Boston Coalition Founds New Charity

A new coalition of Boston-based fundraising groups has launched a campaign to give Harvard employees the option of contributing to a charity other than United Way.

Community Works, which is composed of 17 smaller fundraising groups, bills itself as a more progressive alternative to the 50-year-old United Way, an umbrella organization that makes charitable contributions out of funds deducted directly from employees' paychecks.

Community Works contributes to "grass-roots organizations" such as ecological and anti-nuclear groups, as well as to the more established health and human service organizations that United Way emphasizes, organizers said this week.

'Progressive' Slant

"In economic hard times, people don't know how to provide a channel that will affect others directly-in a more social change kind of way." Community Works President Fran Froelich said yesterday.

Harvard, which is the single largest employer in the state, handles all employee charities, including United Way, through its "Charity of My Choice Campaign." Roberta W. Ealey, coordinator of the campaign, said yesterday that United Way contributes to "older, more established agencies."

Harvard's system is structured so that employees can give payroll deductions to any charity they choose, Ealey said.

Because of its size, Community Works organizers "spent a lot of time brainstorming who we knew at Harvard," to build support for the future, Froelich said.

"It isn't our intention to compete with United Way," Susan Levine, representative of the coalition's Membership for Survival group, said yesterday.

When new groups enter campaigns, studies have shown that the total amount of donations actually goes up Levine explained.

Robert Chandler executive vice president of United Way in Boston said yesterday that his organization and Community Works contribute to different social agencies For instance. "We don't perceive environmental concerns" as a priority, he said.

Harvard employees said this week that the new group has great potential. "I personally felt that United Way was too big and impersonal," Robert Warren, a Law School library assistant, said yesterday.

Warren D. Goldtarb associate professor of philosophy added that United Way "tends to play it politically safe it's important to have an alternative that's more progressive.

Good

Ruth Hubbard professor of Biology, said the new group "supports a lot of projects that I support and emphasizes those that are badly in need of money."

After the Harvard drive, organizers hope to increase their public presence by going to other universities and to small and large corporations.