Lines Between Charity, Institute Blue at Schools

San Jose Mercury News/September 15, 1996
By Sarah Lubman

On paper, the International Community Service Day Foundation is an independent offshoot of the Sterling Institute.

But in practice, the ties between the two organizations remain so close that ICSD volunteers have often used the foundation's public school and community center projects as promotional and recruiting opportunities for the institute and its seminars.

Gwen Tillman, executive director of the Oakland-based public charity, said any overlap between the two organizations is accidental: ''The intention is not to promote the Sterling Institute of Relationship.''

Nonetheless, dozens of interviews with educators, parents, community leaders and members of Sterling-affiliated groups reveal a pattern of subtle endorsement of the Sterling philosophy in the projects and occasionally open recruitment of people to attend weekend seminars.

San Jose's Santa Teresa Elementary School complained this year. So did a center for disturbed children in Redmond, Wash. Perhaps the strongest reaction came from Springfield, Mass., where ICSD helped the local YMCA spruce up a public park this spring.

Springfield residents were so put off by ICSD's group hugs, its creed and sex segregation that the YMCA threatened to quit the project. For resident Yvette Cruz, the last straw was when a project leader asked her and a group of women to line up and sing a love song to male volunteers.

''I really didn't like it,'' said Cruz. ''I thought it was about a group of people wanting to get something for themselves, and that they had some kind of philosophy they wanted to spread through ICSD.''

Reaction not unusual

Tillman said the Springfield project was poorly managed. But the YMCA's reaction wasn't unusual, based on interviews with 31 schools and youth centers that participated in ICSD projects from 1990 to 1996. That represents 16 percent of the 192 projects for which ICSD has records (the foundation says it did about 60 additional, undocumented projects in its early years).

Nancy Handelman, an Oakland focus-group moderator who ran the foundation from 1990 to mid-1991, said such complaints were commonplace: ''There were always times you had to reprimand somebody who was talking about the (Sterling) weekend, and there were always schools that would say. . . 'I don't get this separation between men and women.' ''

Handelman, a seminar graduate, says she quit because the Sterling Institute didn't want the foundation to be independent, and because she had to work grueling hours for low pay. Peter Rosomoff, the institute's executive director and the foundation's treasurer, says Handelman left because she was about to get a poor evaluation; she denies it.

In 1994, the foundation decided to change its name to ICSD from the Sterling Community Service Foundation. Tillman said the aim was to distance the non-profit from the Sterling Institute. Yet the same year, the non-profit adopted a creed that includes the Sterling Institute's key credo: ''There are differences between men and women which we honor, value and respect.''

ICSD picks more than a dozen projects to work on each spring, primarily fixing up public schools. The foundation estimates it has raised about $20 million over the past decade.

Asked to recite creed

All projects have a male and a female ''co-leader,'' the vast majority of whom have attended Sterling weekends. Many key volunteers are also members of the men's and women's groups sponsored by the Sterling Institute. Recent project leaders have asked parents, teachers and community leaders at weekly planning meetings to recite ICSD's Sterling- w derived creed. That practice, combined with briefly separating men and women during meetings, has drawn repeated complaints.

More than two-thirds of the schools interviewed said they had found ICSD's creed and methods strange or offensive. Two schools asked the foundation to leave, and another 11 said they'd complained to ICSD volunteers or asked them to change their approach.

In addition, principals, leaders and parents at 14 schools and youth centers said ICSD volunteers urged them to take Sterling weekends, or invited them to ''open houses'' held to sign people up for the seminars. Fewer than a third of the schools gave unqualified rave reviews.

Positive responses

Tillman said she isn't aware of widespread discomfort with the foundation, much less invitations to Sterling weekends.

She also cited positive responses by 10 out of 15 foundation project sites to a 1995 questionnaire. But that survey focused only on the after-effects - whether vandalism decreased after ICSD beautified the grounds, for example.

Certainly, schools that liked ICSD raved about it.

''It was a beautiful experience,'' says Everleanor P. Smith, a teacher at Madison Middle School in Oakland. The foundation padded Madison's gym walls, fixed its stage, and put in murals and an organic garden last year.

But the majority of school representatives interviewed said that while they liked results such as new playgrounds, Sterling volunteers made people uncomfortable. Several schools also said they told ICSD volunteers they didn't want to help promote the foundation, which solicits membership donations at the schools. Tillman said ICSD splits membership donations evenly between local projects and ICSD operations.

Some former members of the Sterling-sponsored men's and women's groups said they weren't told to recruit weekend customers at ICSD projects, but that it happened nonetheless.

''You're taught to enroll people all year, so it filters in,'' said Charlette Fuggetta of San Jose.

Although the Sterling Institute relies on word of mouth to make money, getting subtle promotion through ICSD is not illegal if there's no improper financial relationship. ICSD's most recent state and federal tax statements show no financial support from or donations to the Sterling Institute.

Still, charity watchdogs say ICSD should be frank about its affiliations.

''Non-profits should be forthright, and all connections should be presented,'' said Dan Langan, director of public information for the National Charities Information Bureau in Washington, D.C. A tax-exempt charity like ICSD, he said, should be ''out there to do good, period, no strings attached.''