Jerry Rauckhorst: Man of mission and values

Jerry Rauckhorst, who brought unity and identity to Catholic Charities Hawaii, retires after 21 years at the helm

By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald

Jerry Rauckhorst, the man who oversaw the transformation of Catholic Charities Hawaii into a unified, mission-driven organization with a renewed Catholic identity, has retired. But he is not going away, not yet.

“I’ll actually be around until the end of February,” he told the Hawaii Catholic Herald in an interview Oct. 28.

After his last day in the office Oct. 31, Rauckhorst stepped into a four-month-long consultant role as part of the transition plan created by the committee that selected his successor, Terry Walsh.

“My whole goal is to do whatever I can to make him [Walsh] successful,” he said. “So much of that is just relationship stuff with the external community, introducing him to a lot of people. That’s going to be a priority.”

The outgoing president and chief executive officer will help the new CEO navigate “the background and strategic direction for the organization … so that he has a pretty thorough understanding of what we’ve been doing.”

“I have a lot of confidence in Terry Walsh,” he said. “I think it is going to be a terrific transition. He’s the right kind of leader for Catholic Charities going forward. That gives me great satisfaction.”

Rauckhorst is passing on a very different organization than the one he took over 21 years ago.

“When I first came, there were two major questions,” he said. “What makes Catholic Charities different and how do you define Catholic Charities’ identity as a Catholic organization? There was quite a lot of turmoil around that.”

He said those topics were among the first he discussed with Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo, who hired him in 1995. “He wasn’t too sure that the organization really understood its Catholic identity,” he said.

“And there was a lot of anxiety because obviously we have a lot of non-Catholics who work for Catholic Charities.”

The questions led the organization on a year-long self-examination process that involved every employee.

Mission and values

“Out of that process came a refreshed mission, when we identified the four core values” — dignity, compassion, social justice and commitment to excellence.

“It created an incredible amount of unity within the organization to be able to focus on what really does make the organization different, and what the staff, board members and volunteers really value,” Rauckhorst said.

It was the starting point that led to the physical unification of the operations of Catholic Charities at a single location, on a single campus.

Rauckhorst had inherited an organization that was divided into four distinct parts at four locations — Elderly Services, Family Services, Community Services and Immigrant Services.

“It was kind of a crazy organizational setup because we had four unincorporated entities who were acting as if they were incorporated. And then you had this administrative arm called Catholic Charities, which is what I directed.”

“And so having the mission and core values in place and building the unity around that,” the organization came together.

“Catholic Charities” was added to the front of the names of the four operations and “Hawaii” was added to the overall organization’s name.

The next thing to do was to address the division of the agency into four separate locations — St. Stephen Parish, Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa, Vineyard Street, and the Aloha United Way building.

Rauckhorst witnessed first hand the difficulties this created for clients when he had to tell people who came to one location for help that they would have to go to another location to get it.

“It was happening all the time,” he said.

“We were all within 10 minutes of each other,” he said. Catholic Charities owned none of the locations and rent was expensive. “That’s what brought the thinking that we really needed to identify either a parcel to build on or some kind of property where we could bring all this together.”

Catholic Charities eventually bought the former First Presbyterian Church site, a large complex in upper Makiki which had administrative offices, a large hall, an apartment building, meeting room and a big church building which eventually was renovated to hold two floors of workspace.

“Bringing us all together at one location, it was just huge,” he said, “and then we had an asset that we never had.”

“It turned out to be just a wonderful location, the kind of location that is much more conducive to what we do, what we stand for,” he said.

“We had always thought we would end up in a five- or six-story building on Beretania or King street, a commercial property,” he said. “But this is no commercial property. It’s right in the middle of the neighborhood. It’s a campus, it’s wide open, so if you are a family, a client, that is coming here for certain purposes, you are going to feel so much more dignified, comfortable.”

It was also a great benefit for employees. “By bringing everybody together, now all of a sudden there is this integration, interactions going on and people knowing about the entire organization.”

There was one more thing to do: to give Catholic Charities’ mission and values the weight of a personnel position.

“We decided that we actually needed to have a person that would be called the director of Catholic identity and mission,” he said. At first a part-time role, it evolved into a vice president position, emphasizing its importance.

The three vice presidents of programs, administration, and Catholic identity and mission now form the executive team.

Catholic identity and mission are “incorporated into everything,” Rauckhorst said, “from the orientation of new employees, to staff conferences, to the way we conduct supervisors meetings. The key to having core values is how they become integrated in the day-to-day work of the organization.”

Under Rauckhorst’s watch, throughout this course of unification, the organization grew from a $9 million budget to one of $27 million. Catholic Charities now serves about 40,000 people a year.

An ongoing challenge

Not one to rest on his laurels, Rauckhorst recognized that Catholic Charities still has an ongoing challenge, an overreaching one — incorporating the work of his organization into the full life of the church in Hawaii.

He pulled out a copy of “Stewards of the Gospel,” the recently published diocesan pastoral plan, and showed where he had highlighted throughout the document its social ministry goals.

“I was very excited when the pastoral plan came out,” he said. “I think the biggest challenge is how this pastoral plan get implemented in a way that its social ministry implications, and there are many in here, get carried out. How do we insure as a church, that this is serious, and that it gets operationalized.”

“There is significant social ministry challenges” in the document, he said. “It’s all about carrying out the Gospel, demonstrating that the Gospel message is about caring for each other, building community, all of the kind of things that we stand for.”

“We do our best to try to help people make that connection.”

He said he finds it “interesting” that the many people with whom he interacts who are not Catholic welcome the religious nature of Catholic Charities’ mission. “They are not looking for any apology” for us being Catholic, he said, but rather appreciate that “this is what the church ought to be about, out there in the margins, working with people, being non-judgmental.”

“The Gospel message is validated through the work of Catholic Charities through the social ministries done under the auspices of the church,” he said.

Quoting the head of Catholic Charities USA, Father Bryan Hehir, he called Catholic Charities “the bridge of the church into the world, the world of today.”

Rauckhorst said he is “not sure” a lot of Catholics understand this.

“It’s one of the reasons that we do Catholic Charities Sunday. It’s an opportunity to get out there in the parishes and talk about the work that we do, to make the connection that an important ministry of the church is social ministry, just like education, just like evangelization.”

“It’s a challenge because Catholics don’t necessarily make that connection, that we’re all together in this.”

If Catholic Charities had more resources, Rauckhorst would like to “focus more on what we call volunteer services and community engagement” particularly in parishes.

Other needs

Rauckhorst also wishes Catholic Charities could do more on the neighbor islands. “We have really been focused on the neighbor islands for perhaps the last eight to 10 years, and we’ve definitely done some good things, but those efforts are so limited.”

“There are needs on the neighbor islands that we could be more involved with if we only had the resources to be able to do it. And we just don’t.”

Foster care is another area in which Rauckhorst wishes Catholic Charities could do more. “The reality is that after a youth becomes 18 years old, they are going to be pretty much on their own,” he said.

“When you think of the vulnerability of the kids that have been in foster care, I wish we had more resources to be able to create safe environments, collaborative living environments for these youth that still need some support. They just can’t be out there on their own.”

Rauckhorst also hopes the organization could address the goals in the diocesan pastoral plan regarding family life.

“Could Catholic Charities be doing a whole lot more that relates to family life? Absolutely, we can. We should. But there is no money to do it. We are not going to get government dollars to subsidize the Mary Jane Program” for unwed mothers, for example.

“What can we do to increase the level of support that comes from the parishes? It’s just a very challenging conversation. A lot of the parishes really don’t have the dollars. After all these years with Catholic Charities Sunday, we still get somewhere between $100,000 and $120,000. That’s all. That’s the total collection.”

The Mary Jane Residential Home is an example of a program dependent on private, non-government funding. Rauckhorst said Catholic Charities has been “really blessed in that area” with significant donations. One couple left a large trust. Another couple gave Catholic Charities a fully paid for, perfectly situated 12-unit apartment building which it uses for women and young children.

The apartment donation was like “divine intervention,” he said, inspired by a Catholic Charities solicitation letter that highlighted the Mary Jane program.

Rauckhorst’s retirement brings to an end 43 years under the church’s employment.

“The only place I’ve ever worked is Catholic Charities,” Rauckhorst said.

He started out in the Diocese of Cleveland, and was director of Catholic Charities in Pittsburgh before being appointed chief executive officer of Catholic Charities in Hawaii.

In retirement, Rauckhorst, 67, will continue to volunteer on a number of community boards and perhaps teach. “There are a lot of students that are interested in non-profit leadership and management,” he said.

He is “looking forward” to a slower pace. “I am definitely ready,” he said, “and the organization is definitely ready for a new leader.”