Grant Makers Shift Focus From Welfare to New Projects to Reduce Poverty

As foundations move away from supporting projects related to the federal welfare system, some grant makers have begun financing several new programs aimed at decreasing poverty.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, in Baltimore, which spent more than $70-million on welfare-related grants in the past seven years, has shifted its emphasis in recent years to programs that conduct research into the viability of expanding federal tax credits for poor families. Casey has also made $500,000 in grants to look into ways to help low-income mothers better deal with the often-conflicting demands of holding a job and raising children.

The Joyce Foundation, in Chicago, which made $46-million in grants to welfare-related programs from 1994 to 2004, began in 2002 to direct its focus away from welfare programs to the creation of so-called transitional jobs — which aim to get poor people off government assistance and into work — and to helping workers get more out of their jobs once they have them.

Last year, Joyce also started making $5.4-million in grants for a pilot project in four states in the Upper Midwest. The program will determine whether jobs and training that succeeded in aiding welfare recipients would also work for people returning from stints in prison. The grants will help pay for workers’ salaries at government agencies, private companies, some Goodwill affiliates, and other organizations.

Such programs have gained steam in recent years as several foundations, including the Open Society Institute-Baltimore, have sought ways to keep the 600,000 prisoners who leave jail each year from committing crimes that would send them back. Poor families are especially affected by the lack of work for returning prisoners, says Jennifer L. Phillips, a senior program officer at the Joyce Foundation.

Joyce is also supporting a five-state, $10-million program that helps community colleges develop programs to help low-skilled, low-income adults get training for work. A separate program will make grants to groups that are attempting to find ways to increase benefits to low-income workers, including unemployment insurance.

Not a Separate Issue

Grant makers such as the Public Welfare Foundation, in Washington, that have long backed groups that perform advocacy on behalf of welfare mothers have taken a step back to see how best they can serve low-income people.

“We’re not looking at welfare as a separate issue anymore,” says Ericka D. Taylor, program officer for community development at Public Welfare. “Now that groups are stabilizing or looking to expand their own focus to include working toward a living wage and other poverty issues, so are we.”

The Public Welfare Fund, a program run by the Public Welfare Foundation, distributed $4.3-million to 43 small organizations in 25 states from 1997 to 2005, Ms. Taylor says.

But the foundation decided that many of those groups couldn’t garner enough funds to keep growing, in terms of both staff and range of services, at a time when welfare rolls were declining. Some of those groups have closed their doors.

Still, Ms. Taylor says that the majority of those groups now receive money from the foundation to finance a wider range of activities, such as performing advocacy work for expanded health-care benefits for poor people.

With less than 50 percent of welfare-eligible families now receiving benefits, advocates for the poor say that grant makers’ shift in focus is understandable, and that many organizations that try to influence policy makers have also changed their tack.

“The best way to get traction on the poverty issue is not to focus on the welfare program, but on all of these issues surrounding people with income-security problems,” says Steve Savner, senior fellow at the Center for Community Change, an advocacy group in Washington.

Ms. Phillips, at Joyce, says grant makers will continue to develop new programs, knowing that welfare has become a lesser issue. “There’s a next step to take and that’s in reducing poverty for our most disadvantaged people,” she says.