How the nonprofit sector should respond to the reconstruction challenge of the Gulf Coast

By Rick Cohen

September 29, 2005

 
One sprightly Fox-TV morning anchor announced that viewers had suggested two federal expenditures for cuts to make room for Katrina relief and reconstruction spending:  the United Nations and National Public Radio.  His sprightly co-anchor answered that there was no chance that the U.S. would ditch the UN, as attractive as that sounded to her, but the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (she had corrected her associate on the targeted program slash)?  Now, that was a good idea.

 
In a nutshell, that explains why the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy is going to keep watching what the Bush Administration, what members of Congress of both parties, and what the nonprofit sector do in response to the relief and reconstruction needs of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  Because the resources, support, and integrity of the nonprofit sector may be at stake, deep-sixed by people and institutions of benevolent and malevolent intentions in the chaotic scrum that characterizes some, not all, of the Katrina relief and reconstruction effort.

 

Observers like columnist Neil Peirce have called for a Gulf Coast region reconstruction czar of impeccable ethics and integrity to oversee the rebuilding effort; in Congress, there are competing proposals for a Katrina relief Inspector General and bipartisan, nonpartisan, and clearly partisan 9/11-type Katrina commissions.  In reality, while all of this apparatus gears up, if it ever does, it’s up to all of us in the nonprofit sector to demand that our sector behave with more decorum, more integrity, more commitment to the core values of charity and philanthropy than it ever has before. 

 

As an alternative to functioning as a shill for the political damage control efforts of the Bush, Blanco, Barbour, and Nagin administrations or a partisan ally for any of their legions of critics, nonprofits have to take a higher road.  We have to start now to ensure that the Katrina (and Rita) reconstruction efforts, the largest in U.S. history, function a lot better than so many reconstruction efforts involving U.S. government and charitable moneys in the past.

What do we have to be on guard about?  Any number of items, but some concerns should be first and foremost:

 
As our Fox-TV news hosts have indicated, to pay for Katrina, both parties are probably unwilling to entertain tax increases, so they’ll search for areas to cut and aim not at Congressional pork, but at some critically important programs and services—like public television and radio—that shouldn’t be sacrificed.  We have to be ever vigilant.

• At the same time, as the new package of proposals for reconstruction in Louisiana issued by Senators Vitter and Landrieu contains lots of provisions that have absolutely no connection to post-Hurricane reconstruction but a lot to do with the interests of the lobbyists who comprised virtually to a man (and woman) the advisory committee convened by the two senators.  The sector has to be on guard for members of Congress converting the need for major public investment into a playpen of unrelated and inappropriate pork.
  
  
• On Capitol Hill, Katrina has spawned the largest package of nonprofit-related legislation in history.  There are bills changing, adding to, and subtracting from programs including Low Income Housing Tax Credits, Community Development Block Grants, AmeriCorps, Medicaid, Work Opportunity Tax Credits, Section 8 housing vouchers, and much more.  These are all in the public policy wheelhouse of the nonprofit sector.  You—and we—have to be critically engaged.
  
  
• It isn’t only public television that’s at stake. Already, in the budget-gutted federal system of the current administration, Katrina survivors are being pitted against other poor people for scarce public resources such as public housing units and subsidized housing vouchers.  The nonprofit sector has to take on the malignant dynamic of leaving the poor and disadvantaged only the scraps of public programs and services.  Katrina shouldn’t be permitted to become the latest venue for the continuing underfunding of the public social safety net.
  
  
• Taking a page out of the Iraq corporate profiteering handbook, corporate behemoths are lining up for no-bid and barely bid contracts to rebuild the Gulf Coast region.  Many dash to the front of the line due to their connections with federal and state politicians of both parties.  Elsewhere, Congressmen and governors are designing programs to subsidize the rebuilding costs of casinos and other for-profit interests, yet another example of how well government operates for the institutions and people who need it least.  In this case, unlike Iraq, the corporate profiteers are likely to recruit nonprofits as partners to give them the veneer of respectability they need to fend off criticism for their skyrocketing profit margins and stock values.  This is the nonprofit sector’s watchdog role and ours, to identify the profiteering that is guaranteed to occur and call out the nonprofits that choose to sully the sector’s reputation in the process.
  
  
• Whole communities have been devastated, others are likely to be bulldozed as beyond repair.  Maybe the business interests and historic preservationists will be able to revive their stakes in the New Orleans business area and in historic neighborhoods like the French Quarter and Algiers, but who is going to represent the interests of a half-million people displaced from New Orleans, Biloxi, Gulfport, and vast rural areas so that they can exercise their democratic voice in the composition and process of rebuilding their communities.  That should be as close to the top of the list of nonprofit concerns—and NCRP’s attention—as any.

 Why is NCRP returning yet again to the Katrina crisis?  Because it constitutes an across-the-board challenge to foundations and nonprofits to do the right thing. It’s not simply the primary focus in the 9/11 aftermath, whether donors’ intentions were being honored by the Red Cross and Salvation Army and the United Way/New York Community Trust efforts that controlled and dispersed the bulk of resources in Lower Manhattan.  This is different.  It is a focus on the reconstruction of dozens of communities, of an entire region that, unlike Lower Manhattan, has been for the bulk of its low-income, minority residents mistreated and abused, witness the racial and economic divides between who were largely better served by the federal and state government responders and who were left on rooftops, in the New Orleans Convention Center, and in the Superdome to fend for themselves as best they could without food, water, medical care, and police protection.

 
The reconstruction of the Gulf Coast requires work by the nonprofits on the ground in the region and by funders and nonprofits across the nation.  The way the nonprofit sector responds to the reconstruction challenge of the Gulf Coast is ultimately a test of the character of our sector.  The nonprofit sector should be watching.  Hopefully, NCRP and its allies will be, to applaud the successes of the sector to be sure, but to make sure that our sector provides the closest possible eye on Gulf Coast region reconstruction accountability at the nexus between nonprofits, philanthropy, and government.