It’s Not That Easy to Give Away Money From the Olympics

The foundation created to distribute the Southern California share of the huge Olympic surplus is, according to one of its most influential board members, “finding it tougher to decide how to give the money away than it was to make it.”

So said television producer David Wolper, chairman of the Los Angeles Organizing Committee Amateur Athletic Foundation’s grants committee, before his four-member group met last week to decide on recommendations for the first regular quarterly grants from the $90-million youth sports fund. Grants will be made for the next 20 years or more.

Even before it gears up, the foundation is caught in a tense contest of wills with a politically well-connected coalition of South and East Los Angeles residents.

That coalition has applied for grants that would consume most of, perhaps nearly all of, the $6 million to $8 million the foundation directors are thinking of distributing annually or spending on in-house programs such as a sports resource center. According to the foundation, most expenditures will come out of interest income.

Wolper would not say where the grants committee meeting was being held, fearing that demonstrators would show up from the coalition. And after the grant recommendations were made, he would provide only a sketchy account of what they were, pending the Dec. 9 meeting of the full, 17-member board that will finally decide on them.

Foundation chairman Paul Ziffren, however, lauded the work of Wolper’s group. He said that the first grants will show everyone that the foundation is determined to help economically deprived youth but “not exclusively through” any particular group.

The story of how a process that supposedly involves giving money to a large number of worthy sports programs for kids has turned so stressful revolves around the coalition that is asking for so much of the money--the East Side-based United Neighborhoods Organization (UNO) and the South Central Organizing Committee (SCOC).

Both are ecumenical church groups in which Roman Catholics play leading roles.

UNO describes itself as an organization of 16 parishes and congregations in the Central and East Los Angeles area. SCOC calls itself an organization of 21 churches based in South Central Los Angeles.

The coalition has proposed that $5.2 million be given the first year to a variety of projects, most but not all of which would be in Latino or black neighborhoods.

Last month, the coalition applied for grants for 98 separate sports programs, 30 of which would be located at Catholic schools or other facilities, and its leaders insisted that the foundation board accept the concept of providing funding for the entire package.

That would mean, foundation officials said, that most of the other 70 grant applications the foundation has pending would have to be rejected. Many of these mostly nonsectarian projects are in the same neighborhoods represented by UNO and SCOC.

The UNO-SCOC proposal was endorsed by such powerful community leaders as Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, Los Angeles School Superintendent Harry Handler and Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger Mahony. Just Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors also endorsed it.

In Block’s case, in particular, an endorsement is no surprise. The sheriff’s department would get $633,836 under the UNO-SCOC proposal to “involve youth in baseball, basketball, flag football and soccer in county parks near sheriff’s stations in Altadena, City of Industry and Lennox.”

The UNO and SCOC leaders have engaged in a wide-ranging campaign to win acceptance of their entire proposal, seeking the endorsement of Mayor Tom Bradley, one of the members of the foundation board, and sending letters to all board members and seeking media support. They pointed out that all of their programs would be open to youngsters of all religions.

In response, Ziffren instructed the staff headed by Stanton Wheeler, former Yale University sports law professor, to begin its consideration by reviewing in detail and making recommendations on a few of the UNO-SCOC projects and withholding any sweeping commitments to the rest.

“We start out with a very genuine respect for what they’ve accomplished and their goals,” Ziffren said. “We want to do everything within reason, consistent with fairness to all groups, to give them all the help that we can.”

Wolper said, however: “We’re not going to give up our authority to pick the programs that we think are proper.” He also warned that the foundation is not a political group and would not be susceptible to pressure. UNO and SCOC “are going about it the wrong way,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Bradley said that the mayor supports the goals of the UNO-SCOC proposal but has not committed himself to the specific grant requests. She said that, like other members of the board, he would examine them as they are brought to the board for a decision.

The staff decided to review 10 of the 98 UNO-SCOC proposals, totaling $728,175, or, as later amended, about $946,000. The sheriff’s department item was not reviewed. Meanwhile, it recommended that nine of the non-UNO-SCOC projects, totaling $577,000, be financed.

When the grants committee met, a compromise was struck, designed to demonstrate to the coalition that it was likely to get some but not all of its proposals approved and that substantial foundation money would go elsewhere.

A resolution that UNO-SCOC had suggested be adopted that would have committed the foundation to “maximum feasible funding” for its entire package was not accepted.

Wolper said that the six-hour meeting resulted in the recommendation to the full board of 17 grants in the last quarter of 1985, totaling approximately $1 million. Eight of the 10 coalition proposals that had been reviewed by the staff were approved, as were all nine of the non UNO-SCOC grants that the staff had recommended. Some of the amounts in both categories were reduced, and other recommended grants were subjected to slight conditions.

The grants committee chairman mentioned no specific names of recommended grant recipients, but the identities of five of those recommended soon became known. Two were from the coalition requests and three were not.

But all five would use the Olympic money primarily for services to economically deprived black and Latino youth. All five represent programs that will now be expanded. None involve building projects.

A foundation spokesman said later that some of the other recommended grants involve programs that would serve Anglo and other ethnic groups and neighborhoods outside the East Side and South Los Angeles. The aim, he said, is for all segments of Southern California youth involved in sports to benefit from the Olympic funds, although there will be a leaning toward aiding economically deprived areas.

UNO-SCOC leaders reacted with some unhappiness to the grants committee recommendations. Dan Saenz, president of UNO, said that the coalition will now seek to learn why all 98 financing requests are not being promptly reviewed and will ask which 2 of the 10 already reviewed were not passed along.

Saenz said that UNO-SCOC had already “weeded out” weak proposals and considered all of those it had sent to the foundation to be strong ones.

Visits to the five projects identified as recommended for grants--the first three not part of the UNO-SCOC proposal and the last two part of it--showed the kind of programs the foundation is moving to fund, although perhaps not for the entire amounts requested:

--The Fundamental Foundation, headed by former UCLA basketball star Willie Naulls, has been training 250 boys and girls a week in the fundamentals of basketball, mainly in South Los Angeles.

Before they can play, the youngsters, ranging in age from preschoolers to 11th graders, must show that they have expanded their vocabulary by five new words a week, an approach known as vocabulary basketball.

The $128,752 it applied for would allow a considerable expansion both of its regular and summer programs, including beginning at a third location, on the East Side.

--The Aliso-Pico Recreation Center on the East Side, already serving 843 youngsters, many from public housing projects, in a variety of activities financed in large part by business sponsors, applied for $21,618, to expand its gymnastics, judo, baseball and tennis programs. Some of the money would go for equipment, such as a pitching machine.

--The Southern California Tennis Assn., already offering 30 low-cost tennis introductory programs, applied for $75,000 to expand by 15 more such programs, including 11 on the East Side and in South Los Angeles.

Bob Kramer, the director of the association, said the plan for 1986 is to charge each of 1,000 new participants, ranging in age from 7 to 17, only $5. That would not only bring them a series of lessons, but also provide them with balls and a racket if necessary.

--The Saybrook Park Athletic Assn., which has been sponsoring 25 baseball teams for 340 youngsters on the East Side, applied for $20,742 to organize a girl’s softball league for players 12 to 17, fund equipment and uniform purchases, and even help pay the county for lighting for night games. One feature of this program is national travel by the championship teams.

--The South Bay Basketball League, founded two years ago, applied for $34,075 to expand its summer program headquartered at St. Mary’s Academy in a largely black neighborhood in Inglewood, from 13 to 20 teams while keeping its team fees to $100.

The games would be played in a second gym at another school as well as at St. Mary’s. This program brings together girls of many races and religions from a wide area.

Foundation officials cautioned that the five programs do not represent the only kinds the foundation may ultimately support. They said it will, in some cases, be willing to put up matching funds or seed money to construct certain facilities, such as gymnasiums or swimming pools, and may also support programs to develop lesser known sports such as fencing or archery.

Under another proposal, the foundation is also likely to set up a sports resource center or institute at its headquarters on W. Adams Boulevard, spending perhaps 10% to 15% of its annual available funds on operating it.