UPDATE on Partners:
Philadelphia Office
Since the summer of 2012, Partners staff has been
piloting our Strategic Investment in Sacred Places project
with the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United
Methodist Church, working with a group of United
Methodist churches along Broad Street, Philadelphia’s
primary north-south thoroughfare. After getting to
know the congregations and the buildings that house
them, staff began meeting with leaders at the churches
to propose ways we might work together.
Partners is applying the many strategies it has
developed over the course of the past twenty-four years
by matching the congregations with the resources they
really need. This tactical, targeted approach has the
potential to strengthen each church and enhance the
quality of life in each one’s community. Its explicit
goals include:
• Energizing and empowering the congregation so
that it can better fulfill its vision.
• Fostering community health, vitality, and cohesion.
• Increasing neighbors’ access to both cultural capital
and needed resources.
• Increasing the availability of affordable space in
neighborhoods so that nonprofit and
community organizations can meet people
where they are.
• Reducing facility costs for arts groups.
• Incubating small businesses and reducing their
overhead costs.
Although Phase II, in which we provide resources
ranging from space-sharing support to New Dollars/
New Partners training, has not officially begun,
we are seeing early successes from our approach.
We’ve facilitated three space-sharing agreements
while laying the foundations for several more, and
have also started to provide one-on-one consulting
services on topics such as organizational structure
and planned giving. Phase II is set to begin this
winter with a New Dollars/New Partners training that
is tailored to the eleven congregations that haven’t
already been through it.
Intern Dana Rice measures a room’s dimensions at Mid-Town Parish in
Philadelphia as part of Partners’ Strategic Investment in Sacred Places
work for the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist
Church
7 • Sacred Places • www.sacredplaces.org • Fall 2013
Most recently, we provided assistance to H&S
Learning Center, a highly regarded afterschool
program that had been displaced two weeks before
the start of school in September, when the church
property where it had been renting space was
deemed unsafe. Partners’ staff facilitated its move
to nearby Mt. Zion United Methodist Church, which
had been maintaining an empty education wing,
thus ensuring that two dozen children have a place
to go after school.