The search for a new CEO for the United Way of Western Connecticut will go hand in hand with an ongoing strategic transformation, the nonprofit”™s chairman said, three years after Stamford”™s United Way was merged into that of Danbury.
Michael Johnston is stepping down as CEO of the United Way of Western Connecticut, with Chief Operating Officer Kim Morgan taking his duties on an interim basis as the Danbury-based organization hunts for Johnston”™s replacement.
The Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Hartford hired Johnston as its CEO, as reported by the Danbury News-Times. Johnston was hired to lead the United Way of Western Connecticut after a private-sector career with General Electric Co. and before that with Sandler O”™Neill, where he had worked in the World Trade Center office destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“We are very sorry to see him go ”“ he has been terrific,” said Brooke Feder, chair of the United Way of Western Connecticut and a commercial real estate broker with Cushman & Wakefield. “His shift to the nonprofit world was a very thought-out decision. He had done a lot of planning and introspection.”
In an August interview with the Fairfield County Business Journal, Johnston cited 9/11 as starting a process that would result in his transition to the nonprofit sector.
“That was the first of a series of events that completely changed my life,” he said. “I lost my parents a few years later and I began to think about the world a little bit different, and I saw the value of putting things into my life that were different ”“ you know, not monetary.”
If not the object of his life, Johnston has seen firsthand how money remains a challenging objective for nonprofits like the United Way, which competes for and complements funding directed to other organizations.
“For us to succeed in our mission, we actually don”™t want to be the only game in town,” Feder said. “Our mission is to mobilize people and effect change to improve the well-being and health and welfare of our community. Where we are actually most effective is ”¦ working collaboratively to identify the needs in the community that are being underserved, and help bring people to the table.”
Feder said the United Way of Western Connecticut might not bring a new CEO to the table until the summer. The organization will be run until then by Morgan, whom Feder said could be a candidate for the CEO position in addition to potential outside candidates from the nonprofit and private sectors.
In the fiscal year ending June 2010, the United Way of Western Connecticut had a $250,000 loss as revenue improved slightly to $6.2 million, with Johnston receiving a $150,000 salary that year. In 2007, the year the Danbury and Stamford United Way organizations merged, revenue peaked at $6.9 million.
The United Way distributed $2.5 million to some 140 Fairfield County area organizations in fiscal 2010, the most recent year for which the Internal Revenue Service has made an annual report available online.
In the past few years, the organization”™s grants have ranged from $1,200 grant for the WeCAHR program for people with disabilities, to $84,000 for Interlude, which provides housing and support for people with mental illness and substance abuse problems. Both organizations are based in Danbury. Following the merger, some in Stamford privately voiced concerns that the city”™s needs would become secondary to those of Danbury, which the United Way of Western Connecticut chose as its headquarters.
Feder said that has not been the case, adding that if anything the organization will be more visible in Stamford with a planned relocation of its office there to just north of downtown.
