Jobs Coalition: a Chance for Foundations to Walk Their Talk

By PABLO EISENBERG

Grassroots organizing in low-income neighborhoods is alive and well. Not since the welfare-rights movement in the 1960’s has the United States witnessed such a surge in local activism.

And yet, while nonprofit advocacy groups are effective at the local and state levels, they have long needed allies at the national level to help them seek large-scale policy changes in behalf of the poor. Few mainstream foundations have been willing to help with that task, and their stinginess with grant money has hurt minorities, the poor, and other marginalized groups.

The irony, of course, is that the foundations’ positions fly in the face of their rhetoric. Their buzzwords stress the importance of “organizational effectiveness” and “program impact” — exactly the kinds of goals sought by grassroots groups that do solid public-policy and coalition-building work.

Foundations now have a highly credible vehicle through which they can put their buzzwords into action and help grassroots groups seek change: the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, a coalition of more than 1,000 community organizations and national allies. The organization was formed last winter with assistance from the Center for Community Change, a 30-year-old nonprofit anti-poverty group in Washington.

The National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support has a three-year budget of $9-million, much of which will be distributed to participating state and local coalitions and organizations. Yet, so far, only one major grant maker — the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation — has made a major commitment to the campaign: $3-million over two years. The balance of the money that it has raised so far has come in the form of much smaller grants from small to mid-size foundations.

The paltry support from the foundation world belies the growing efforts by grassroots groups to advocate for policy changes that will help the poor.

Two developments are largely responsible for that mobilization. The first is the lack of attention given to poverty during the past 15 years by political leaders of both major parties. Their disregard for the problems of the poor has resulted in rapidly growing economic inequality and worsening conditions in our poorest neighborhoods.

The second development has been a fundamental shift in the welfare system as a result of legislation that was passed in 1996. The welfare law shredded the nation’s longstanding social safety net for mothers and children and virtually delegated to the states total responsibility for running the replacement system.

While the change in the welfare system slashed welfare rolls by 50 percent, it has done little to reduce poverty or provide poor people with job training, education, day care, health care, and transportation to and from work — the kinds of support services that are essential to people leaving welfare for the job market. The welfare legislation also restricted the availability of food stamps and reduced benefits for legal immigrants.

Women have been hit the hardest by the welfare changes. As many as 40 percent of those who left welfare have not found jobs, according to studies conducted by many states and by research institutes such as the Urban Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. For the 60 percent who are working at any one time, most are in low-wage jobs, many without any benefits.

With the withdrawal of the federal government as the protector of last resort for needy constituencies, local community organizations were left with only one choice: either passively accept the changes or actively organize to influence the new system. And organize they have.

Hundreds of local groups and coalitions have put pressure on state governments to stop punitive administrative procedures, waged campaigns to expand Medicaid and day-care programs, helped to restore benefits for legal immigrants, pushed for publicly financed jobs and agreements to pay workers a decent income, and promoted model policies to improve job training, access to transportation, and better educational opportunities.

The effort has produced many impressive local victories. Yet, while active at the community and state level, local groups have realized they need a support system and allies at the national level.

It was for that reason that they formed the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support.

The campaign’s directions and policies are set by an organizing committee of 28 representatives of local grassroots organizations and some of their networks, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and the Gamaliel Foundation. The heart and soul of the campaign are low- and moderate-income constituencies and their community-based organizations. Yet they are reaching out for broader participation and support across class, religious and racial lines. They have demonstrated their capacity for solid data collection and analysis, innovative policy and program recommendations, and productive dialogues with public officials. Their style is substance, not rhetoric.

Through this rational approach and careful organizing strategy, the campaign presents a challenge to large philanthropic institutions that have long avoided investing in organizing and public-policy advocacy.

While conservative foundations have allocated a substantial portion of their resources to organizing, public policy, and advocacy, their mainstream and more progressive counterparts have been reluctant to do so. Nor have such institutions been willing to provide much general support to organizations representing the poor — the type of financing that could enable them to build their membership and administrative structures as well as their public-policy capacity. Of all the funds distributed by foundations in 1997, only about 13 percent went to general operating support.

The Mott Foundation’s support for the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support stands in contrast to the low levels of support from other big grant makers.

The wealthy Ford Foundation could only manage $225,000 a year for two years. Yet Ford recently gave the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University $50-million to endow a Center for Government Innovation to perpetuate a program created by the foundation. And last month, Ford announced plans to give $330-million primarily to support graduate students in 20 countries.

To its credit, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation has committed $200,000 to the campaign for one year. But it gave $1-million to the Johns Hopkins University for a three-city study of how families are faring under welfare reform and a somewhat surprising $200,000 to underwrite a search for the chief executive officer of the Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s richest nonprofit organizations.

The Rockefeller Foundation made a grant of $60,000 to the campaign. Compare that amount with the $1.5-million it gave to Policy Link, a yet-untested quasi-policy think tank run by Rockefeller’s former vice president for equal opportunity.

And what about other major foundations like MacArthur, Hewlett, Kellogg, Gates, William Penn, Knight, and Casey that do not have an illustrious record of supporting grassroots policy and advocacy efforts? Will they be willing to bite the bullet?

Since World War II, Americans of all stripes and political persuasions have touted the significance of bootstrap approaches to helping poor neighborhoods. With a little help, people could shape their own destinies. What they needed were the bootstraps to do the job.

The National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support marks an opportunity for foundations to provide relatively minimal resources for an effort that could make a major difference in the lives of millions of people. But are foundations willing to provide the bootstraps?

Goodness knows, they may even get to like this sort of grant making once they get a taste of it.

Pablo Eisenberg is senior fellow at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute and vice chair of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. Mr. Eisenberg served as executive director of the Center for Community Change from 1975 to 1998. He is a regular contributor to these pages.