Ranked among Chicago's top 10 public grammar schools for best rate of improvement in math, reading and attendance in 1992, the Howland School of the Arts is situated in the heart of a west side ghetto called Lawndale. A sense of despair deadens life in a local economy dominated by drugs, welfare and the criminal justice system. But Howland proves that the community fabric has not totally unravelled. Inside this rundown, century-old brick building the hallways and classrooms hum with energy and optimism.

As a participant in the Board of Education's "Options for Knowledge" program, Howland offers classes in music, drama, dance and visual arts to all students. It serves an area that is larger than the immediate neighborhood but not as big as a citywide "magnet" school. Students come from all over District 5 to take advantage of a curriculum based on the idea that learning through the arts encourages greater participation in one's education.

While Howland receives well over 90 percent of its funding from traditional public sources, the faculty supplements its agenda for lively learning by tapping other sources — foundations, corporations and cultural organizations, volunteers and individual contributors. As one of 32 schools nationwide in Hughes Aircraft's Galaxy program, Howland receives math and science courses and exchanges faxed messages with fellow Galaxy schools via a satellite perched atop the roof. In 1987, when Howland was designated an arts options school, the Chicago Board of Education provided money for three full-time arts positions and a one-time grant of $10,000 to buy band instruments. Band members practiced at home, thanks to a retired man, now deceased, who repaired and donated old musical instruments. Taking help in almost any way it's offered, Howland faculty have used

Public schools such as Howland are competing against others in the nonprofit sector for support from private and corporate foundations

grant monies and donations from suburban schools, businesses and individuals to build a program that now includes seven full-time arts faculty.

As the availability of government budget dollars decreases, public schools such as Howland are competing against others in the nonprofit sector — including human service agencies, universities, medical facilities, cultural institutions and community-based organizations — for support from private and corporate foundations. Foundations nationally give away about $9 billion a year. These "warehouses of wealth" maintain tax-exempt status by distributing 5 percent of endowments each year to nonprofits, thus helping citizens address needs, pursue hopes and press government to be more responsive.

"The money is out there, all you have to do is take the time to write the grants," said Anita Broms, who took early retirement in 1993 after 20 years as Howland's principal. Claiming no organization ever turned her down, she said she also accepted donations of time and talent. She tended diligently to the strings attached — speaking to a foundation's board of directors, joining a community organization's board or increasing parental involvement in school activities: "I take your help anyway you want to give it."

Philanthropic and government policy go hand in hand, with private monies augmenting federal plans. When the public spigot is turned down, they become the biggest trickle in town. Private philanthropies, with agendas of their own, force nonprofits to compete for money and to adapt when foundations shift priorities.

Foundation dollars improve education and a host of other services in Lawndale — a place that most people make a point of avoiding. Located south of the Eisenhower Expressway (Interstate 290) between California and Cicero avenues in Chicago, Lawndale, basically the city's 24th Ward, includes 55,000 residents, 98 percent of whom are black. Half of the land is vacant and half the people on welfare. In 1966, when the civil rights movement waged an "end slums" campaign in Chicago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sought to dramatize the plight of northern ghettos by residing in a drafty three-story tenement several blocks from Howland. A mile from Howland, looming above vacant lots and housetops, stands the industrial ghost town where

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These students at the Rowland School of the Arts are part of the percussion section of musicians waiting for a class of interactive arts to begin. This Chicago public grammar school was rated one of the top 10 in improvement for math, reading and attendance in 1993.    Photo by Richard Foertsch

Sears, Roebuck and Co. prospered for seven decades before moving downtown in 1973. The blighted landscape still bears the scars of rioting that erupted in 1968. Yet Lawndale was already in decline in the 1950s when nearly all of the Jews, Irish and Italians moved to the suburbs. Since 1960, the community has lost 60 percent of its housing, 60 percent of its population and 75 percent of its businesses. The decades of disinvestment that fueled the area's decay have also reduced its philanthropic resources. Broms used to call the area's main employer "Uncle Sears," playing her quid pro quo game for many years with the company's store, bank, YMCA and community center. True to the corporate philosophy promoting neighborliness, the Sears Foundation once showered local nonprofits with grants and goods. The endowment still provides some funds for area social service, educational and community development agencies. Foundation president Paula Banks, said, however: "Our responsibility as a corporation is to

where our employees live and work, where we do business and [then] to society at large."

A decade ago, when the Reagan administration was axing "wasteful" programs for the poor, White House staffers had the misconception that private philanthropy and voluntary service could pick up the slack, recalled Brian O'Connell, president of Independent Sector, a Washington-based coalition of 850 corporate, foundation and voluntary organizations that promotes giving, volunteering and not-for-profit initiatives nationwide. Not only did the government reduce its flow of monies to nonprofits, it imposed regulations that complicated the ability of agencies to draw resources from private funders — especially if their activities involved advocacy work which might, for example, criticize government's abdication of responsibilities to the poor. The day after a recent White House meeting, O'Connell said the Clinton administration shares many of its two predecessors' misunderstandings about the size of the giving sector.

"As a society, we're not spending very much on programs and services that directly benefit low-income people," said Kirsten Gronbjerg, a Loyola University sociology professor and author of Understanding Nonprofit Funding. "Of total public welfare spending nationally, cash assistance for the poor amounts to only about three percent." She explained that public outcry on too much government spending usually targets social service programs, many of which are provided by nonprofit agencies. "These organizations depend heavily on public funding, with cutbacks hindering their capacity" to deliver services, she said.

In northeastern Illinois, among the philanthropies that seek to influence the workings of government are the Chicago Community Trust, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Joyce Foundation and the Woods Fund of Chicago. They influence policies in two ways: 1) through distinct public policy programs relating, for example, to education, the environment or economic development or 2) through funding for advocacy organizations who try to affect public policy. An informed source said these four foundations are the only ones in the region that would want their names associated with the sensitive issue of advocacy. Funders seek to maximize their own limited, but flexible monies by leveraging resources collaboratively.

A decade ago, the White House staffers had the misconception that private philanthropy and voluntary service c ould pick up the slack

In 1993 Chicago-area foundations and corporations gave $450,000 in planning grants to 14 partnerships — including 52 schools, 50 arts institutions and 25 community organizations. Recognizing that Chicago public school children have suffered from the virtual elimination of arts programming over the last decade, Marshall Field's convinced 12 foundations to finance the Chicago Arts Partnership in Education (CAPE). The program will fund an unspecified number of those 14 neighborhood

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Standing in the forefront, from left, are Diane Czerwinski, eighth grade teacher, and C.C. Mitchell, arts coordinator at the Howland School of the Arts, one of Chicago's public schools chosen to participate in the first phase of the foundation-funded Community Arts Program in Education. In this interactive classroom with third, fifth and sixth graders, dance students perform to the music played by other students, while art students draw their impressions. Photo by Richard Foertsch/ Photoprose

partnerships for five years, with the ultimate goal of persuading local and state government to increase support for arts-based teaching methods. "This isn't just about arts advocacy, but education change," CAPE executive director Arnold Aprill explained. Change is, of course, a consequence of advocacy. Last fall, in the midst of the Chicago school deficit crisis, CAPE joined the Illinois Arts Alliance in a lobbying campaign that persuaded the Chicago Board of Education to withdraw a proposal to rid schools of part-time art and music teachers. Howland houses one of the CAPE partnerships, which link neighborhood schools, corporations, arts institutions, artists and community-based organizations in an experiment designed to use arts-centered education to boost academic performance. "The CAPE program adds a whole new dimension to what we're doing and gives us access to more artists," Howland arts coordinator C.C. Mitchell explains. Taped to the orange wall behind her desk is a photocopy of the $30,000 MacArthur grant underwriting the first phase of Howland's CAPE endeavor — its planning year. The Howland partnership — including the Child's Play Touring Theatre, Community TV Network, Dance Center of Columbia College, artist Charlotte Main, the People's Music

School and Scott Foresman Co. — began last summer with planning workshops that led to an integration of arts into the curriculum. For example, first graders learned about animals in reading class, drew animal shapes in art class, took up barn dancing and then made a field trip to the zoo.

If its five-year implementation plan is approved, Howland will be eligible to receive $60,000 annually over the next five years. The high stakes help explain why 45 people — including Howland teachers, parents and the janitor — endured subzero temperatures one Saturday last January to attend a downtown brainstorming session.

In the competition for diminished foundation and other private charitable resources, places like Howland have an advantage. With the tight economy narrowing their own profit margins, most funders have reduced their giving. Chicago-area endowments, for example, gave $32 million in 1991 but $28.4 million in 1992. Many Chicago schools have a faculty member who has taken up grant writing because some pushiness and promotion "beats sitting there quietly and sinking," Polk Brothers Foundation executive director Nikki Stein said. Recalling a meeting of the Donors Forum, a consortium of Chicago area funders, where Howland kids went around the room giving everyone a hug, she added: "Anita Broms is a master at not letting her kids be forgotten." Stein observed, however: "People who aren't working with adorable children have a harder time selling their story."

As Lawndale has degenerated through the years, its churches have become the key social organizations. Today, there are 60 with even the small storefronts housing an array of nonreligious programs such as meals for seniors, day care and a range of intervention services for neighborhood residents.

Many foundations realize funding such community outreach isn't the same thing as funding religious activities, which traditionally are not funded. Congregations sponsor the outreach programs largely through religious networks and individual giving. They can get foundation support by stressing they are "the last hope, a remnant of glue holding the community together," said Claude Smith, former executive vice president of the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation. Yet, such endeavors are often caught in another Catch 22: Unable to separate their activities from a congregation's operating budget, or lacking technical skills to write sophisticated grant proposals, many programs suffer from their inability to meet philanthropic standards for fiscal accountability.

Together with Lawndale's schools and churches, 54 nonprofit human service agencies, funded through a combination of government contracts, individual giving and foundation support, provide services. Foundations help create a margin of success - or maybe just the avoidance of chaos. The criteria for foundation support may not be the most accurate available.

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Most Lawndale nonprofits import capital from outside the community — a consequence of decades of needs-based governmental and philanthropic poli-cies that undercut citizens' capacity to serve themselves by "clientizing" neighborhoods through intervention programs, said Professor John McKnight, director of community studies at Northwestern University's Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research. "Local groups solve local problems when focusing on the capacities, gifts and assets rather than problems, needs and deficiencies," he explained, adding that other institutions — including banks, universities, United Way and the news media — also tend to focus on me latter. The center has sent guidelines for "capacity-oriented funding" to foundations nationwide with hopes they will help inner-city nonprofits become more vital local resources. "We'd be happy to get one-third of the foundations involved," McKnight said. "The most important foundations are risk takers and innovators whose experiments are things the rest of society can learn from."

The Howland School of the Arts is located in the Chicago neighborhood of North Lawndale but serves students coming from a larger area. Photo by Richard Foertsch/Photoprose

That asset-based models work better than deficit-based models is an idea gaining currency. New approaches are definitely in order. "My conclusion is that what we can do is allow individuals more control over what sort of help they seek," said Joel Getzendanner, vice president of programs for the Joyce Foundation, which strives to fund "the new generation of ideas" such as proposals that are designed to help someone in five ways rather than having "five programs guess what that person needs."

What Getzendanner sees — and supports — is people developing new institutional forms that look beyond the top-down scientific model of human organization. The seeds of social change are being sown in rural, urban, suburban and even corporate America, he said, due to what one prospective grantee calls "the epidemic of institutional collapse."

Finding more effective strategies to improve conditions in ghettos is clearly something philanthropies need to do. In the last quarter century many foundations have poured support into community development corporations (CDCs). Due to their capacity to own and develop land, CDCs have emerged as inner-city institutions in recent years.

But philanthropic support can never be the key resource to defuse the social timebombs ticking near the heart of the nation's metropolitan regions

One CDC serving Lawndale is Bethel New Life Inc. Affiliated with West Garfield Park's Bethel Lutheran Church, this 350-employee operation's varied activities include the development of 1,000 units and a model elderly care facility. Philanthropies are vital to Bethel — financing new programs, filling in gaps and accounting for about five percent of its $6.5 million operating budget. "Foundations like nice neat things, but they have to be willing to fund things that are a little messy, such as planning processes that they don't know the outcome of," Bethel President Mary Nelson said. "They have to make a leap of faith."

But philanthropic support can never be the key resource to defuse the social timebombs ticking near the heart of the nation's metropolitan regions. "Government has to take responsibility for having somehow failed in neighborhoods like this," said Father Michael Ivers, pastor of Lawndales's St. Agatha's Catholic Church, literally an oasis in a land of violence.

This Afro-centric social justice congregation houses many community-based programs, including a scattered-site public housing resident group that went to federal court to force the Chicago Housing Authority and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to do their jobs — raze old buildings and build new ones. Last summer CBS-TV's Dan Rather went to St. Agatha to interview members of its gang intervention program.

St. Agatha's programs try to maximize the charity within each person by inspiring them to do more. Ivers said nobody wants to be dependent on philanthropy, but foundation support remains critical and helps "contain the rage... Without foundations, conditions would be 10 times worse."

Robert Heuer is a freelance writer in Chicago.

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