please?

QUESTION: Hi. I have two things. One, I would like to commend the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for—from what I've read and researched about your faith-based programs, it seems as if you are trying to get the faith-based organizations to come together in unity, and I think that's a great idea, and from a grantmaker's point of view, how would you guys feel as far as making a grant to churches, say, in the same neighborhood, maybe of the, you know, the same belief systems. That you have one church on one corner that has a prison ministry, and another one, you know, not too far from them, that's also working with a prison ministry and they come together to do partnerships, and put together a grant, and present it to you.

Would you feel more compelled to fund that, rather than an individual church coming to you?

MS. CHENEY: Well, that's exactly what we do look for, is that coalition, and so it is not one church but several churches and congregations, and whatever faith group might be in the community, whether it's a Christian church or a mosque or a synagogue, as well as, again, those other community organizations.

So that group effort is perceived more favorably from our perspective. Absolutely.

MS. ROGERS: But what about the other grantmakers on the panel?

MR. DAVIE: You know, if churches want to get together and form some sort of collaborative and come to us with a proposal, of course that's wonderful, that's terrific. The problem is it's so hard for foundations to at in such a way that they're actually funding voluntary behavior and not in fact coercing the behavior that they would like to see voluntarily.

If we make it a condition—and foundations do this a lot—you will have a coalition, you will form a coalition of eight to ten community-based groups. We want to see the names. We want to get this thing signed off on, you know, in some sort of Request For Proposal.

Sure, these coalitions will arise. I mean, people will go out and sign up partners for this sort of thing, and then they'll all, you know, take the various pieces of the pot and go back and do their own thing anyway. I mean, you can artificially induce what appears to be desirable behavior, and a program officer can feel good about having stimulated a coalition in this community, when in fact it isn't a coalition. It isn't, at all, a coalition.

You know, I think that we're swimming against human nature when we insist that folks kind of, as I say, you know, submerge their particular zeal to do this particular program for this particular population. When we insist, no, no, no, you have to do it in partnership with a bunch of other people whose faith perspectives you don't share. You know, now something is lost when you compel people to do that, I think. Something is gained, I understand that, but only if it's sincere, and it's very hard, when you're the foundation, to sort of promote that kind of sincere ecumenical behavior.

MS. ROGERS: I wanted to get to a few other questions, if we could. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. But if we could get to a few other questions because we are quickly running out of time.

QUESTION: My name is Barbara Finberg. Mr. Schambra, I was very interested in the situation you described and I wondered—sort of hypothetically, you set up with Fred Green. I wondered whether you had actually funded a project like that, or a Fred Green of some sort, whether you give individual grants, and of what size, and how long you would do it. Whether you get concerned about creating a dependency or not. How long you would continue supporting a program of that sort. Would it be three years, ten years, twenty years?

I'd just like to understand better how you think about this.

MR. SCHAMBRA: You know, like all foundations, we can't give directly to individuals, but it's usually not difficult to find a qualifying entity who would take the money and serve as the administrator of the money. So, always, you have to have some kind of entity. In this case, if we had found Mr. Green, it would have been the Merrill Park Neighborhood Association, I'm sure.

We've done this quite a bit. Oddly enough, the press is actually pretty helpful in this regard. You read some inspiring stories in the press, and you slap yourself in the forehead and say, well, my gosh, I've been—you know, this is exactly what we're supposed to be aware of and we're not aware of it. So we end up calling people that we read about in the press and going out and having visits with them and actually giving them, as I say, some modest amount of money.

Now why do foundations say, you know, we're going to fund you for three years, and over this time you're going to go out and find a bunch of other funders, you know, when the fact of the matter is probably you're the only funder in the city that's going to be doing this kind of funding.

I mean, it would be pointless of us to say to Fred Green, we're going to fund you for three years, and then you need to find a bunch of other people to support you. It's not going to happen. You know? Fred Green is not a qualifying project to most— We started this program in 1994, and this is 2001, and so we have programs that were with us, projects that were with us in the beginning, seven years ago, and we don't say to folks, you know, we're cutting it off next year.

I mean, if they're doing good work, why are you cutting them off? I don't get it. You know?

MS. ROGERS: More questions. Anybody? Okay. Well, let's go ahead and fill in—

REV. MADISON: I have a comment on this. My comment on this is that I really think that foundations need to be using their resources to encourage generosity and charity more than they do. I made a suggestion, earlier, to the moderator, that I propose that the Foundation of the MidSouth, that we would have a—I don't have a name for the thing yet, but a community equity match grant program, to match three to one, four to one, five to one, any individual institution or organization in a community that is engaged in work that is generating serious human capital, social capital, volunteer service, civic engagement on the part of a community, as well as creating businesses and jobs for the young people, and stuff.

I mean, that we would have a program that is designed to encourage people to care and contribute as opposed to a grant program that is designed to pay folk for doing what God commanded they do anyway. Now I wouldn't say that if I was with the West End Community Development Group, but I say that with the New Hope Baptist Church.

MS. ROGERS: Okay. I think we can take this last question.

QUESTION: My question is for Sarah and Bill. I think it's pretty clear that the philosophies of your organizations are rather different, and I just wanted to give Sarah an opportunity to clarify their position in light of what Bill's had to say about outcome measurements and bringing communities together.

I think it's important that people know how their money is being spent, and how foundation money is being spent, and I think it's important to realize, and to be discussed, what does happen, what are the good things that do happen when communities and churches, black or white churches, and people of different faiths are brought together, and find common ground.

MS. CHENEY: I'll start, I guess. Again, our experience is based on 20 years of funding faith-based programs, and we have found that that coalition, that interfaith coalition that reflects the diversity of the community is just an integral piece to the success for long-term sustainability.

We have funded over one thousand faith-based faith-in-action programs across the country, and, to date, we have 80 percent sustainability.

So I think that our success rate, about how the coalitions work, is something that we have found to be effective. Personally, I don't think that faith-based organizations are a cure-all for our social ills, but I do think that they are an important ingredient in meeting the needs that our communities have, and for us, the coalition, and representing the diversity is so important, and it is the faith factor that is very important in the services that we provide.

In all of the world's major traditions, both Eastern and Western, if you look at the language in their doctrines, the Christian wording or the Christian golden rule, that doctrine is evident, again, in all the world's major traditions, and that is to help your neighbor, and we talk about faith in action as being not about religion but what all religions have in common, and that's a mandate to do good works.

It is about neighbor helping neighbor, and we have found that it's the high credibility of the faith-based organizations that make it easier for volunteers to get involved, and also easier for people to ask, that need help, to ask for help.

Again, the churches have a long tradition of having volunteers, and having volunteers to meet community needs, and so we're just trying to help those churches capitalize on their own resources by working together, and to extend those resources and take them even further.

Again, churches are great stewards, typically, of resources, and can make them stretch, and by collaborating, then they can serve the community, we think, in a more holistic way.

MS. ROGERS: Thank you. Well, thank you very much. There's just been so much brought up, that would be so helpful to pursue, but I'm sorry that this session has to end at this point. I want to thank each of the panelists for bringing their distinct philosophy to bear on the questions at issue, and for the important work that you do. As Fred said, it's not every foundation that has done this, and I want to commend you and think you for the work that you've done.

I also want to commend the INDEPENDENT SECTOR for bringing together this discussion. I think that we haven't had enough discussions about private funding of faith-based organizations, and we've just, you know, had the "tip of the iceberg" today. It shows that there's a lot more that can be productively done in the public discussion of this important issue and I commend INDEPENDENT SECTOR for being a leader in bringing that discussion about.

Thank you for your insightful questions and we wish you a very good rest of your conference.