By Ellen Butler, Staff Reporter
Three months ago, the Claremont Neighborhood Centers laid off four full-time and five part-time employees after losing one quarter of its $360,000 budget to city cuts.
Determined not to let her after-school programs sink, the centers' executive director phoned the two private foundations that supply a fifth of the centers' financing.
One turned down her request for more money. The second, the Charles Hayden Foundation, came through with a $25,000 grant for her youth recreation program.
Although it doesn't come close to offsetting the loss of $84,000 in city funds, the director, Rachel Spivey, said, "At least it's something to give me hope to hold on to."
Private charities say they can't heal the damage that budget cuts have done to social welfare programs, but they are trying to help agencies ease into a leaner future.
Foundations now provide $25 million citywide to youth services, said Gilda Wray, vice president of the Hayden Foundation. But foundations will be hard pressed to find an additional $20 million, to replace in grants what Mayor Rudolph Guiliani just struck from the Department of Youth Services in his proposed city budget.
Wray said her foundation alone decided to award $700,000 in emergency money to 17 agencies in the wake of the cuts.
"We couldn't just sit by and let programs we care about suffer without the space for them to figure out how to downsize," she said.
Agencies have long depended on the government to provide the core of support to their programs. But with the disappearance of that support, foundations like the Hayden are reassessing the role they have traditionally played in funding programs like Spivey's.
"The problem is that the way foundations have operated is with the expectation that if a program is successful, that government will pick it up," said Ani Hurwitz, an official with the New York Community Trust.
Now, foundations are considering awarding general operating support. "But we can't give it to every program that we fund," Wray said. "We don't have the money!"
Hurwitz said her trust offers small technical assistance grants -- $2,000 to $3,000 -- to allow organizations to hire consultants who can say, "This is what's coming down in the future and here's what you need to do about it," Hurwitz said.
Maria Mottola, a program officer at the New York Foundation, said no one should accept the government cuts without a fight. The cuts, she said, raise a fundamental question: Does the government have a responsibility to fund social programs and provide a safety net for people?
Mottola said agencies should rally the people they serve: "People who use after-school programs will have to demand after-school programs. People who use soup kitchens need to demand soup kitchens."
Rachel Spivey said Claremont parents have met with their elected officials and written letters to city officials. Even their children have written letters.
"They've done what they can do," Spivey said.