The South Bend Catholic Worker today announced that they’re spinning off their drop-in center, Our Lady of the Road, as a nonprofit.
Mike Baxter announces the plans just before the end of mass at OLR.
They’re actively seeking donations to help them buy the drop-in center outright. You can’t make a tax-deductable donations at the moment, but you will soon be able to. Please contact peterclaverhouse@gmail.com for details.
OLR is open Friday and Saturday mornings, and is at 744 South Main Street in South Bend, Indiana. If you’d care to make a small donation right away, please bring by any of the following items:
- Coffee
- T-shirts
- Small canisters of shaving cream
- Dish soap
- Laundry soap
- Socks
- Trash bags (13 gal and 30 gal)
Grab yourself a cup of coffee while you’re there and hang out awhile.
For those of us not intimately involved in the hospitality non-business, what are the advantages and disadvantages of non-profit status? Or, why are most Catholic Worker houses not non-profit organizations?
There are a lot of different reasons. I’d say 2 biggies are:
* Hostility towards “the state.”
* The desire to “model” radical gospel living for others. One message the Catholic Worker Movement sends is that you don’t have to be in some special situation (monastery, non-profit corporation) to respond to the people around you with Christ-like love and mercy.
In this case, where they’re making the center, but not their community, a non-profit, I don’t think #2 applies. It’s one thing to say, “Anyone can open their home to the homeless.” But I don’t think anyone is trying to say, “Anyone can buy a huge warehouse and turn it into a laundromat/eatery.” (Some Catholic Workers would object to a large-scale project like this for just that reason.)
Adam, I’ll try to research this further and give you a more comprehensive answer.