NCC digs deeper into hunger/relief funds
By Parker T. Williamson, The Layman Online, March 1, 2000
NEW YORK – Characterized by Episcopal Church representative Rev. Patrick Mauney as “a long and painful history,” the relationship between Church World Service and the National Council of Churches showed little improvement at the NCC’s Feb. 28-29 Executive Board meeting.
Supporters of Church World Service, a popular hunger and relief agency, had hoped to gain some freedom from NCC control in return for helping to bail the NCC out of a $4-million deficit. But at its first executive board meeting since former Democratic Congressman Robert Edgar took the helm, the NCC announced the resignation of Church World Service’s executive director, Rodney Page, and approved a budget for the year 2000 that charges the hunger-relief ministry a whopping $4,430,000 for “support services,” and another $350,000 as a required contribution to the NCC’s Washington lobby.
The support services charge represents a 75 percent increase over the 1998 formula for determining charges levied on Church World Service by the NCC.
Who is in charge?
Budget figures for the year 2000 show the NCC as a tail that wags the dog. Church World Service, which receives almost $30 million from public and community appeals (including the popular CROP Walks) and almost $18 million in government grants for refugee resettlement and other humanitarian activities, projects an income for the year 2000 of $62,760,000.
By contrast, the NCC’s projected income for the same period is only $7,198,635. Yet the NCC insists on combining the two income streams into one consolidated budget over which the NCC executive board – not Church World Service – is in charge.
Poor people pay the price
Having run up huge deficits for several years, the NCC drained its reserves and ended 1999 $4 million in the hole. NCC officials asked Church World Service for disaster relief, and after negotiations, described by one participant as “contentious,” Church World Service reluctantly agreed to transfer $1.4 million to the NCC.
Mauney, who is vice chairman of the board of directors for Church World Service, called that decision “painful,” saying the transfer severely diminished hunger, refugee resettlement and relief programs. Included in the cost of the transfer to the NCC was the extraction of $200,000 from the disaster agency’s Blanket Fund.
Church World Service representatives entered those negotiations from a position of weakness. The NCC owns the agency, so unless CWS officials choose to abandon ship and start another relief agency on their own, they can do little more than protest their treatment by the parent organization whose assets and public credibility have teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.
CWS wins rescue efforts
As NCC member churches considered proposals to help bail out the foundering organization, denominational leaders pointed to Church World Service as their primary reason for agreeing to a rescue. Presbyterian Church (USA) executive John Detterick, for example, supported a $500,000 gift to the bailout fund on grounds that the PCUSA used Church World Service as the agency through which most Presbyterian relief efforts are administered.
If the NCC died and Presbyterians had to create a disaster/relief agency to replace it, the church would spend a lot more money than the amount requested in the bailout, he argued.
Hopes dashed
But several participants, including Detterick, expressed the hope that as a result of the NCC’s “recapitalization” and reorganization, Church World Service would be given more managerial and fiscal autonomy.
Church World Service officials apparently anticipated that as well, and it appears that this was one of the requests that they placed on the bargaining table when their gift of $1.4 million to the bailout fund was discussed.
In a memorandum to NCC executive board members, Mauney said one of the reasons Church World Service agreed to make the gift was to help create a positive atmosphere in which the relationship of the two agencies could be improved. But if NCC officials ever had any passion for hosting such discussions, it withered shortly after the gift was made.
The NCC ‘no show’
Mauney’s memo described his hopes that good-faith discussions would follow the Church World Service gift, but he said that no substantial conversations have occurred since December.
If NCC officials have any intention of pursuing the matter, they showed no signs of it at their executive board meeting. In fact, the resignation of Church World Service’s executive director and an NCC budget for the year 2000 that shows even greater draws on Church World Service resources suggest that NCC officials plan to tighten their control over the disaster/relief organization.
With Rodney Page out of the way, NCC General Secretary Robert Edgar has been given a free hand to lead the search for a new Church World Service director, one who may more enthusiastically marshal the organization’s assets toward the needs of the NCC.