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GROUPS THAT CHANGE COMMUNITIES

The Cooperative Ministry

The Cooperative Ministry
Patricia Mikelson, Executive Director
P.O. Box 1705
1928 Taylor St.
Columbia, S.C. 29202
(803) 799-3853
(803) 252-8621 fax

This model grassroots program began, as so many effective programs do, with a simple response to a basic problem: Concerned because so many hungry and homeless people were showing up at rectory doors asking for small amounts of money to help them through a crisis, five large churches in downtown Columbia banded together in 1982 to coordinate their responses and pool the resources available to help.

Their response began as nothing more than a part-time worker handing out money from a table located in a downtown rescue mission; but it quickly grew. By 1986, it had grown to an ecumenical effort by 40 churches and became a non-profit group; The Cooperative Ministry now represents fully 115 congregations, including every large church in the metropolitan area and a good number of the smaller ones, representing an ecumenical and multi-racial group of churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. Funding came initially from the churches themselves, and this source still accounts for about 25 percent of the group's income; but aggressive grantsmanship has dramatically increased income from state and local government grants and other sources.

Since the beginning, The Cooperative Ministry's top priority has been emergency assistance, but this has always been provided with a focus on boosting self-reliance rather than enabling dependency. Recipients may not come back more than once in three years for help with rent, for example, UNLESS they agree to enter budget counseling and begin seeking solutions to the problems that underlie their crisis.

Under a new policy beginning in April 1996, NO request for aid will simply be granted without the recipient and a staff member working together to examine whether there's a more long-term solution to the short-range problem. This isn't being done out of a spirit of meanness, Mikelson emphasizes, but as a pragmatic response to the drastic cuts in federal and state programs that have drained $250,000 out of Richland County's emergency-services funding and forced closing of the city's only adult day center for homeless people.

In addition to its ongoing emergency-aid program, The Cooperative Ministry hosts a number of unusual, creative and replicable models:

Project Independence: This program involves church-related volunteers, usually in groups of several families, who form "a covenant relationship" with a poor family, not to offer them money but goal-setting, mentoring and support on a regular basis for a year. The program, originated in 1989, is limited to 10 families at a time, and it has achieved some heart-warming success stories.

The Community Auto Repository (C.A.R.) emerged directly from Project Independence when organizers found that a lack of affordable transportation was one of the most frequent barriers between poor families and work. (Public transportation is very poor in Columbia.) Working through church and civic groups and word-of-mouth, The Cooperative Ministry seeks donations of older cars in good running condition from families who no longer need them. The organization takes title to donated cars, for which the donors receive a charitable tax donation; the cars are then given to families who need them for transportation to work. More than 180 cars have been transferred through this program over six years.

The Clothing Bank is no mere clothes closet but a warehouse filled with carefully sorted and organized donated clothing, which is distributed to needy families through some 100 local providers. This model worked so well that The Cooperative Ministry has extended it to a FURNITURE BANK that provides not individual items but a full household, including furniture and kitchenware, through service agencies to families moving into permanent housing. They've also organized a COMPUTER BANK, brokering donated personal computers from colleges and government agencies to non-profit agencies that will use them in their programs and for computer tutoring for area youngsters.

The Cooperative Ministry has a staff of 11 plus two full-time volunteers, and an annual budget of about $800,000.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.
Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.
Send him E-mail.
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