Help Lags Behind Need in Pr. George's
Report Cites Number, Funding of Groups

By Philip Rucker and William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 30, 2008

Prince George's County has more people living in poverty than any other Washington suburb, yet its charitable support system is far smaller than those in other large suburbs or the District, studies show.

This imbalance has consequences: Prince George's families sometimes travel long distances for health care, counseling and youth programs -- or never get help. Nonprofit groups in better-served areas, particularly Montgomery County, are overloaded with outside clients, which hinders their ability to help their communities.

The trend is evident to a lesser degree elsewhere as poverty has spread into the suburbs and services have failed to keep pace. Thriving hubs of nonprofit agencies have blossomed in such spots as Silver Spring and Arlington County. But in Prince George's and such outer-ring counties as Prince William, Loudoun and Charles, service groups are insufficient and undercapitalized, experts say.

The problems might be exacerbated by the worsening economy. "When people have needs, jurisdictional lines don't matter," said Chuck Bean of the Nonprofit Roundtable of Greater Washington. "Some people might live in County X, but the best match for the needs are in County Y."

The divide is starkest in Maryland's two biggest suburbs: Montgomery has three times as many large nonprofit groups as Prince George's, and they bring in far more annual revenue, according to a 2007 report by the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations. The study also found that the Prince George's government awarded grants to nonprofit groups at a rate of about $2 per person. Most other suburban jurisdictions gave $9 to $10 per person, which in some cases reflects their relative affluence. Prince George's officials dispute that figure, but some acknowledge the need.

"We had known for some time that the capacity in Prince George's lagged behind other counties," said Heather Iliff, the report's author. "The real surprise is just how far an outlier the county is."

The findings are especially dramatic considering that the Chronicle of Philanthropy ranks Prince George's among the nation's five most generous counties in charitable giving by its residents. Most of those dollars, though, go to churches, which often offer services but not necessarily to the whole community.

"There's no doubt churches and faith groups play an enormous role," Iliff said. "But it's doubtful that churches alone are going to come even close to filling [the gap] between what nonprofits get in Montgomery and what they get in Prince George's."

Leaders of large churches in Prince George's decline to say how much they spend on community programs, and federal tax forms do not provide such information. But nonprofit leaders say the proof of the county's unmet need lies in the hundreds of residents who show up in neighboring jurisdictions. Government services are reserved for county residents, but some nonprofit agencies funded by Montgomery report that a third of their clients come from Prince George's.

"We don't officially work in Prince George's," said Frankie Blackburn, director of Impact Silver Spring, which serves low-income residents. "All of our funding and support comes from the Montgomery County side. But unofficially, we're definitely bleeding over into Prince George's. For real people, the border is just fiction."

The need in Prince George's is undeniable. About 8.2 percent of its 830,000 residents live below the federal poverty level -- set at about $21,000 for a family of four, according to 2007 Census data. That compares with 16.4 percent in the District and slightly less than 5 percent in Fairfax and Montgomery.

Nonprofit groups spent about $69 million on the 20,000 Prince George's children living in poverty, according to a 2004 study by the Urban Institute. By comparison, agencies in Montgomery spent $366 million on the county's 13,000 poor children.

In Langley Park, an immigrant community hub that straddles the Montgomery-Prince George's border, children from Montgomery have access to CentroNia, a new nonprofit bilingual early learning center for disadvantaged Latinos. Those from Prince George's are relegated to a waiting list.

All of CentroNia's government grants come from Montgomery. "We're only allowed to use Montgomery County dollars for Montgomery children," CentroNia President Beatriz Otero said.

Prince George's and other counties, she said, need more agencies to serve new populations. "You have a larger number of low-income families, a larger number of immigrants and greater diversity of income," she said.

A few miles away in Silver Spring, Mary's Center, a nonprofit clinic for pregnant women and infants, has been treating an influx of uninsured patients. Although all of the government grants in its $1 million budget come from Montgomery, more than a third of its 850 patients come from the neighboring county.

The situation occurs in Northern Virginia, too: Policies in Prince William seem to be pushing more Latinos toward Fairfax County agencies, leaders say. At Fairfax Area Christian Emergency and Transitional Services and other agencies last winter, staff members noticed an increase in Latino residents in their homeless shelters.

Generally, though, Northern Virginia's agencies are better aligned with the needs of the local population, and there is not the stark imbalance between need and resources seen in Prince George's, the study shows. The District has long had a strong nonprofit sector, bolstered by regional and national agencies, to match the city's needs.

In Prince George's, officials said the assessment of its nonprofit sector understates the county's contribution. Jim Keary, a spokesman for County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D), also questioned the objectivity of Iliff, who is also an elected member of the county Board of Education.

"You have a consultant to a nonprofit group saying there needs to be more funding for nonprofits," Keary said. "Of course they think there needs to be more funding."

But some of the county's elected officials are engaged in discussions on how to grow local charities. "The needs are really tremendous, and despite the best efforts of an awful lot of good organizations and people, we haven't been able to keep up with the needs," said Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D), who has run several nonprofit organizations.

For small, secular nonprofit groups in Prince George's, competing against large churches for charitable dollars has been difficult if not impossible. Many families that tithe a portion of their income to their churches might not be able to afford additional contributions, nonprofit leaders said. The county has more than 700 churches, 12 of them large enough to be considered mega-churches.

Community Ministry straddles these worlds. Created by churches in the 1970s to coordinate food and housing for the needy, it serves 19,000 lunches a year out of the county's largest kitchen. Still, it has encountered many of the same fundraising difficulties as secular groups.

Volunteer board President Jimmie L. Slade, a retired Army colonel, compared the situation to the competition among branches of the military, saying, "There's enough bad guys for all of us, the need is so great.

"I'm not slamming the churches," he said, but he added that some need "to look past their individual church at the larger problems."

Church leaders say their efforts are not diverting money from nonprofit groups or supplanting their role but are meeting needs.

"When someone is in need, they don't care where their food is coming from, a nonprofit or a church," said the Rev. John K. Jenkins of the First Baptist Church of Glenarden.

With about 10,000 parishioners, the church fields a corps of volunteers to help run several programs open to outsiders, including a food pantry, clothing closet, summer youth program and Christian school. Every Saturday, the church feeds 150 people. Last week, members assembled 960 Thanksgiving food baskets for the needy.

Officials declined to disclose the church's overall budget but said 10 to 20 percent is devoted to benevolence ministries, with an additional 10 percent going to outside organizations here and abroad.

Still, such programs can leave out some of the most vulnerable. "If you don't belong to these churches, you probably don't know" about the services, said Jerry Adams, director of the Human Services Coalition of Prince George's County.

The struggles of nonprofit agencies in Prince George's go beyond competition with churches. Many groups rely too heavily on government money, meaning programs and staff depend largely on politicians and local budgets, said Desiree Griffin-Moore of the Prince George's Community Foundation. The area's major foundations award fewer grants in Prince George's than elsewhere, in part because fewer groups apply.

Concerned about the imbalance, philanthropic leaders are directing new money and expertise to the county. They formed the Partnership for Prince George's County to award grants to small but successful nonprofit groups.

Blackburn, of Impact Silver Spring, likened the county's nonprofit sector to Silver Spring's two decades ago. "We didn't have a lot of nonprofits, but we diversified and became so urbanized that we created this bottom-up infrastructure of nonprofits to serve people," he said. "Prince George's has to have that kind of movement."