An Imbalance of Need and Aid

"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."