Your United WaY Dollars at Work
GITELL, SETH
Your United Way Dollars at Work By Seth Gitell September is the month when sports fans get reac-quainted with the United Way. They recognize the charity as the sponsor of those fuzzy commercials...
...Instead, explains the group's executive director, Charles Moertel, "These are programs that serve everybody and make people safe...
...The Girl Scouts, for example, determined several years ago that it had to become more relevant to the 1990s...
...The United Way of America is smiling, too, these days, having all but recovered from the terrible period five years ago when William Aramony almost ran the organization into the ground...
...agenda through academia has been tirelessly documented, its impact on philanthropy has gone all but unnoticed...
...The program won the Girl Scouts a special United Way grant of $40,000 in "critical issues funding...
...Now he is determined to raise enough money on his own to make up the shortfall—which points to a problem that is likely to grow: As more and more of the original United Way founders drop out over the new policies, they will end up in direct competition for donations with one another and with the United Way...
...Louis launched a program that has become a darling of both the media and the United Way, Girl Scouts Behind Bars...
...Ultimately, the United Way backed off...
...These initiatives reflect the twin obsessions of many of the new generation of charitable givers, the baby boomers...
...The Texas Gulf Coast United Way made "diversity and inclu-siveness" its cornerstone more than two years ago, then spread the word to its member agencies...
...Louis, explains that the idea of the program is to "forge a bond between mothers and daughters so when the mothers get out of prison they might have some parenting skills...
...Still, dissatisfaction with the new United Way has been relatively muffled, partly because many of those affected by the changes hope to continue to benefit from grants...
...Defenders of the United Way argue that times have changed and a host of new nonprofit organizations demands that the old partners take a back seat...
...The board named a Strategic Planning Committee, which urged it to "heighten the role of United Way in setting public policy at all levels...
...Nevertheless, all new or increased grants the charity is giving out end up going to minority communities...
...Meanwhile, the United Way of America launched Project Blueprint, the linchpin of its nationwide effort to place "ethnically diverse leadership" on the boards of its member charities...
...The two had differed, it seems, over how to best serve a group of low-income children who participated in a YMCA summer program...
...Soon United Ways in cities such as St...
...In the months after the scandal broke in February 1992, contributions to the United Way plummeted, as did donors' confidence in the once proud philanthropy...
...They were trying to force some kind of quota system on us," says Catholic Charities associate director Joseph Brogdan, who would have had to cut services to existing patrons in order to abide by the new rules...
...To this end, local chapters have embarked on a program of diversity and multiculturalism that is threatening to alter the face of American philanthropy...
...A little more than a year ago the Houston branch won the United Way's first Championing Diversity Award for its "cutting-edge role in cultivating a multicultural environment...
...There's another reason, too, why so little has been heard about these changes...
...Although this generally works against traditional United Way agencies, the Bayou City United Way's makeover has thrilled the national organization...
...This structure survived essentially intact until the the Aramony crisis...
...Goldberg argues that the new ways are hurting a charitable structure that worked...
...Aramony, the group's longtime president, was caught using its money to pay for a playboy lifestyle of exotic trips, gourmet meals, and young girlfriends...
...The problem was so severe for Jewish charities that the Council of Jewish Federations conducted a study to advise its members on how to confront it...
...Since 1995, for example, the St...
...In the last few years, the United Way had cut its funding for the program but was evasive about why...
...The Y's leaders were infuriated and ended their 30-year relationship with the United Way...
...Thus, the Girl Scout Council of Greater St...
...At times it seems actually to promote racial and ethnic separatism or shows a willingness almost offhandedly to damage well-established charities that work...
...In June 1995, with fund-raising still sluggish, the United Way decided to alter its mode of operation...
...Paul United Way has required prospective grantees to describe "the proposed client population . . . including generalized demographic characteristics such as race and age" and has tracked grant recipients' success at serving these communities...
...During the funding process, United Way volunteers asked Catholic Charities why it didn't serve more blacks...
...First, they began allowing donors to dictate where their contributions would go—including to charities not affiliated with the United Way...
...The money was distributed according to a formula...
...Even a charity as vital as the American Red Cross is feeling the heat...
...Theresa Loveless, executive director of the Girl Scout Council of Greater St...
...Explains Bert Goldberg, executive vice president of the national Association of Jewish Family & Children's Agencies: "Everybody's afraid to speak out because it's not politically correct...
...This body acts as a kind of political commissar overseeing Houston's charities, on the lookout for violators of its new policies...
...Many of United Way's traditional partners—the very charities that helped establish the organization in the first place—are unhappy with its new approach...
...ined what this trend means nationwide...
...To be sure, some groups are flourishing in the new environment...
...On the other, they have enough EC...
...The United Way of Middle Tennessee recently unveiled an aggressive new ad campaign...
...Then they tried to prescribe the share of the charity's clientele that should be black...
...Increasingly, the charitable establishment caters to certain segments of the population and neglects others...
...Certainly, the United Way should strive to be responsive to donors and to avoid the lax oversight that allowed the Aramony debacle...
...His organization had lost more than $100,000 in United Way funding since 1991, but Luft maintains that no one at the United Way ever explained what the problem was...
...The difficulty for the JCC is that its charter requires it to have a Jewish board, though the activities and services it sponsors— like those at a YMCA—are open to all comers...
...Paul has lost $350,000 in United Way money in recent years, money used to teach CPR, water safety, and swimming and to help people after disasters...
...United Way chapters should "identify priority needs" and "embrace only 'those who truly represent community.'" Guided by that new philosophy, United Way branches started to change the way they doled out funds...
...Moribund United Way branches learned at conferences and through newsletters how they too could become more active...
...And once the new policies are implemented, there will be no hope of rolling it back or repairing the damage that's been done...
...The organization grew out of the system of private giving that developed in the early 20th century, when charitably minded people in a city would collect money for a "United Fund" supporting the major local charities—the YMCA, Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts, and so on...
...When times inevitably turn bad, the situation is likely to explode...
...While a national spokesman for the Salvation Army downplayed the difficulties, evidence from around the country suggests that the problems are growing...
...Finally the United Way informed the Y that more than half of the children in the program would have to be low income...
...Paul, Minnesota, and Columbus, Ohio, were going through their own internal changes, aided by local polling firms that told them their communities wanted these changes...
...Three times in recent years, United Way officials have asked one of its beneficiaries, the Jewish Community Center of Houston, to create a more diverse board—that is, to include minorities or "people of color...
...Right now, good economic times are masking the pain of the United Way's restructuring...
...Here and there, member agencies are starting to get fed up and to sever their relationships with the United Way...
...The new policies began to catch on...
...flavor to make your average fortysomething money manager or insurance clerk feel like he's acting on good Woodstock values...
...Lieutenant David Luft of the Salvation Army in Springfield announced his branch's disaffiliation with the local United Way this summer...
...The Multicultural Committee had done its job...
...On the one hand, they manifest the "do your own thing" mentality of the 1960s...
...These new policies are playing out in strange ways...
...It is a Christian organization and still refers to its leaders by military rank...
...Many established "diversity plans" or "pluralism plans" to guide member charities' progress...
...Under this program, the Girl Scouts arranged for some 16 female prison inmates to serve as leaders for 26 girl scouts, including in some cases their own daughters...
...Unfortunately for the St...
...Paul Red Cross, those services don't meet a "priority" need or serve an ethnic community...
...In one commercial, a man introduces himself by saying, "My son was killed in a drive-by shooting...
...The Houston JCC neither complied nor lost all United Way funding...
...Washington, D.C.'s Salvation Army has severed its connection with the United Way, as has Springfield, Illinois's...
...The Salvation Army, which for so long has helped the worst-off in society, is an old fashioned charity, one that the new whiz-bang United Way seems to have trouble dealing with...
...They recognize the charity as the sponsor of those fuzzy commercials during National Football League telecasts, where gridiron greats like Reggie White and John Elway, surrounded by throngs of smiling children, extol the value of community...
...They're principally directed at kids...
...It sounds like I'm speaking against minority groups...
...When NFL Sunday viewers see that ad, they'll be looking at evidence that something else has died, too—the traditional United Way...
...They just asked us to come up with a plan to increase the service levels within the African-American community, and we resented it...
...As the world of philanthropy changes, so do those ubiquitous TV ads...
...Rather than continue to be perceived as a distant distributor of funds to member agencies, the United Way has endeavored to become itself an "agent of social change...
...Local branches of the Salvation Army have also been at odds with the United Way...
...The system prevented the member charities from getting into messy fights by soliciting the same donors, and it helped them raise larger sums by combining their efforts...
...To help get the diversity agenda out, the Houston United Way formed its own Multicultural Committee...
...The American Red Cross of Greater St...
...The inner workings of the United Way, as of many charities, are distinctly arcane...
...When the Y's executive director, Nicholas Ciambrone, asked how he could comply, the United Way suggested that a separate program be created for the low-income students in the poor part of town—in effect segregating them...
...Second, they offered donors the opportunity to give to one of several "priority" areas designated by the local chapter...
...The new policies are making their mark...
...One of the first United Way chapters to get in tune with the new thinking was in Houston, America's fourth largest city...
...While the spread of the EC...
...One response some organizations have adopted is to strive for intra-Jewish diversity—that is, to make sure boards include Russian and Orthodox and low-income Jews...
...Issued last year, the study reported that local United Ways had gone so far as to ask "agencies to change their names (e.g., take Jewish out of the name...
...Indeed, the Houston United Way denies that it dictates to its members and argues that its income has risen $2 million since the new policies were put in place...
...Because much charity is strictly a local affair, no one has yet examSeth Gitell is the national editor of the Forward newspaper in New York...
...Eventually, in 1918, these local organizations banded together to found the United Way of America, today a kind of service organization and policy-coordinating body for its 2,100 local chapters...
...The Catholic Charities-Diocese of Dallas generally gears its programs to largely Catholic Hispanics, who tend to turn to the church when they need help...
...While the memory of Aramony lingers in the back of the public consciousness, the United Way has worked mightily to remake its image...
...But the new approach seems to be eroding the core strengths of a system that brought Christians and Jews, Lutherans and Catholics, together for the good of the community...
...This past June the leaders of the Family YMCA of Easton, Phillipsburg and Vicinity, in Pennsylvania, went public with their dispute with the local United Way...
Vol. 3 • September 1997 • No. 2
