United Way Shifts Priorities for Funding Charity Groups : Grants: Although the lion’s share is still going to traditional organizations, resources are being shifted toward new ones that mostly help poor, homeless or needy minorities.

The Mano a Mano social services program started small, scrambling for start-up space in May at local hangouts such as George’s Barber Shop in Baldwin Park and the city’s community center.

But the nonprofit group had big ideas to help turn around the lives of poor Latinos. Program coordinators wrote to five major grocery store chains and a retail giant, asking for help. They dropped by stores, hoping to buttonhole a manager. They approached a Spanish-language daily newspaper. No luck; not even a response to their letters.

Their salvation: an emergency $30,000 grant from United Way’s San Gabriel Valley Region, awarded from a new discretionary fund for fledgling community groups that serve mainly poor families and ethnic minorities.

In a move to respond to the changing needs and demographics of the valley’s residents, United Way is rethinking its tradition of handing out money to tried-and-true groups year after year, such as the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts, each of which were dealt cutbacks of about 50% this year. Although it is still handing out the lion’s share of money to traditional groups, United Way is starting to shift some resources to new groups that help mostly needy African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans, as well as the homeless, unemployed and illiterate.

“For a long time, United Way was thought of as almost exclusively traditional, and if you were in the package, you stayed in, and if you weren’t getting any money, you had no way of getting any money,” said Ron Wolff, associate regional vice president for United Way’s San Gabriel Valley Region.

The new priorities, set after a comprehensive 1992 study of the valley’s needs, are weighted toward groups in the central valley, including Baldwin Park, El Monte, La Puente and Rosemead. Program priorities have also shifted from camping trips, crafts classes and merit badges to food, shelter and jobs.

United Way doesn’t want to minimize the work of mainstream community groups, said David Klein, a member of the agency’s Regional Planning Council. The goal is “not to harm any agencies or any people, but simply to make things a little bit more reality-based in terms of the needs of people who are hurting,” he said.

According to United Way’s 1992 study, the San Gabriel Valley has more than 1,400 social service agencies. But most people who need help, particularly those in the central valley, don’t know where or how to find it, the report concluded. The two-year study, which included surveys of 501 random households and 12 diverse focus groups, was United Way’s most comprehensive look at the valley’s needs since the agency began in 1971. One of the study’s recommendations was to focus donations on people who are poor, homeless or members of an ethnic minority group.

Wolff said traditional groups still have the option of relying on community donations, which are often not available to newer groups that serve poor, ethnic neighborhoods.

“I think when donors give to United Way, they think of helping unfortunate people, people in need,” he said. “I’m not saying that middle-class people don’t need recreation; they do. But they can have other avenues for finding it. . . . Shouldn’t our priorities rather be in providing programs that people can’t afford on their own or are nonexistent?”

At Mano a Mano, which, loosely translated, means “hand-in-hand,” program coordinators from the Visiting Nurses of the East San Gabriel Valley train unemployed Latino residents to work as community outreach workers. The part-time workers meet other Latinos at local gathering spots and refer them to places for clothing, birth control, immunizations and other immediate needs.

Options, a Rosemead-based group that also got an emergency United Way grant, was lucky to get the money for “The Basic Necessities Project,” co-sponsored by Info Line of Los Angeles, said project director Vicki Carnes. The project, for families at risk of becoming homeless, had trouble getting off the ground in February, she said.

“Without having some political or moneyed people behind you,” Carnes said, “it does make it more difficult to find funds that are unrestricted for innovative projects.”

Last year, for the first time, the local United Way set aside $55,000 in discretionary funds--$33,539 for Mano a Mano and $21,461 for Options. This year’s discretionary funds, about $216,000, will be allocated next spring.

In 1991, the local United Way began another program to fund new groups, targeted at ethnic minority populations. This fiscal year, the “new admissions” program in the valley distributes $53,592 among five groups: Altadena Christian Children’s Center; Asian Youth Center in Rosemead; East San Gabriel Valley Task Force on Alcohol and Drug Abuse in La Puente; Transformations, an Arcadia-based program that helps drug-dependent mothers; and the West San Gabriel Valley Juvenile Diversion Project in Temple City.

United Way is shifting its funding slowly, at a time when donor dollars are shrinking, mostly because of the recession.

The 1993-94 local allocations, announced in August, totaled $2.3 million.

To the Girl Scouts-Mt. Wilson Vista Council, the new allocations meant a cutback from $167,061 last year to $84,791. The Boy Scouts-San Gabriel Valley Council went from $254,738 to $129,222, and Camp Fire Council of the Foothills, from $111,432 to $46,993. Despite the cutbacks, those three groups still receive considerably more than any of the new groups.

About 90% of the money still goes to the same 60 or so groups that have long histories of United Way funding. Some of the traditional groups provide the same services that the newer groups do but may not target the populations or geographic areas that United Way has made a priority.

A Girl Scouts spokeswoman said the group isn’t upset about the funding shift.

“All the nonprofits that are members of the United Way, we’re all there to help people,” said Sallyjane Bolle, of the Girl Scouts-Mt. Wilson Vista Council in Arcadia.

Dev Dougherty, spokesman for the Boy Scouts-San Gabriel Valley Council, said his group is as worthy as other groups that focus on the poor. Besides providing recreational programs, the Boy Scouts collect canned food for the needy and provide summer camp scholarships for more than 250 young people in low-income areas, Dougherty said.

“I think that we, as a society, need to really support organizations that have those kinds of track records and abilities to serve in the areas where there is the greatest need,” Dougherty said.

For Campfire Council of the Foothills, troop activities are only a small part of the group’s mission, said Executive Director Patti Desmarais. This summer the Campfire Council reached nearly 1,000 children in Northwest Pasadena, El Monte and Duarte, in eight sessions aimed at teaching them how to say no to drugs and gangs.

“No one can deny that United Way has made some good decisions,” Desmarais said, declining to elaborate on her views about the shift in funding. “It’s just that there are also huge amounts of prevention programs and support programs that have just been sort of bounced downward in the cycle.”