Nonprofits chafe at Atlanta's plan to return $30M to feds

That has local nonprofit officials seething at a time when a deep recession left service agencies on the edge of ruin.

“It’s absurd,” said Dan Moore Sr., director of Apex Museum. “It’s hard to even respond to something like that at a time when so many nonprofits are struggling. To have so little money get in the hands of service providers, it’s almost criminal.”

Moore said his agency made three separate applications for funding — partnering with established groups like the Butler Street YMCA and the Atlanta Urban League — only to be rejected each time.

“The rules they have put in place are designed as barriers,” Moore said.

The record of Atlanta’s Renewal Community and the agency that runs it, Atlanta Renewal Community Coordinating Responsible Authority, or ACoRA, will be the subject of a public meeting Tuesday at 12:30 in City Hall before the Atlanta City Council’s community development committee.

Atlanta Councilwoman Joyce Sheperd said the meeting was called because City Hall has been flooded with calls since a July 12 story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution outlining how ACoRA was due to return so much federal aid.

At this late date, Sheperd said, there’s no time to choose new agencies to use the leftover $30 million. Even if they could change the allocations, officials note, the purchasing rules that have slowed spending the money to date couldn’t be navigated by Dec. 31.

“We want to educate the community on what’s going on,” Sheperd said. “We have gotten calls from so many people saying they want the money. That money is already allocated.”

The Renewal Community is the successor to Atlanta’s $100 million Empowerment Zone, a federal program conceived during the Clinton administration to help pump life into ailing inner-city neighborhoods. Atlanta’s Empowerment Zone covered 30 neighborhoods, including Vine City, Cabbagetown, Summerhill and the Old Fourth Ward, neighborhoods that for years have battled some of the city’s worst crime while fighting high unemployment rates and alarming school dropout and poverty rates.

The program, though, quickly became mired in charges of corruption and mismanagement. The community board created to oversee the program bickered. As a result, the neighborhoods failed to see the sort of transformative impact officials promised.

By 2003, Mayor Shirley Franklin disbanded the Empowerment Zone and created ACoRA to dispose of the remaining $53 million before the program expires Dec. 31, 2009.

ACoRA officials say the money’s been slow to move because of federal procurement rules and a requirement that agencies first spend the cash and then wait, often for as long as six months, to be reimbursed by ACoRA.

William McFarland, ACoRA’s executive director, said the Renewal Community does have some successes to point to with the programs it has paid for. He cited park and streetscape improvements, job training and a new YMCA off Pryor Road as good works done through the Renewal Community.

“These are things people want to see,” McFarland said.

He said Atlanta’s gotten such a large share of the money awarded so far because it has navigated the process better than local nonprofits and effectively used the money it has been given. Even so, community service agencies are struggling and so are the people they serve. And, that’s while ACoRA looks likely to return about $30 million.

Elizabeth Omilami, who runs Hosea Feeds the Hungry and Homeless, said something needs to be done to change the rules so organizations like hers can get the money and provide services before Dec. 31.

“So many people have walked away from this arena,” Omilami said. “You have to make it with nickels and dimes. I can name 10 organizations right now that are so desperate for funds that they are borrowing from each other’s programs to survive.”