In the midst of doom-and-gloom news for nonprofits, one human services agency ended 2008 with a small surplus in funds, had only minor cuts in state funding for the coming year and anticipates expanding in various service areas.Â
“The mission of The Guidance Center is to improve the lives of people of all ages through innovative and effective programs that enable everyone to learn, work and thrive,” said Amy Gelles, executive director of The Guidance Center. “We take those last three words very seriously, and all of the programs that we have are organized and run so that we can make sure that the people who come through our doors achieve those types of results.”
The Guidance Center, which has an annual budget of about $9.2 million, is “a very outcome-focused agency” that provides services to 4,000 people every year throughout Westchester County.
“People who cross our doors come with all different kids of problems and issues,” Gelles said. “There”™s the widest range from people who have kind of hit a bump in the road, and so it”™s a crisis for the moment, and then we have people who have more long-suffering issues that they are really trying to get help with. These are hard times, and I think everyone is affected one way or another.”
The Guidance Center itself knows hard times. From 2002 to 2005, the agency was not performing the way it should have been, Gelles said. Prior to that, it had been a leader in many fields, including having one of the first therapeutic nurseries and a large vocational services department.
“All of it crumbled, and as a result the agency was almost at a point where it didn”™t know how it was going to make payroll week to week,” Gelles said. “There were serious issues. I think the board realized that they had to do something different. I came in, and we”™ve been doing a lot of things differently since I”™ve gotten here.”
That mission started with management. The management team has made the tough decisions to consolidate programs, close locations and reduce employee benefits to keep the agency fiscally sound, said Laura Newman, The Guidance Center”™s director of development.
“We have, as they say in management terms, the right people on the bus, and we”™ve given them the support and the tools so that they can actually drive the bus,” Gelles said.
Effective and innovative programs that focus on outcomes consistently show successful results, Newman said.
“For example, our methadone clinic has a higher-than average success rate with more than 95 percent of adults in the program abstaining from using illicit opiates,” Newman said.
Diversity in services is an agency hallmark; it is the only nonprofit in Westchester that operates programs in six interconnected areas: early childhood education; school-based programs; substance abuse treatment; vocational assessment training and placement; supported housing; and mental health service.
“Because the outcomes are good and our programs are effective, the funding stays solid,” Newman said. “Being diversified is good because we are able to get funding from more sources.” If one area has a negative impact on the bottom line, another area can offset it.
The agency has low staff turnover (last year only 10 percent of the work force voluntarily left The Guidance Center) and a committed board of directors (19 volunteers who support the executive director).
“It”™s a very difficult economic time, and always the conundrum for all of us is that the needs of the community increase at a time when a lot of the funding decreases,” said Richard Goodman, a longtime board member and chief financial officer at PepsiCo in Purchase. “We have a lot of extremely hard-working professionals ”“ that is really the core of the agency ”“ and we”™re working extremely hard to make sure we are phenomenally efficient and can maintain the services that we have.”
The Guidance Center has 190 paid employees (120 full-time and 70 are part-time). Most of its funding comes from the state; some is from the federal government.
“Unlike some of the other social service agencies, we”™ve never had an endowment, which is the good news/ bad news in this environment,” Gelles said. “Because we don”™t have one, we have been forced to live within our means, so for the last three years we have balanced our budgets based on the monies that we get from our funders.”
The staff agreed to freeze the agency”™s pension plan as a way to make sure that instead of having to lay anyone off or hurt how a program might run, “this way everybody is taking a little bit of a hit,” Gelles said.
Future plans for the agency include a move to a new headquarters in Mount Vernon in the next couple of years.
The Guidance Center would also like to increase vocational services for youth and expand the substance abuse program to an outpatient detoxification program.
“I think we see ourselves as the little engine that could,” Gelles said. “The Guidance Center is well-situated, and I think that because we”™ve taken care of being so financially sound, now when people contribute it really is helping the programs.”
The Web site is TheGuidanceCenter.org.
