October 1994
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina • 21
A spark for change
Coordinated social service program aims to boost families
A pilot project funded by the Z.
Smith Reynolds Foundation
aims to better integrate the
labyrinth of social services
programs that families on
welfare must navigate. The
key, say project leaders, is
involving welfare recipients
in efforts to improve the
system to help free them
from dependence on it.
By David E. Brown
Warrenton
welfare system often is
I like a lead wei^t around the
/ necks of the people who pro
vide public assistance. That’s doubly
true for welfare recipients.
Whether they deliver services or
need them, people involved in the wel
fare system must navigate conflicting
state and federal regulations; miles of
red tape and stacks of forms.
Vanessa Wilhams knows the drill.
The Warren County woman wants to
work, but the income would put an
end to some medical benefits her dis
abled dau^ter gets from the federal
government, and job benefits wouldn’t
replace them.
Williams, a nurse’s aid, is going
back to school; she earned a 4.0 grade
point average in her first quarter
studying micro-systems technology at
Vance-Granville Community College.
She hopes alternative approaches
such as the Opportunities for Families
Fund — a project of the Z. Smith
Reynolds Foundation — can spur
some change in the system before she
graduates.
In North Carolina, social service
programs are primarily the responsi
bility of county government. So it is to
the counties that the Reynolds
Foundation turned with a five-year, $5
million attempt to make some sense of
human service deUvery.
For the Winston-Salem-based
foundation, the Opportunities for
Families Fund, or OFF, is another
chapter in a long history of grass
roots involvement in the state’s social
problems. It continues a Reynolds
theme of involving the poor in shaping
a system that works.
OFF’s goal is a long-standing
ideal: Move poor families away from
dependence and toward self-sufficien
cy by addressing their needs as a
related set of challenges, rather than
attacking each need with a separate
program.
“Most people don’t really want to
have anything to do with public assis
tance,” says Pheon Beal, who coordi
nates the OFF project. “But the reality
of the system is they come into a
revolving door...Reducing dependency
on pubUc assistance is easy: Just cut
pubhc assistance. But what have you
done with poverty?”
The federal JOBS program gives
recipients a limited period in which to
become self-sufficient — improve
their education levels, become more
employable.
In a fragmented delivery system,
this window often closes before recipi-
ents can get themselves on solid
ground, critics say.
Schooling may be available, they
say, but day care may not be. A job
opportunity may vanish for lack of
public transportation. A job without
health care and child care benefits
eventually can become less lucrative
than the welfare system.
The counties must be eager for
help; 86 of the state’s 100 counties
applied for the Reynolds Foundation
program. Sixteen proposals repre
senting 20 counties received planning
grants, and five of those — Warren,
Scotland, Forsyth, Cleveland and a
Mitchell-Avery-Yaneey consortium —
were chosen for $1 million grants.
$3 PER MONTH
Poverty is not a single problem,
but a set of circumstances — usually
addressed separately by the social
service system. OFF works on the
premise that those circumstances are
interrelated, and the solutions should
be too.
Warren County is typical of the
way the system operates.
Vanessa Williams laughs ruefully
about her $3 per month in food
stamps. Given her husband’s income,
that was the allotment at one time.
Hardly worth the 29 cents and the
time to stuff the pay stubs in the enve
lope — to say nothing of the effort on
the government’s end.
But the laughter she shares with
family outreach coordinators Nina
Goode and Juanita Tate is genuine.
They work for The Family Institute,
the Warren County agency that is
coordinating an OFF pilot project.
They can laugh about the sad, frag
mented shape of the welfare system
as they see it because they’re going
door to door to tiy to make it better.
Warren, the state’s poorest county
- with 28 percent of its population
below the federal poverty line -
earned its grant by convincing the
Reynolds Foundation that solutions
would come from people such as
Wilhams. She was part of a commit
tee of local citizens who surveyed
their nei^bors on how to improve the
services they receive.
With the grant in hand, part of the
committee merged with local coun
selors, teachers, clergy and business
leaders to form the board of the insti
tute. The core of the Warren program
is an intensive study of 35 families
like the Wilhamses — examining then-
needs and the roadblocks in their
way.
Tate and Goode, social workers
by profession, each took half that
number to interview.
“Contrary to what agencies think,
families do know what’s best for
them,” Goode says. “They may not be
able to relate that, but once they get
comfortable with being a part of the
solution, they can.”
“That’s it,” Tate says, “just getting
them to talk. So many of them have
been so down about this system for so
long. I think the families we’re work
ing with are starting to gain a lot of
self esteem.”
The Warren County project does
things that high-volume social ser
vices programs can’t. If a family
needs housing. Family Institute
staffers like Goode “ride down the
road ’til you see an empty house —
get in folks’ business.”
They persuade people to clean up
their debts and plan five years down
the road for a house. They talk the
Vanessa Williamses into going back
to school.
Warren would need an army of
Tates and Goodes to transform ser
vice delivery to the whole county, Beal
says.
“I think the fundamental problem
is, we’re used to doing business as
usual. There has not been enough
pressure to change the system, and
the people that can be most effective
have had a very small voice.”
Cathy A. Lawrence , who directs
the Warren project, says that after
three years, the problems are clearer.
There is not enough successful
participation in the county’s Graduate
Equivalency Degree high school com
pletion program. Social services agen
cies are in several different
Warrenton locations, and the food
stamps office is miles away in NorUna.
There are no domestic violence
shelters anywhere. Housing is unaf
fordable, substandard or nonexistent.
There is no day care. The employ
ment outlook for the small rural coun-
LookforOFF, page 22
Hugh Morton, Jr.
Video Productions
Broadcast-Quality
Fundraising Videos
and
PSA’s for Nonprofits
720 Lake Boone Trail
Raleigh, NC 27607
(919) 834-8444
’HERROSr
& Company, Inc.
Investment Counsel
3301 Woman's Club Drive,
Suite 148
Raleigh, NC 27612
Phone (919) S7\-17T1 FAX (919) 571-7889
Short Takes
IRS seeks back taxes
from senior citizen group
The national American Association of
Retired Persons has paid $135 mil
lion, to settle part of a tax dispute with
the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS
claims the nonprofit owes taxes on
royalty payments it received from
insurance and investment companies
that market products bearing AARP's
logo.The AARP says the income is
related to its primary mission and
should be tax-exempt.
President Clinton nominates
Duke professor to board
Thomas Ehrlich, visiting professor at
Duke University's Terry Sanford
Institute for Public Policy and former
president of Indiana University, was
nominated by President Clinton to
the board of directors of the
Corporation for National and
Community Service which runs the
new AmeriCorps program.
"PLANNED GIVING STRATEGIES
FOR THE LONG RUN"
Interested in learning more about how to carry out a planned
giving program? Come to the fall meeting of the North Carolina
Planned Giving Council.
Wednesday, November 2, 1994
11 ;00 - 3 p.m.
Adam's Mark Hotel
Charlotte, North Carolina
Joint Meeting with the South Carolina Planned Giving
Council. Philip Converse, President of Converse & Associates
of Memphis, TN will present strategies for marketing
planned giving to potential donors and advisors.
$15 members/$20 nonmembers includes lunch
Excellent session for long range planning and development committees
For information and reservations call Sandra Shell
910-770-5289
The Council is a nonprofit organization organized
to promote planned giving in North Carolina. Annual dues; $50
SOFTWARE RULES:
1. Use the correct software.
2. Use the software correctly.
3. Use a company that knows your business.
a company dedicated to Non-Profits...
Cost Management Associates, Inc.
Computer Systems/Services/Support
635-H Chapel Hill Road
Burlington, NC 27215
800-747-0906
910-228-6008
♦ Fund Accounting Software
♦ Fund Raising Software
♦ Client/Service Databases
♦ Networks
♦ Installation, Training, Consulting