Statement of Reverend Donna Lawrence Jones

Cookman United Methodist Church, Philadelphia, PA

Our Experience with Charitable Choice

Tuesday, April 24, 2001

Like many urban African American churches, Cookman already had a history of social ministries designed to empower its community. Although many social service agencies exist in the neighborhood, issues of distrust, mis-information, and dis-respect for poor people's issues caused persons in need to seek alternative solutions through various community based-organizations (including churches) to their life-challenges. All of our outreach efforts have always been open to all residents regardless of faith commitment.

As welfare reform became a reality, we started to see more and more residents coming to us for referrals, tutoring and other assistance. We also found many residents were very confused by the system and by their county assistance office personnel. In order to meet their needs we chose to utilize the Charitable Choice provision to compete for federal funding for our what was becoming an increased demand on assistance for persons receiving TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) benefits.

We have also, like many churches in our area, chosen not to actively proselytize persons in need of our help, feeling that it is not appropriate to in any way force religion on the needy. Therefore, when charitable choice came our way, we did not see that it would impede what we were used to doing in anyway.

We did see it as a Godsend. For years, our small congregation had been providing various services to needy families with a very limited budget. This put a tremendous strain on too few volunteers. And, since we are not a "professional church" (Other than myself, there is only one other person with a post-high school diploma) we started to feel the weight of trying to provide better quality services in response to person's felt needs. We found our community agencies tried hard, but were unable to handle the volume of issues found in our high-risk community alone. The additional funding allowed us to hire targeted staff, and improve our curriculum. The extra staff actually made it easier to solicit volunteers, as they were not so easily burnt-out.

Our experience with the State of Pennsylvania has overall been very good. We had a challenging start as we each tried to understand the freedoms and restrictions of Charitable Choice. But we worked together with our monitor to develop what we feel has been a beneficial collaboration for the citizens in our area who have fallen through the systemic cracks. This help enabled us to expand our program of education, life-skills, job placement, job development and computer literacy, and children and youth services.

We offer a voluntary Bible Study at the beginning of the day. We advertise that we have a Christian program, but we are careful during orientation and on a regular basis through out the program to let clients know that religious activities are not mandatory and that they have every right to pursue other valuable activities at the same time, such as: computer lab, job search activities, or counseling/case management. So far we have served 182 women. At last count, our job placement rate at 20 hours/week or greater was 87%.

We have a separate account for funds received for the welfare to work program, and the church continues to have to meet its own operating and ministry expenses. We make a distinction (both now and before charitable choice) between what we do in mission and what we do in evangelism. We do not see social service (helping the needy) as evangelism so we have never had an issue with trying to proselytize someone who needs help.

The government collaboration has increased the level of bureaucracy and paper work we were used to. However, for the most part this has been welcomed. We have better records than we would have every dreamed of having before and we are linked to a State Wide database that has been exceptionally helpful to us in follow-up with the families we help. While some of the paper requirements are tedious, most are necessary such as financial records, case notes, accurate client files, and employer and family information. Although it was a challenge for us in the early months, now that we've been at it for a few years it has been a tremendous blessing for follow-up.

The State also has not in anyway impacted our free exercise of religion. They have not in any way interfered with the organization or structure of our church. Nor seemed to care - appropriately.

Lastly, churches receiving funds for various programs from non-religious sources is not new. Many foundations and private donors fund church programs and place guidelines on how those funds are to be used. Churches make choices daily to accept or reject funding based on the donor's wishes. We believe that churches are more than able to follow clearly defined guidelines when receiving government funding as well. We are also capable of declining funds if we disagree with the way a contract is asking us to define a project. Churches also make choices daily regarding when and how to share our faith. Organizations that have overt proselytization as part of their methodology are not likely to compete for government funds.

To us, the bottom line remains that churches have been actively engaged in providing much needed services to their communities for quite some time. However, we have not been invited to compete as peers with other non-profit agencies for the funding necessary to support our work. We have been invited to set up separate secular entities under which to provide charitable services, but this to us takes away from our integrity as asacred agency. The word sacred does not say anything about how we share or don't share our faith. It does speak to our motivation for doing our work. It means that we hold our responsibilities to help the needy extremely important and get great satisfaction from being there for people as agents of God's love. This means that we tend to go the extra mile, make the extra call, visit the extra family member in the hospital (who may not be particularly entitled to our service): all in an effort to bring wholeness to our community.

Lastly, Charitable Choice has not changed our church - we still worship on Sundays, have pot-luck dinners, attend choir rehearsal, Bible study and Sunday School, and go out evangelizing the community on Sundays. It has however improved our ability to provide quality help to the needy who know us, trust us and expect a bit more dignity and love from us.

Financial Disclosure Statement for Reverend Donna Lawrence Jones

The Cookman United Methodist Church has received two state contracts over three years. The first was a Community Solutions performance based contract beginning in March 1998 and ending Feb 28, 2001, which paid out roughly $50,000.00 the first year, $50,000 the second year and $10,000.00 the third year. The next contract was a grant in 2000 to do short-term follow-up and monitor retention of working clients. It paid out $40,000.00.