The Good News Garage

In its three years of operation, The Good News Garage, in Burlington, Vermont, has handed car keys to 300 people who would never have been able to afford cars on their own. By accepting donated cars; reconditioning them; and then donating them to qualified low-income applicants for the cost of repairs, the Good News Garage has enabled these people--many of whom live in rural areas not accessible by public transportation--to take jobs that would otherwise have been unattainable.

I knew that Lutheran Social Services of New England had organized area Lutheran churches through the Social Ministry Outreach Process and had just done a needs assessment to identify a common project that would really help the poor in this area. So, I approached a member of the group, the Rev. Frederick Neu of Ascension Lutheran in South Burlington, with the idea of church support for rehabbing donated autos for qualified recipients. He thought it was a great idea!

After meeting with four Lutheran churches during an initial task force meeting, I came away with the vision to say, "This is going to happen. I don't know how or where the money is coming from, but I know it will happen." They fully embraced the idea, which sounded kind of wacky to me--a church group opening a garage?

With Rev. Neu's help Ascension Lutheran church provided office spaceand Lutheran Social Services of New England got behind the idea and funded the start up for the Good News Garage. We opened in July, 1996 with in-kind support from the city bus garage and in April 1997 moved the operation into a three-bay garage to provide quality used cars for low-income customers. Church members really "got us on the road." They donated vehicles and volunteer hours to fix up the garage and spread the word.

Jon Van Zandt, a master mechanic, joined the team instead of starting his own repair shop. He'd been an engraver in New York City and a lobsterman in Key West. "This is probably the best situation, working for the Good News Garage, because it's rewarding," he says. "Here we only do work that needs to be done." Jon's expertise allowed us to offer repairs at market rate to supplement our work on donated cars. We also began to offer an apprentice program for people interested in that kind of job training.

Communicate Mission

It's really important when you're just getting started to garner support from the city or town. Initially we wanted customers to pay the market rate for our repair services and we planned to offer a discounted rate for those in hardship, but we quickly became known as the garage for "poor" people, which was our own fault because we didn't clearly communicate the two products we offered. People with money didn't come to us because they thought trainees would be fixing their cars--but that wasn't true. We have three excellent, experienced mechanics. For a time that hampered our operation. Now we only offer a break-even $40 an hour rate and we help people find subsidies if they need them. We have also produced a public service announcement and now we're struggling to keep up with the vehicle donations, which is a good problem.

Collaboration

Collaboration has been a key piece in our program and it has a tendency to build and snowball. You start with the right partners and you go with your gut and follow your entrepreneurial spirit. Try things that are different. Other programs don't offer that much in terms of helping people who are trying to achieve transportation equity. It took a little courage to convince people that this program is actually worthy of support, but it surely has paid off.

We also learned not to take "No" for an answer. When we went down to the state legislature for funding, we failed the first time. We presented what we thought was a simple, straightforward proposal to the House Committee of Transportation, but some people took issue with it, in terms of "unfair competition." We hadn't done our homework and didn't have a lobbyist in place, but we believed in what we were doing and eventually we befriended a supporter. Initially, even she saw us as a threat in terms of training programs, but soon she realized we were different. We're not a tech school. We target a group of people who don't do well in school and give them apprentice-style training. We are really a necessary part of the equation because those folks don't have a chance to enter tech schools. She ended up sending our head mechanic to advanced training and donated a diagnostic scanner to the organization. You never quite know how things will turn out.

Faith-Based Community Eager to Assist

Until you ask, you will never receive. I had been frustrated with the city of Burlington and the University of Vermont when we were trying to find space to keep vehicles that had been donated. They had every excuse in the book not to make a decision: "Well, we have to have another meeting. We don't want a junkyard." I called two Episcopal parishes and both responded positively. It was painless. That never would have happened unless I asked. I was amazed at their speedy response. Boom. It's done.

The faith community is out there waiting to be asked for help. If you can demonstrate that your program works, they all come on board. We're now working with the Episcopal diocese of Vermont. We met with the Bishop several times and she loves what we are doing. There are only seven Lutheran churches in Vermont. The Episcopalians have a lot more churches, but they don't have anything like the Lutheran Social Services organization that their church can plug into and support, yet they have a lot of needs that LSS can support, so a great partnership is evolving between the Lutheran congregations and the Episcopal congregations.

Will the Faith-Based Community Be Excluded in the Future?

We need to achieve a comfort level when it comes to including faith-based organizations in community building. The whole separation of church and state keeps getting in our way. When I was to receive an award for the best welfare-to-work project from the Small Business Administration, I wanted to make sure that our organization, Lutheran Social Services, was given some credit for this, maybe on the plaque. But because the SBA is a government entity, the gentleman said, "We can't do that because it has the word Lutheran in it. You can say things in the presentation, but it's uncomfortable for the government to be in partnership with a faith like that." It's crazy. We're doing all this good work--this is who we are. Give us credit and hold it up as a success-- a great partnership! This is obviously an underlying issue; consequently, nonprofits are leery of bringing churches or congregations into the fold in a direct way.

We need to push the envelope to reeducate ourselves about what the community really is. Long, long ago it was the church that did all this work. Now we have gone way in the other direction, yet government is eliminating programs. This project would not have succeeded without critical support from the four congregations and Lutheran Social Services. We had very little money to make this happen, but a lot of committed individuals made a difference. How do we become totally inclusive in all the parts of community?

Good News Garage
A program of the Lutheran Social Services of New England
Hal Colston, Program Director
23 King Street Suite 214
Burlington,Vermont 05401

Here's how to contact them: 802-864-3667 or 1-877-GIVE AUTO, www.goodnewsgarage.org, e-mail: gnewsg@together.net

Photos by Dave Kaphingst are reprinted with permission from Correspondent magazine and Aid Association for Lutherans.