We Don’t Ask: Are You Catholic or Not? We Ask: Are You Hungry?

He never wanted to be an administrator. He wanted to be a therapist, and to work in a food pantry. Instead, J. Antonio Fernández has a job that no layman had held in more than a century.

He leads Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York. Not one organization, but 82 of them, 9,000 employees, more than 400,000 people served a year. And he still turns up at the food distributions most weeks.

Ask him what people get wrong about the work, and he doesn’t hesitate: “We don’t discriminate. We don’t ask: Are you Catholic or not? We ask: Are you hungry? You need a place to live.”

We talk about the federal money that has disappeared, about being a landlord in a city debating rent freezes, and about the one thing he is certain no technology will ever replace.

It’s J. Antonio Fernandez on The Business of Giving.

J. Antonio Fernandez, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, Chief Executive Officer

Denver: Welcome to the Business of Giving, Antonio.

Antonio: Thank you for having me.

Denver: Tell listeners about Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York. Who do you serve? What do you do? And what would surprise most people about the scale of your work?

Antonio: So Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of New York is a big institution. So we actually are comprised of 82 different non-for-profits together working under the umbrella of Catholic Charities. So for us, it’s not just what we will say around the country…and this is my third Catholic Charities…  one institution, one 501(c)3, it’s eighty-two that work together to have as much synergy as possible to help the people in New York who need it the most.

So to be honest with you, as I came from Chicago and then Texas, when I got to New York, and you know everything is bigger in Texas, they say. But I can tell you, New York is quite big as well. And for us, you know, total we are like 9,000 employees, and we help over 400,000 people, which is a nice chunk of people, as you can imagine.

Denver: What has been the most difficult adjustment? I have spoken to so many people in a comparable position that you’ve been in from different organizations, and they just say New York is so different. They’ve been successful. Not to jinx you, you know,  they come to New York and it’s not like Chicago, it’s not like LA, it’s like nothing they’ve ever seen. What have you observed and what’s been one of the more challenging adjustments you’ve had to make?

Antonio: So many different things. I mean, the reality that Catholic Charities, is through the country. We provide the same services. You feed the hungry, you clothe the naked, you provide housing to people who need it the most, legal counseling, anything that we try to do. New York is quite different, and I think the biggest difference that I will see here is the housing situation. Rent in New York City, as you know, is tremendous. So when we see people who are hungry…

Denver: Yeah.

Antonio: It’s not just that they’re hungry now. It’s that they have to choose between paying rent and getting something to eat, or paying rent and having insurance or whatever it is. So New York in that sense, the need is different. It’s going to be the housing issue and then the city has one. You know, Texas is…you go at a nice pace. Chicago’s a little faster, but then if you want to work in New York, you have to go fast. My board, my employees, everybody here is like you know, seven o’clock in the morning to seven o’clock PM every day.

Denver: Oh my

Antonio: And I’m happy to do that, but it takes time to get used to it.

Denver: Yeah, yeah. Well, these have been challenging times. I don’t know if my numbers are exactly right, but you’ve lost maybe ten million dollars, eleven million dollars in federal funding…maybe seventeen percent of your public support. So this isn’t hypothetical anymore. I think you said you’re going to have to put this on your own back. What does that actually mean? What does that actually look like with these cuts?

Antonio: So at the end of the day, the federal administration has different goals than they had maybe three years ago. So for us, we have lost funding to provide services to the immigrants, to people who need it the most, which is everybody who has lost benefits with the SNAP. So we have to find a different way of being creative, think outside the box to get more funding from other institutions or from private donors. So for us, we have to… and we’ve been very successful in the last nine months… to actually try to get donors to support Catholic Charities a lot.

So with outcomes, good, good outcomes, we’ve been blessed to actually have a lot of new donors, just to ensure that they understand that we’re here to teach people how to become self-sufficient. We feed everybody, but we are trying to do a lot more things, not just to say we’re going to give food for free, but we need to help these people to be independent, to be self-sufficient. And I think that’s one thing that is now new in Catholic Charities that we are trying really, really trying to emphasize these days.

Denver: Mm-hmm. What do donors most often misunderstand about what it really takes and what it really costs to run a human service network like Catholic Charities?

Antonio: You know, I think for Catholic Charities, I have two issues. One is that people always tell me it’s like “Antonio, but you only help Catholics.” We help everybody. We don’t discriminate. We don’t ask: Are you Catholic or not? We ask: Are you hungry? You need a place to live. So that’s one. But the second one is: some of the companies will tell you: If you know, give us one dollar, we can feed four people. I have never seen anything like that. The reality is that it costs money to feed people.

“…We don’t discriminate. We don’t ask: Are you Catholic or not? We ask: Are you hungry? You need a place to live.”

Especially when you are providing healthy food, vegetables, protein, things like that. But also for us, it’s not even just the food, because we try to provide the case management, the wraparound services. So when someone comes to us asking us for food, it’s not just the food that we give. We give the hope, but we give the case management to get people out of poverty. And that case management takes a lot of money, as you can imagine. But we do believe this is a long term race, not a short term race that we just wanna give people food and get out.

Denver: Yeah. That must be a challenge though, because I mean food is probably easier to raise money for. It’s immediate. Case management is not very quick, costs a lot of money. But as you say, it’s the long-term solution. How do you keep that in balance?

Antonio:  And that well, telling the story of people like you and like many other people who understand that. Because at the end of the day, we know we can feed people with ten, fifteen dollars. But those ten, fifteen dollars in one year is going to be maybe twice a week, maybe once a week. So now you’re talking about fifty times or a hundred and ten… a hundred times. Now that fifteen dollars, now you’re talking about fifteen hundred dollars. Yeah. When you can actually try to do a lot less than that and then have someone to support them. So we have volunteers, employees who actually can provide the case management to people who need it the most.

And you know, I don’t know you, but I don’t wanna be asking for money or be asking for food. These people don’t wanna do it, but they have no choice. You know, whatever happened in life, they feel like the Catholic Church or other institutions need to help them. So for us, it’s our mandate to help these people as much as we can.

Denver: Cool. You know, when a company or foundation says: we want to help, as you mentioned before, what separates the ones who become true partners and the ones who just simply write a check to you?

Antonio:  You know, I’ve been blessed because we do have a lot of food distributions through the diocese in the city of New York. So we invite donors, we invite foundations to come. My wife, my daughter, and I, we go to give food on Saturdays. So I think there are times that people just want to write a check, and there are the people who really want to feel the work we do. So I will encourage everybody to come with Catholic Charities, 

So, you know, Thanksgiving, Holy Thursday, you know, every Saturday, every Wednesday, we have tons of food distribution. So when people can see really what is going on over there, they feel different about what they’re doing. I mean I can tell you I think it was last month I went to a food distribution that started at 10 o’clock in the morning. The first person on line has been there since one o’clock in the morning… with rain because she was afraid that if she would go later, then we would run out of food. Yeah. So it’s not just about the food, it’s the hope that we give these people. It’s everything that we do…with healthy food and everything. 

And these people, I can tell you, they are so thankful for everything we do. So when I have someone who is giving us the money or who is giving us the support and they see this, they truly feel in love. They love what we do. They fall in love with us.

Denver: You know, if Catholic Charities of New York disappeared tomorrow, what would this city, New York City, lose that no one else would step in to replace?

Antonio:  So the services that we provide. So let’s talk about: there are people who are food banks and they give you food. There are people who are in charge of housing, and they provide you with housing. There is no other institution like the Catholic Charities in the sense that you are coming asking for food, and we can provide that wraparound services with case management, with counseling, with housing, with legal support, all of those other things that we do to supplement the food that you are getting.

And I don’t think there is another institution like that because the reality is that people don’t do those things. People specialize in one thing, which I like. I really would like to say, Well, let’s be just special in one issue. But what makes us unique is the fact that we can try to help two people with everything that we can. And if we don’t know what to do, then we’ll call someone who does. But at the end of the day, our goal is to ensure that people get what they need from Catholic Charities or one of our agencies.

Denver:  Yeah, great. I mean you’re actually addressing the way people actually live their lives. They don’t eat here… and they don’t sleep here… and they don’t, you know, silo their education here. It’s all together. This is the way we practically live our lives. You know, take a step back, Antonio, from Catholic Charities for a moment. And if government keeps stepping back the way that they have, how do we actually pay for the social safety net over the next twenty years? I mean, I know you’ve thought about it. What happens to our society if this trend continues?

Antonio:  Well, I think New York. You know New York more than I do. You know that there’s people with lots of money here. You got Wall Street here. The reality, if the government does not step up, the business corporations, the corporate business is going to have to step up. Because people are going to need this. I mean I always tell my daughters like Dad, what do you wanna do? It’s like I don’t wanna work. But if I don’t work, then we don’t need Catholic Charities, So if there’s no Catholic Charities, people don’t have everything they need. Mm-hmm.

We’re going to have the Catholic Charities. We need  Catholic Charities. So if the government’s not going to step up to the plate, we’re going to have public funding go away. So we’re going to need private funding to actually support that. Corporations, businesses, normal people like you and I are going to have to step up too with volunteer services or small donations. But it’s all of us who take care of the city of New York and the people who don’t have enough to eat and enough to survive.

Denver:  You know, eighty-two organizations that you mentioned before, that’s not really one organization, it’s more like a federation, which somebody said it’s like herding cats. I mean,  it’s tough. Tell us a little bit about that and how you try to keep that constellation together and lead the way you need to lead when you have an organization that’s structured like this.

Antonio: Well you know, I think it is a simple message, and my daughter will disagree with me. I can do so much. You can do so much. But both of us together, we can help so many thousands of people. So in my mind, when you got all of us together that we can have synergy; we can support each other; we can try to actually communicate and be more efficient with the services that we do. All of us don’t have to do the same thing.

We can do something different, all of us, and then complement each other with services. So the more we communicate, the more we work together with each other, the better the people of New York will be. And I think that’s what I’m trying to do right now. I’m trying to have regular meetings with the CEOs of these entities to ensure: How do we help each other? How do we communicate and have that synergy to provide better, more efficient, more quality services to the people who need it the most?

Denver: How do you keep people from losing the dignity that they need when you operate at such a large scale? That doesn’t happen accidentally. It has to be intentional. And what do you do to see that it occurs?

Antonio: You know, I’m blessed to have a daughter who’s fifteen years old. She was baptized at Catholic Charities. She has grown up in the system, meaning we volunteer all the time together as a family. We serve the poor. And I think it’s we serve the poor, but most important, we serve us because it is treating people with respect, how you want to be treated. And I tell my daughter at times: You treat people like you wanna be treated.  

And I think for us, that love and confidence, passion that we have has to do with the basic thing of Catholic Charities. You know, I can tell you, you know about the fires that happened in the branch last month and two months ago. The three buildings caught on fire. We were there the same night. We offered food and clothes and basic human needs. The most important thing that we did was to listen. These people who had lost everything. In their mind was that you lost your house today. What are you going to be doing tomorrow? Where are you sleeping tonight?

Denver: Yep.

Antonio: How are you going to get everything? So sometimes I don’t have to be talking to you. Just listening to you with compassion and empathy will mean a lot more than just giving you a can of food or giving you a place. And I think that is what makes Catholic Charities unique. From top to bottom, from bottom to top, we learn how to treat people with respect and dignity, with love, and provide hope. And I think we have that at all levels. And that’s one thing that I want Catholic Charities to do forever and ever.

…in an efficient way, in a realistic way, but there is something to do with dignity. You know, we don’t give you a bag with food. We allow you to go shopping in our site so you can actually get your own food like you would do in a store. And that’s been called respect and dignity. So important, very, very important to me.