For the first time in Washington Height/Inwood’s history, we are providing an estimate of the value of the contributions by faith-based organizations to social welfare. The religious groups provide food, shelter, education, counseling, direct money grants, and a whole host of other things to help the poor, the hurting and the downtrodden.

Today, we are publishing an estimate of the amount of value that Protestant churches are providing. In the coming weeks, we will add the estimates from Catholic, Jewish and other religions’ investments into social services. We expect that their contributions will also be large.

We calculate that the Protestant churches contributed $27,107,200 each year to social services for the needy and downtrodden.

We arrive at this figure by adding the amounts that the local Protestant organizations contribute ($26,820,000) with an estimated $187,000 that the the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies contributes to the neighborhood.

The help is needed in Washington Heights/Inwood. The socio-economic groups that particularly need social services in Community District 12 include the poor (over 50% have low income, and 24% earn less than $19,112 per year in 2016). Only 24% of elementary and middle school public school students reached the minimal proficiency in math and English. Most public high schools only graduate two-thirds of their students, though there is one outstanding exception, the City College Academy of the Arts in North Washington Heights.

How did we achieve this breakthrough?

First, we needed an accurate count of the number of Protestant organizations in Washington Heights/Inwood. We found 100 Protestant organizations that contributed social services to the poor and downtrodden.

We then took advantage of the path-breaking work on evaluating the worth of faith-based social services in cities done by a team of researchers at University of Pennsylvania lead by Professor Ram Cnaan. In U.S. and Canadian cities, they have analyzed in detail the contributions of congregations and ministries. Cnaan got similar results in different cities in the United States for the average value of the social welfare contributions of congregations. Adjusting for inflation, the average contribution from each congregation is $268,202.

He started with a project in Philadelphia. Eventually, the discovery of the large faith-based contributions to urban social welfare was quantified as “the Halo Effect.”

He and his students studied a sample of churches. They used a social accounting technique widely used in social work that counted the salaries, volunteer time, and estimated value of the space provided to social services. What would it cost to replace the social services that the faith-based groups were providing?

For example, a pastor may spend a couple of hours a week running the food pantry with five or six people volunteering a couple of hours each also. The cost of providing the pastor can be calculated from his or her salary, and the volunteer time was calculated at a low hourly rate of $11-12. The space for housing the food pantry can be valued at local market rates per square foot per month. The measure of in-kind and direct monetary grants are also added into the total. Of course, the average dollar amount contributing to social services in Washington Heights/Inwood. varies widely by size and solvency of the 100 Protestant organizations that we counted.

At a selection of the religious sites, we also gave out a survey in English and Spanish. The survey asked various questions about religious activities and social service activities. If the survey was not completed at the time of visit or mailed in, then one of our staffers attempted to do a phone interview. We also conducted longer journalistic interviews at a selection of the religious congregations and ministries. contributing to social services in Washington Heights/Inwood.

We sent reporters to visit and conduct interviews. If no one was there, we left a questionnaire and later called by phone. We asked each religious congregation or ministry to check off a list of social services that they provided and to add any that we didn’t list. Then, we compared the list to Cnaan’s list to see if he was finding the same things that churches are doing to help the social welfare of local communities. The lists are quite similar.

In Washington Heights/Inwood, the faith-based organizations contribute $122.00 on behalf of each and every person to social services for the poor and needy.

The rest of the faith-based story in the social welfare of Washington Heights/Inwood

An accountant’s view of the contribution of faith-based groups to Flushing’s social welfare is hardly the whole story. Congregations in the city provide a whole host of informal person-to-person social services that are not easy to formally count. In other words, the statistics don’t tell the whole story.

Protestant groups’ social concerns are usually tied to help for bringing individual life-turnarounds. These personal investments of Washington Heights/Inwood Protestant congregations are hard to count but hugely important. A Protestant education initiative is lowering drop out rates of public school students. A store-front congregation envelopes a felon with a loving social network and guidance so that he won’t end back in prison. A Washington Heights/Inwood pastor has turned his church into a shelter and job training center for immigrants who have been thrown out of work. Such efforts as these help people to get back on their feet after one of life’s knock-downs. Consequently, they help to transform our communities with reinvigorated productive citizens.

The most common informal social service that congregations provide is personal and marital counseling. Another area that doesn’t show up on the books is how often religious groups support local social actions with announcements, volunteers, and the like. Many times a pastor, congregant, or small group will also help someone out with a monetary grant or loan that never shows up in any formal announcements.

One of the most important social welfare service of faith-based groups is changed hearts. One local pastor, a former drug dealer, recalls his own story. What started with his own changed life turned into five, and then into dozens of changed lives among drug addicts and criminals. Every person who ends his criminal career in Washington Heights/Inwood saves the city and state millions of dollars in police and prison costs.

And what is the effect of changed lives on the people around them: priceless.

Pastor Hector Vega recalls his drug-dealing, crime-spree days in Washington Heights/Inwood and how he became a pastor in East Harlem.