Who’s being served?

Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005 | 7:27 a.m.

Ryan Hall asked a roomful of local pastors and parishioners at a recent meeting whether they knew about a 35-year-old program to help the poor with money raised every Thanksgiving in local parishes across the nation.

About half of the crowd of 400 raised their hands.

Hall, who was hired in July 2004 by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas to get out the word about its efforts to help the needy, then asked how many understood the program -- called the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

Half again answered.

Hall said he "was really disappointed" about the program's 10-year history in the Las Vegas Diocese.

Some of the local funds raised for the program -- meant to help fight poverty -- were instead used to support pro-life campaigns, a move that Hall said was "stretching the definition" of the program.

The local program has suffered from a lack of promotion in the valley's 28 parishes, inadequate response from churchgoers in parishes where annual collections have been taken and a lack of applications from local nonprofit organizations for funds that have been collected, Hall said.

The program has raised more than $460,000 during the last decade, but less than 10 percent of that money has made it back to local projects not connected to the church. Most of the money -- at least $300,000 -- has been awarded to nonprofit groups in other cities around the nation.

Money raised in local parishes for the program is divided nationwide by leaving about one-fourth of the annual collections from each diocese in a local fund, with roughly three-fourths being sent to a national office in Washington.

Almost one-fourth of the local fund during the last 10 years -- $22,417 of $96,755 -- supported an anti-abortion campaign, a funding decision which Hall said was "probably not going to continue."

Hall said the diocese wants to change the program and is starting by raising its profile.

"We don't want to just keep it (the money) -- we want to give it away," he said.

The program is based on annual collections in parishes around the nation the week before Thanksgiving. Each diocese then collects the money from its parishes and keeps about one-fourth of the total in the local pot of money, while sending the rest to Washington.

Hall said the results from this year's collection are not known yet.

Each year nonprofit organizations can apply for grants of up to $50,000 from the national fund and smaller grants from the local fund.

During the decade in which Las Vegas has had its own diocese -- before, the diocese was part of the Reno diocese -- $365,765 has flowed to the national fund, with $96,755 remaining in the local fund.

Still, this fall the Las Vegas Diocese gave only the second grant to a group not affiliated with the church. The organization -- ACORN, a national community organizing group recently-arrived in Las Vegas -- received $10,000 from the diocese as well as $30,000 from the program's national office.

Will Ward, director of the Las Vegas ACORN office, said the grants fund one-fifth of the organization's annual budget. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, he said, is "one of the few faith-based programs that understands and values community organizing" -- as opposed to funding services such as feeding the poor.

The difference between what his group does -- organizing the poor to take political power -- and groups that offer a free lunch, he said, brings to mind the old saying about the difference between teaching someone to fish or giving them a fish.

But so far in the Las Vegas Valley, not many have been taught how to fish -- or, for that matter, helped in any other way -- by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

Hall said he hopes that changes soon.

"There could have been a lot of use for this money in Las Vegas," he said. "There's certainly plenty of poverty and so many things could be done."

Timothy Pratt can be reached at 259-8828 or at timothy@lasvegassun.com.