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March 09, 2006
Charity Leaders' Pay Soars Under Federal Jobs Program
Many of the biggest charities in Javits-Wagner-O'Day routinely use workers with modest disabilities. What matters, they say, is not the type of disability but whether it prevents them from holding a job outside the program.
One of the most successful is Fedcap Rehabilitation Services, a New York City charity that pays an average of $17.87 an hour to Javits-Wagner-O'Day workers. Fedcap, which supplies custodial crews for federal buildings, reports the program's third-highest average wage, mostly because the nonprofit pays union scale.
Like Skookum, the charity specialized in hiring workers with profound physical disabilities when it was founded 70 years ago. Now, Fedcap workers include many with learning disabilities, mental illness, alcoholism and substance abuse who are judged unemployable elsewhere, said Susan Fonfa, the charity's executive director.
"Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not real," Fonfa said. "We will get people with every disability possible, just about."
Critics of this hiring trend say it's less a balancing act than a cop-out. Some charities are cashing in on the government's largess, they say, while smaller nonprofits with workers who are far needier can't get in.
Posted by Michelle at March 9, 2006 12:19 AM