A Veteran Leader Combines Social Services With Civil Rights in Detroit

Presumably, someone who gets to the office at about 6 most mornings would have a lot of time to herself.

But Eleanor Josaitis, the 72-year-old chief executive officer of Focus: HOPE, has only about a half-hour before the rest of the nonprofit group’s executive staff members and some of its 500 other employees start arriving. Their enthusiasm is palpable this Tuesday and, judging by the early hour, it appears they are excited to be part of a group that combines social services with a commitment to civil rights.

In the quiet early mornings, Ms. Josaitis signs thank-you letters to donors — a task, she says, that helps cement supporters’ names in her mind, in case she bumps into them around town. The office’s floor plan is wide open, and Ms. Josaitis’s desk is one of several — no bigger or fancier than the others — in a large space. The open arrangement, she says, was designed to facilitate interaction among staff members and support the group’s mission. Inclusion, she notes, is “what civil and human rights are all about.”

Focus: HOPE was founded in 1968 by Ms. Josaitis and the Rev. William Cunningham, a visiting priest at her church. What began as a food program for the poor has grown and evolved into a nationally recognized educational, job-training, and human-rights organization with a $55-million annual operating budget.

Many of the people who have participated in Focus: HOPE programs — close to 3,000 — have gotten off welfare and into jobs. But with its successes, the charity has also faced its share of challenges. Like a lot of social-service organizations, Focus: HOPE has had to make up for the sharp decline in government funds in recent years. It has also endured other setbacks: a fire-bombing in 1974, a tornado in 1997 that caused millions of dollars in damage and, that same year, the death of one of its founders.

The community the charity serves has had its troubles too. Today, Detroit is one of the most segregated cities in the nation, and its poverty rate — 30 percent — is more than twice the national average of 12.7, according to U.S. Census figures. Even with an early start to the day, there’s an awful lot to do.

Activist Beginnings

Back in the mid-1960s, Ms. Josaitis recalls, she watched a television program about the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, which was interrupted by news reports of civil-rights demonstrations in Mississippi. The images of fire hoses being turned on human beings stuck with her. She wondered if she had been in Germany during World War II — or if she had lived in Mississippi under Jim Crow — whether she would have taken action.

Just a couple of years later, riots erupted much closer to her home in suburban Detroit. When they ended, the homemaker and mother of five walked through the rubble with Father Cunningham, surveying the damage and thinking about what they could do to prevent the violence from happening again. The two, joined by a group of like-minded friends and supporters, agreed on their mission during discussions at her kitchen table: to take action to overcome racism, poverty, and injustice. Focus: HOPE began.

Shortly after, Ms. Josaitis and her husband, who are both white, put their principles into action by selling their suburban home and moving to an integrated Detroit neighborhood that was undergoing rapid white flight. Their families, she recalls, thought they were crazy. Her mother hired a lawyer in an unsuccessful bid to get custody of Ms. Josaitis’s children.

One of the fledgling organization’s first undertakings was a study of discrimination in food and prescription-drug prices that received national attention. Using 400 volunteers, the study found that city residents, who were mostly minorities, were paying up to 35 percent more than suburban dwellers, who were mostly white.

From there, Ms. Josaitis and Father Cunningham lobbied Congress to approve continued financing for the charity’s supplemental food program, which includes a food pantry and meal delivery to homebound clients. Focus: HOPE’s program, which covered women, children, and the elderly, became a model that today feeds 43,000 people each month and has been copied in 32 states.

Civil rights meant economic opportunity to Ms. Josaitis and Father Cunningham, so they next looked to educational and job training. It was 1980, and although 75 percent of all machine-tool products were produced in the Detroit metropolitan area, there was a shortage of machinists. Ms. Josaitis interviewed local shops and learned that they sought skilled, hard-working machinists who didn’t abuse drugs or alcohol. In response, less than a year later Focus: HOPE opened its Machinist Training Institute, an eight-month program with job-placement services.

In the 1990s, the organization expanded its job-training services, opening the Center for Advanced Technologies in 1993, which grants associate and bachelor’s degrees — and provides work experience — in manufacturing engineering. Six years later, the charity responded to the demand for trained technology administrators by creating the Information Technologies Center. To support students in those programs, Ms. Josaitis says, Focus: HOPE also provided child care, opening its Center for Children in 1987.

Focus: HOPE’s 40-acre campus also contains a conference center, an art-exhibition area, a park, and a for-profit logistics company. Given its size and scope, the organization and Ms. Josaitis have gotten much attention, locally and nationally. She has been featured in Fortune and Fast Company magazines. She holds 11 honorary doctorates.

Grooming Colleagues

This morning, as she does every Tuesday at 7:15, Ms. Josaitis meets for an orientation session with about a dozen candidates for Focus: HOPE programs. After introductions, she unfolds some papers. “I want to share my love letters,” she says.

She holds up an envelope. When it arrived, it contained no note, just a check for $11,000. She holds up another that contained nothing but a $1 bill. One letter writer asks why the child-care center has to look “like the Taj Mahal.” Another says Ms. Josaitis “puts black people up too high.” The next tells her what she can do with “diversity” and ends with an epithet. “This only makes me want to work harder,” says Ms. Josaitis.

She tells the group they are about to meet “some folks” and instructs them on how to introduce themselves and extend their hand. She reminds them to do this whenever they see anyone at Focus: HOPE whom they do not know.

“You never know who’s sitting next to you,” she tells them.

From the very start, she is grooming the candidates for professional interaction, which includes etiquette lessons she gives to each class of engineering students during an organized lunch or dinner. She has been known to have tables set with as many utensils as possible and request that foreign or messy foods be served, to challenge her charges.

While many job-training programs teach participants to write résumés and handle job interviews, not all provide the social-skills training that Focus: HOPE does. Ms. Josaitis takes students to the opera, to Detroit Economic Club luncheons, to an annual meeting of auto-industry executives in Traverse City, Mich.

“I like to say we’re in the business of changing perception,” she says. “So many people say these young people don’t know anything. I want them to know all the rules — what piece of silverware to use, how to shake hands, work a room, what to do at a cocktail party. People put a label on you real quick. I want to remove the label.”

The new recruits work their way through a receiving line of senior managers, including Keith Cooley, the charity’s chief operating officer, a veteran of the automobile and nuclear industries. They also meet Lloyd Reuss, former president of General Motors Corporation, who serves as executive dean of the Center for Advanced Technologies. Mr. Reuss refuses to be paid for his job at Focus: HOPE, and whenever Ms. Josaitis thanks him, she says, he quickly stops her with “No. You have it wrong. I should be thanking you.”

Planning Ahead

After attending a weekly manufacturing meeting, where students report on their progress, Ms. Josaitis and Mr. Cooley join Mr. Reuss and Cheryl Simon, Focus: HOPE’s director of development, for a 10 a.m. fund-raising huddle. In a few days, the group is meeting with a large foundation (which they prefer not to name, so as not to affect the chance to win a grant), and the team is fine-tuning its presentation.

Focus: HOPE recently completed a five-year capital campaign, which exceeded its $75-million goal by $6.7-million. The money raised will help review and upgrade the job-training curricula, replace old manufacturing equipment, and augment the organization’s Student Loan Fund.

The fund, which the charity established six years ago, is intended to become a model for other job-training programs. Focus: HOPE also wants to create a scholarship program next year, Ms. Josaitis says.

It is important to give students help with tuition, she says. Ten years ago, she says, government funds covered 80 percent of tuition costs for Focus: HOPE training programs; today, they cover less than 15 percent.

“It’s just not easy to get a Pell Grant or assistance from other government programs. These are difficult times for a lot of students,” she says. “A lot of people have lost their jobs; a lot of parents don’t want to [co-sign] for student loans because they’re having a difficult time themselves.”

After a cursory lunch in the cafeteria, Ms. Josaitis meets with Mr. Cooley. The two are scheduled to address the Detroit Orientation Institute, a program run by Wayne State University designed to familiarize business executives, nonprofit leaders, and journalists with the issues and personalities of the city. Ann Slawnik, the institute’s director, used to run the volunteer program at Focus: HOPE. Now she brings all the institute’s participants here.

“It’s a way to show those who are new to the Detroit area an amazing organization that they’re not likely to get off the freeway and see,” says Ms. Slawnik. “I like for people to see what can be accomplished in Detroit even through adversity.”

As the group of more than 50 people is served lunch in the Focus: HOPE conference center, Ms. Josaitis gives a rundown of the organization’s history. Mr. Cooley steps up to provide an overview of Focus: HOPE’s programs. He ends by telling the audience members that what they’re about to see on their tour of Focus: HOPE’s facilities will change their lives. “It certainly changed mine,” he says.

It seems likely that Focus: HOPE will continue to shape Mr. Cooley’s life. Although Ms. Josaitis says she has no immediate plans to retire, it appears she is grooming him for when she can no longer serve — for example, she has begun delegating public-speaking invitations to him. She has also worked with the board to develop a succession plan. “I haven’t got my head in the sand,” she says.

She has had incentive for thinking of the future.

Two years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer. During her treatment, staff members say, she kept working, keeping in touch by phone when she wasn’t able to come to the office. Once back at work, she cracked jokes about the wind blowing off her wig as she walked from building to building. This gusty day, as she heads back to her desk, she cracks another as she carefully knots a scarf under her chin, just in case.

Proving Her Mettle

Back in her office, Ms. Josaitis catches up on messages and prepares to go to a midafternoon board meeting of the Detroit Medical Center, a large health system affiliated with Wayne State University’s medical school.

It is just one of several boards on which she serves. This evening, a reporter from the Detroit Free Press will interview her at home.

She never expected to be in the role she’s in, she says, and certainly not without Father Cunningham. When he died seven years ago, she assumed the charity’s helm.

Although they had jointly led the organization, he was primarily the visionary, she the operational muscle, observes Jack Litzenberg, senior program officer at the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, who has served on Focus: HOPE’s board since 2000 and worked with the charity at Mott for nearly two decades. Father Cunningham also had stronger ties to industry and donors, and there was some concern about the group’s ability to sustain its private financing in his absence, says Mr. Litzenberg.

Ms. Josaitis’s early tenure as sole leader of the charity was tumultuous. The same year Father Cunningham died, a tornado did some $18-million in damage to the group’s facilities, and an auto manufacturer canceled a multimillion-dollar contract. Debt mounted.

And that, Mr. Litzenberg says, is when Ms. Josaitis proved her mettle. “She got industry involved in a real working board,” he says, noting that several high-ranking auto executives serve on it. “The intimacy with which Focus: HOPE interacts with industry is something to behold.”

In addition to the strong board, Ms. Josaitis relies heavily on her executive staff, particularly when it comes to technical matters. “I can’t change the bag in the vacuum,” she says, “but I surround myself with men and women who have the skills I’m not going to pretend to have.”

Rewards and Challenges

Other challenges remain. Chief among them, says Mr. Litzenberg, is keeping the organization fiscally healthy. Enrollment for Focus: HOPE programs has dropped in the past couple of years, probably due to the auto and information technology industries’ recent downturns. The organization may need to add another focus of study, he says.

“Sustainability doesn’t mean you stay the same — it means you evolve and grow with the community and the community’s needs and always keep ties to industry, whatever that industry is,” he says.

Focus: HOPE’s job-training programs have helped diversify the work forces of local businesses — and it has helped people start their careers, says Mr. Litzenberg. “It’s one of the most effective entities to help young African-Americans make that transition to wages that warrant a middle-class lifestyle,” he says.

William Coyro Jr., chief executive officer of TechTeam Global, in Southfield, Mich., which provides information-technology systems support and staffing, has hired more than 50 graduates of the Information Technologies Center in the past four years.

Focus: HOPE graduates who come to work for TechTeam “stay with us even longer than those who come to us from traditional sources,” says Mr. Coyro. “It’s a pretty focused group. You get a motivated person out of that program. It’s one of the best I’ve seen. They’re not just running people through to get numbers.”

For Ms. Josaitis, the rewards are plenty and come, frequently, in the words of former clients who throw their arms around her and share their latest success stories: landing a great job, buying a car, getting loved ones off the food program. One former student recently paid for his father, just released from prison after 11 years, to attend the machinist-training program. “You gave me the opportunity,” Ms. Josaitis recalls him saying. “Now I want to give it to him.”

She says she and Focus: HOPE clearly have more work to do. And that’s fine with her.

“I’ve met so many people who want to improve their lives,” she says. “I’m just so grateful for every day I can serve.”