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The Role of the Congregation in Community Service: a Philanthropic Case Study

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The Foundation Review Volume 4 Issue 3 Open Access 2012 The Role of the Congregation in Community Service: A Philanthropic Case Study Mark T. Mulder Calvin College Kristen Napp Calvin College Neil E. Carlson Calvin College Zig Ingraffia Calvin College Khary Bridgewater Douglas and Maria DeVos Family Foundation See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/tfr Part of the Nonprofit Administration and Management Commons, and the Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons Recommended Citation Mulder, M. T., Napp, K., Carlson, N. E., Ingraffia, Z., Bridgewater, K., & Hernández, E. (2012). The Role of the Congregation in Community Service: A Philanthropic Case Study. The Foundation Review, 4(3). https://doi.org/10.4087/FOUNDATIONREVIEW-D-12-00015.1 Copyright © 2012 Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University. The Foundation Review is reproduced electronically by ScholarWorks@GVSU. https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/tfr The Role of the Congregation in Community Service: A Philanthropic Case Study Authors Mark T. Mulder, Kristen Napp, Neil E. Carlson, Zig Ingraffia, Khary Bridgewater, and Edwin Hernández This free access is available in The Foundation Review: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/tfr/vol4/iss3/3 doi: 10.4087/FOUNDATIONREVIEW-D-12-00015.1 RESULTS The Role of the Congregation in Community Service: A Philanthropic Case Study Mark T. Mulder, Ph.D., Kristen Napp, B.A., Neil E. Carlson, Ph.D., and Zig Ingraffia, B.A., Calvin College; and Khary Bridgewater, B.S., and Edwin Hernández, Ph.D., Douglas and Maria DeVos Family Foundation Keywords: Families, congregations, education, children, philanthropy Introduction In an effort to bolster academic achievement Key Points and close the achievement gap among children · The Family Leadership Initiative (FLI), part of the in Grand Rapids, Mich., the Douglas and Maria larger Gatherings of Hope Initiative, was a collab- DeVos Family Foundation organized and funded oratively designed program to strengthen families a collaborative, church-based effort called and improve children’s education in Grand Rapids, the Gatherings of Hope Initiative (GHI).1 The Mich. initiative aims to increase the quality and quantity · FLI was launched in 2011 with two cohorts of 20 of collaborative community outreach and service congregations who took part in a six-step design efforts by inner-city African-American and process. Latino congregations. It includes a variety of · Programs were implemented in fall 2011. The components, including continuing education program entailed holding monthly meetings for for clergy, grants for family educational and parents and children that included bonding time, parent education and homework support for stu- recreational programs, and developmental dents, and time for ministry. support for program design, grant writing, communications, and technology. This article · The initial evaluation shows high levels of satis- faction, with students reporting some academic concerns one component of GHI: the Family improvements. Leadership Initiative (FLI), a multichurch effort to strengthen families and educate children. · For the congregations, FLI provided a rare oppor- tunity to collaborate with each other. The FLI began in spring 2011 with “congre- gational learning teams,” composed of clergy and volunteers from two cohorts of 20 the foundation hoped that the churches would congregations each. The teams met at the have a stronger sense of ownership during the foundation’s facilities and were tasked with subsequent implementation. Ultimately, the designing the program in a grassroots manner. FLI sought to equip congregations to be more Both clergy and congregants – parents and youth interested in and adept at supporting families and – from the participating churches were invited to students academically. play an active role in designing the program. By offering the congregations a stake in the design, The impetus for the FLI was poor academic performance in Grand Rapids. The city’s school 1 See gatheringsofhope.org. Gatherings of Hope is an explicitly religious, church-focused sister initiative to the system has been losing students, closing neighborhood-based Believe 2 Become Initiative. (See buildings, and producing some discouraging ibelieveibecome.org.) THE FoundationReview 2012 Vol 4:3 21 Mulder, Napp, Carlson, Ingraffia, Bridgewater, and Hernández numbers: a 52 percent graduation rate and only performance of students from their respective 49 percent of seventh-graders reading at grade churches and neighborhoods. With their support, level (Grand Rapids Public Schools, 2009). congregations received an invitation to apply for Moreover, a 2012 study found that only 8 percent $5,000 grants to facilitate implementation of the of juniors in Grand Rapids Public Schools (GRPS) pilot program at their churches during the fall taking the ACT college entrance exam were semester of 2011.3 To summarize, the foundation deemed “college ready” (French, 2012). sought to use the grant money and pilot program in order to mobilize, equip, and support religious congregations to engage with their communities and take an active role in educating children to be Congregations desire to be ready for school, work, and life. autonomous and independent. Such Literature Review a proclivity for self-sufficiency and In the disciplinary field of congregational studies, a consistently dominant theme has been that of sovereignty inhibits the ability of “de facto congregationalism” (Warner, 1994). churches to pool resources, network, That is, the bent of churches in the United States tends to be toward isolation. Such a phenomenon or collaborate on efforts and projects dovetails with declining denominationalism. In short, congregations desire to be autonomous and that would benefit their larger independent. Such a proclivity for self-sufficiency respective communities. and sovereignty inhibits the ability of churches to pool resources, network, or collaborate on efforts and projects that would benefit their larger respective communities. The reasons for these disappointing results are myriad and complex. Although GRPS may seem In his ethnographic study of the Four Corners an easy scapegoat to some, closer examination neighborhood of Boston, Omar McRoberts reveals the school system to be a victim of (2003, p. 135) persuasively demonstrated how much broader socioeconomic phenomena. congregations consistently failed to build In an effort to bolster academic achievement “collective agential capacities in neighborhoods.” among Grand Rapids’ children without casting That is not to say that churches fail to develop blame, the foundation implemented the FLI in networks; they do. However, the networks 2011 in an effort to harness the latent potential tend to be internal and insular. And because of congregations to support students and their churches have grown more mobile and families.2 With the direct leadership of program particularistic in their membership, they have officer Khary Bridgewater and the supportive less attachment to neighborhoods and, thus, less leadership of senior program officer Edwin interest in developing place-based institutional Hernández, the foundation invited clergy and infrastructure. The vertical networks of these lay people from 40 congregations to participate congregations have a propensity to inhibit in the design and implementation of a program collaborative relationships with neighboring that would seek to enhance the academic churches and agencies. In sum, the latent social power of churches remains largely dormant, 2 The new program referenced here is designed to support untapped, and impotent when it comes to and enhance the pre-existing Believe 2 Become Initiative addressing critical social issues. (B2B). B2B is a place-based initiative that created four con- tiguous “Hope Zones,” targeted neighborhoods composed of the attendance areas for nine low-performing public Though they tend not to coordinate their efforts, elementary schools. The majority of the congregations it should be noted that congregations provide involved in FLI are located in these Hope Zones. For more, see Carlson et al., 2011. 3 Thirty-two churches actually received the $5,000 grants. 22THE FoundationReview 2012 Vol 4:2 THE FoundationReview 2012 Vol 4:322 The Congregation in Community Service high levels of social service. In numerous between congregations that will efficiently and publications, Ram Cnaan has found that churches sustainably benefit both the congregations and function as community hubs and essential the community by supporting the educational components of civil society. In fact, Cnaan (2006) lives of children and strengthening family life in discovered in a study of churches in Philadelphia general. that of the 1,400 congregations considered, almost every faith community exhibited some type of manifest caring for others. It is well understood that Similar to Cnaan, Nancy Ammerman (2005) describes congregations as tremendously effective congregations serve as “anchor generators of social capital. In a bit of a riposte institutions” (Franklin, 2007) in to Robert Putnam’s conclusions in Bowling Alone (2001) (that social capital and community were minority communities by supporting in precipitous decline in the U.S.), Ammerman argues that he should have been observing civic vitality and healthy social congregations instead of bowling lanes. There, discourse. Congregations also within the faith
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