Thee Jewish social service agencies in Greater Washington and the area’s Health and Welfare Council have reached a compromise over non-Jewish minority representation on their boards under which the three agencies will continue to receive grants from the community-wide United Givers Funds the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was informed today.
The HWC, which disburses funds collected in the UGF campaigns, had notified the Hebrew Home for the Aged, the Jewish Social Service Agency and the Jewish Community Center they would lose grants from the United Givers Fund if, by next Sept. 1, at least 20 percent of their boards were not Blacks or Spanish-speaking individuals. During 1972, the UGF contributed $399,693 to the three Jewish agencies, whose budget totalled $4,596,000, most of which comes from the local United Jewish Appeal.
The settlement was reached at a meeting Jan. 24 of the board members of the three agencies and of the HWC. Staff members of the HWC also attended. A statement adopted at the meeting and quoted to the JTA by Leonard Abel, president of the Hebrew Home, indicated that the HWC policy on board membership of beneficiary agencies would be modified. The policy, drafted in 1970 for implementation fully in 1973, is believed to be the first of its kind on a community-wide basis in the United States.
INTENSIFY EFFORTS TO SERVE OTHERS
According to the statement, the Jewish organizations reported at the Jan. 24 meeting on their services to minority group members in the Greater Washington area and that “they readily agreed to intensify their efforts to devise additional ways of serving others in need in the Washington area. The HWC representatives concluded that the discussions at the meeting fully provided the basis for a recommendation for modification of the HWC policy on non-discrimination which would make it wholly consistent with the full thrust of that policy and also with the sectarian values of the three Jewish agencies.”
The statement added that all persons at the meeting “concluded that there was no basis for discussing the termination of HWC funding of the three agencies and that they would remain fully participating and valued members of the HWC family of agencies.”
Abel told the JTA that, by agreement at the meeting, no comments or interpretations would be made on the statement which he and Harry R. Van Cleve, HWC president, were authorized to make public. Persons attending the meeting who were queried by the JTA declined to respond, saying in effect that discussions with the media might lead to misleading interpretations when a full and amicable understanding had been reached. One said “the statement speaks for itself.”
The 450-word statement noted that “the principles of all the parties were fully explored,” and that “sectarian agencies have a deep and basic concern that the needs of all persons will be met” but “this cannot mean that the sectarian agency is the appropriate agency to serve every need of every person who may apply to it.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
