Roderick Jones Left the Projects, Now Serves Those Residents

Roderick L. Jones, the executive director of Goddard Riverside and the Isaacs Center, believes cultivating a strong sense of community is crucial in his line of work.

After all, Goddard Riverside traces its roots to a historic settlement house, which he describes as a form of institutionalized “social intervention.” Settlement houses “mobilize” the collective power of a neighborhood, Jones told Our Town, to provide services to those most in need.

Goddard Riverside dates back to the mid-1800s, and was swept up in the settlement house movement by the time it came into being in 1884. The people who worked at such houses originally lived there, too, giving the movement its moniker. Goddard Riverside earned its current name from a 1959 merger between the Riverside Community House and the Goddard Neighborhood Center, two settlement houses founded in 1887 and 1892, respectively.

After Jones took the wheel in 2017, he expanded its already broad footprint more definitively to the Upper East Side via a strategic partnership with Yorkville’s Stanley M. Isaacs Center that was finalized in 2022.

Today, the nonprofit—which pulled in $31.4 million in revenue in the 2023 fiscal year—provides a massive spectrum of resources to Manhattan residents, resources that can apply to essentially every era of life: after-school programs, job training, senior citizen programming, housing assistance, food assistance, and mental-health support. It’s built around a mission of justice and fairness, one that can “provide self-reliance and dignity across generations.”

Jones, who grew up the Cypress Hills public housing projects in Brooklyn, has known since he was young that he wanted to help foster community. “I went to John Jay High School in Park Slope, an affluent neighborhood. I was part of the founding group for a peer-counseling hotline,” he said. “It was called ‘Teens Meeting Teens.’ Then I volunteered on the weekends with adults who were special-needs.

“At first, I wasn’t aiming to work in nonprofits. All I could think of was that I didn’t want to go back to the projects, and I wanted to make a lot of money,” he added. “So, at first, I wanted to be a lawyer and a judge. Then, I realized that I didn’t want be in a position to defend somebody that I didn’t agree with. When I realized that you could have a particular client, where you’d know they did the crime, I was like ‘no.’”

Jones eventually moved to Rochester, N.Y., where he “stumbled” into the settlement house movement. His first gig was at a “raggedy” place, but he “seriously loved it,” despite it taking him “a little bit of time to understand the concept.” What hooked him was working with a girl with special needs, Kathleen. He realized that he had a unique ability to help her calm down and reach her potential.

It transformed the way he viewed what he could accomplish, and Jones is still in the movement 35 years later. Before coming to Goddard Riverside, he ran Grace Hill Settlement House in St. Louis, Mo., for nearly a decade.

He also holds a Doctorate in Education from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, as well as a Master’s in Public Administration from SUNY Brockport. Education, Jones says, is like an “inoculation for poverty–it gives you options. I grew up with a lot of guys who were absolutely brilliant, and can outthink half of the people I did my doctorate with, but they just didn’t have an educational pathway.”

Goddard Riverside’s expansion under Jones’ watch is captured by the numbers; the nonprofit provided services to 24,000 people by the end of 2024, up from 14,000 when he took over in 2017. “We’ve grown to 40 locations, up from 19 when I got here,” he said. “I’ll tell you in all candor, we’ve still got some work to do in terms of universal quality. Not every shop is running the exact way I want it to.” Yet Goddard Riverside’s coffers are the most stable they’ve been since the 1800s, Jones noted, and his staffers are focused on creating new programs that truly provide care for local residents.

Jones gave a concrete example of what this looks like: “When you come in the door, I’m saying: ‘Don’t just tell me about the fact that you don’t have food today. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do in the long run?’

“That’s a very different proposition than me giving you two bags of food, and then you go home for the day,” he pointed out. “We’re moving much toward the latter side, where we provide comprehensive services.”