November 1996
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina
Initiative
Continued from page 8
Campus Partnerships organization
would make grants to support ser
vice-learning in nursing, medical
and other health professions schools
and would sponsor national training
institutes aimed at allowing commu
nities to play a greater role in
improving the delivery of health
care.
The strategic planning commit
tee has outlined several needs the
new nonprofit organization will
address, including
• The need to prepare health
care practitioners as “community-
responsive” providers.
• The need to make health-care
education more responsive and rele
vant to community needs.
• The need to recognize commu
nity contributions to teaching,
research and the development of
knowledge.
• The need to consider communi
ty assets as well as needs.
The committee was set to meet in
October in Chicago to continue ham
mering out details of how the cam
pus partnerships organization will
work and how it will be funded.
Irons says the Pew Foundation is
a likely source of financial support,
although it has lately shifted its
funding focus from health education
to health-care research.
He hopes the new campus part
nerships program will have a ripple
effect on centers of higher learning.
“I’d like to see a genuine break
down of the institutional barriers
that are virtually universal,” Irons
says. “Td like to see us break down
the walls of the university system.”
The Health Professions initiative
is sponsoring a second national con
ference April 26-29 in San Fransico.
Call Kara Connors, (415) 502-4771,
or send email to:
kara@itsa.ucsf.edu
For information on the ECU’s
service learning efforts or the new
Campus-Partnerships program, call
Irons at (919) 816-2983 or send email
to: irons@brody.med.ecu.edu
Skepticism
Continued from page 1
tribute to charity.
Volunteering and giving, for
example, “could be measurably
increased if volunteering increased
among young people 18 to 24 years
of age, blacks, Hispanics, persons in
households with incomes under
$20,000 and single people,” the
study found.
“People are three to four times
more likely to volunteer when they
are asked than when they are not,”
the study said, yet a much smaller
percentage of young people, blacks,
Hispanics, poor people and single
people are asked to volunteer than
are other demographic groups.
Key factors that prompt people
to contribute to charity, the study
said, include being asked to give by
a close acquaintance or a member
of the clergy, reading or hearing a
news story or being asked at work
to give.
“Having access to payroll deduc
tion plans for contributions also
measurably increases giving and
volunteering,” the survey said.
And people who intend to claim a
charitable tax deduction gave 2.9
percent of their average household
income, compared with 0.7 percent
given by those who didn’t intend to
claim a deduction.
For information on the report on
volunteering and giving, call
Independent Sector at (202) 223-
Fax news about
your organization to
(919) 832-2369.
Preservation
Continued from page 1
grants. State law requires the N.C.
Historical Commission to review and
rank those applications, and to rec
ommend which organizations should
receive grants.
During the past three years, state
Cultural Resources Secretary Betty
McCain generally did not follow the
recommendations of the commission.
McCain made her decisions with a
lot of input from state lawmakers,
says Joanne Williford, assistant to
the director of archives and history in
the Cultural Resources Department.
During the program’s three-year
reincarnation, the commission rec
ommended grants be awarded to a
total of 196 organizations from a total
of 1,232 that had applied for funding.
But only 80 of the organizations rec
ommended by the commission
received grant money
The remainder of the 185 recipi
ents were selected by McCain from
other organizations that had applied
for funding and had received hi^,
medium or low rankings from the
commission - but were not recom
mended to receive grants.
State law does not require the
human resources secretary to follow
the Historical Commission’s recom
mendations, says Bill Price, a
Meredith College history professor
and former director of the state divi
sion of archives and history.
Betsy Buford, deputy secretary of
human resources, concedes that poli
tics plays a big role in determining
who gets grants. She says the grants
were created through a political pro
cess largely to serve political inter
ests.
“We don’t make any bones about
it,” Buford says. “It’s a wonderful pro
gram when you think of aU the hun
dreds of local projects that were fund
ed.
“Pork is such an ugly word to a lot
of people unless it’s going to their
locd project or their local libraries,”
she says. “Tm just grateful, as is
Secretary McCain, to the legislators
for helping us with this.”
Preservationists say the grants
program serves a useful purpose and
should be revived. But they don’t
want politics to determine who gets
funding.
“I’d like to see the program devel
op a more substantive and less politi
cal base, so that it gets funded in elec
tion years as well as non-election
years,” says Myrick Howard, execu
tive director of Historic Preservation
of North Carolina, a statewide non
profit organization dedicated to sav
ing state historic sites.
In each of the past three years,
the commission recommended that
Howard’s organization receive state
grant money, mainly for its revolving
fund, hut the funding was not
approved by McCain’s office.
Howard says his organization was
ignored because it is a statewide
organization and funding would not
have produced tangible political ben
efits for lawmakers, who are elected
to represent local districts.
“One of the problems we have as a
statewide organization is that we are
not in anyone’s district,” he says.
“Regardless of the equities and eval
uations, we are not going to rank well
in a purely political distribution.”
Price, the former director of the
state archives and history division,
says Preservation North Carolina is
“clearly something that ought to have
been funded. And that’s a pretty clear
example of where the Historical
Commission’s observations should
have been heeded and were not.
“When you sit down and have a
conversation with a particular politi
cian about Preservation North
Carolina, they would honestly say
‘Yeah, you’re right, it’s deserving [of
grant money],’ hut when the shake-
and-bake time came to decide if you
were going to back money for
Preservation North Carolina or the
local agricultural museum in your
county, there wasn’t any real con
test.”
Despite the politicized distribu
tion process, Howard says the pro
gram served a valuable purpose.
“I’m very glad there is money
available, and I think the program is
overwhelmingly good,” he says. “I
would like to see it institutionalized
on a merit basis.”
But the likelihood of that. Price
says, is not hi^, although he sees a
general Interest in evening out the
process.
In the grand scheme of things.
Price says, $3 million is not much
money, so revamping the grants pro
gram is not a hi^ legislative priority.
“I really think there’s an interest
in making this more fair and equi
table ... but again, it’s not that big a
ticket item. In the rush of dealing with
the things [legislators] deal with, it
just doesn’t get that much attention.
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