When Denise Panichas took over as director of the Samaritans of Rhode Island in 2001, the suicide prevention group’s budget was about $130,000 – enough to function, but not enough to keep its hotline open more than 40 hours a week, or run many educational programs.
A veteran fund-raiser, Panichas aggressively promoted the Samaritans’ efforts and boosted annual donations by about $40,000. But the Samaritans aren’t expanding.
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In January, when the United Way of Rhode Island announced its latest round of grants, the Samaritans, who used to get about $32,000 a year in direct support, weren’t funded at all. And the group’s other source of United Way income – from donor designations – has also dried up since the United Way in 2002 stopped sending out a list of charities with its campaign materials, Panichas said. While in 2001, the Samaritans got $10,998 in donor designation money, in 2002 it was down to $5,900. The 2004 campaign yielded only $1,916.
“Now we have to go out on our own and find new ways to raise money, because suicide is not going away,” Panichas said. “We have a larger support base, but that safety net is gone.”
It’s been almost four months since the United Way announced the results of its long-awaited change from a membership-based grant system, to a competitive grant system, with specific priorities, in which all Rhode Island’s charities are eligible to participate.
“We were looking to target our money, to use it more efficiently,” said United Way spokesman Hank Sennott. So rather than fund multiple agencies with overlapping functions and audiences, the United Way sought to find the strongest in each area. The response, especially from corporate supporters, has been overwhelmingly positive, he said.
But the change did dramatically increase the competition for grants. Altogether, the United Way got 238 proposals worth $33 million; it gave out $9.2 million to 63 nonprofits, including 24 that had never gotten money before. Several high-profile beneficiaries, however – from the American Red Cross of Rhode Island, to Crossroads Rhode Island – got smaller grants than in previous years, and 19 groups the United Way had previously supported got nothing at all.
Among the latter were several well-established charities: the Big Sisters of Rhode Island, the Girl Scouts of Rhode Island, Jewish Family Service, Rhode Island Legal Services, the Rhode Island Youth Guidance Center, Sojourner House, the YWCA of Northern Rhode Island.
For some, such as the Samaritans, it was a major blow. For others, such as Rhode Island Legal Services, the United Way money was a much smaller part of the total budget.
But even at Crossroads, with a $7 million budget including $1 million that has to be raised from donors and new grants each year, President Anne Nolan said the change hurt. As much as she understands why the United Way did what it did, Nolan said, the money her agency lost helped pay for basic overhead and other hard-to-finance expenses.
“Crossroads is a poor agency,” she said. “We’re a large agency, but we’re constantly running at a deficit and trying to fund-raise. … Most funding agencies fund specific programs, and they don’t fund any kind of overhead. They also like new programs – they don’t like to fund existing programs – so you can very easily end up just chasing money. I also think too many agencies end up doing what is funded, versus finding funding for what they do.”
Panichas described the philanthropic climate in similar terms, as did Deborah Perry, executive director of the YWCA of Northern Rhode Island, which got more than $70,000 from the United Way last year, but nothing this time. (The Y’s total budget is about $1 million.)
“It’s getting more and more competitive to raise funds, and there’s more and more nonprofits being created every day,” she said. The Y gets much of its money from program fees for direct services, and from state-subsidized child care, but Perry and her staff have to raise about 25 percent through grants and fund raising each year. They plan to apply for the next round of United Way funding, but in the meantime, they’re grasping at straws.
“I’m now spending about 70 percent of my time trying to fill the $70,000 gap for this year and make it long term,” Perry said. The agency is looking into “social entrepreneurship” – setting up some kind of small business – and at new collaborations. It’s courting new donors. Yet selling the Y for what it is, Perry acknowledged, is a bigger challenge.
“Our mission is to eliminate racism and empower women, and those are oftentimes the last things that are funded,” she said. “But we do have a proven track record.”
Even groups that did well in the United Way’s grant-making process this year are still facing challenges. Val Sinesi, executive director of the Big Brothers of Rhode Island, said his group was “really blessed” to receive a $194,000, 21-month grant from the United Way – which has traditionally provided about $80,000 in direct annual support.
“Without the United Way, without getting this grant, it would be maybe impossible for the Big Brothers of Rhode Island to exist,” he said. The group, which matches up fatherless boys with men willing to mentor them, is supporting 122 such pairings right now, but looking for “big brothers” for another 300 boys, Sinesi said. To make it through this year, they’ll need $384,000.
“So we have to do a lot of fund raising,” he said. “But without the United Way base money, we couldn’t even begin.”
