‘It’s Everyone Working Together’
According to data both compiled and published by the New Jersey Center for Nonprofits, The Garden State is home to more than 41,000 nonprofit organizations. They exist primarily not as profit-generating entities—though they certainly require capital to invest in the tools and talent helping them pursue their community-minded missions with the passion those endeavors deserve—but rather to meet a pressing need head on.
There are, of course, both inherent and systemic challenges dogging those service-providing and problem-solving organizations, which is why good corporate citizens stepping up to be even better neighbors offering their time, energy and willingness to be part of the solution are always appreciated.
“Nonprofits address critical needs in the community, helping sustain education, health care, housing and food insecurity for the underserved in our community,” says Amy R. Guerin, a labor and employment attorney at Parker McCay. She adds that the law firm aims “to support these vital organizations so that they have the resources to build a stronger and more resilient community,” and recognizes the importance of giving back. “[We have] a long history of being a good corporate citizen. We support a number of local causes … with regular volunteer days for employees and fundraisers.”
The Southern New Jersey Development Council’s (SNJDC) service to the region’s eight counties began in 1951, and President Marlene Asselta says that the organization has sidestepped many of the issues that other nonprofits are currently facing, buoyed as it is by a membership of more than 300 mid-size and large businesses and benefiting from strong state-government relationships that transcend politics. But its past wasn’t without challenges.
“We’ve had our slumps, no doubt, and it does take your attention away from the real work that you do,” she notes. “It takes your attention away from that when you’re concerned with something like ‘Does the lighting bill get paid this week?’ I know, from being on other boards, that many are really living day to day. … If you’re not having to wring your hands over where you are, then you can respond to the requests that come in.”
South Jersey’s nonprofits are as varied as both the populations and purposes they serve, making for a nuanced narrative where the prevailing common thread is answering the call to care for one’s neighbors. Whether those efforts have the support needed to continually undertake community-focused missions, though, is a question that’s getting harder to answer in today’s landscape where avenues of needed funding are steadily drying up.
Fred Wasiak, president and CEO for the Food Bank of South Jersey, expresses his organization’s greatest challenges—combatting hunger at home—in no uncertain terms. He notes that today’s uncertainty not only echoes but also eclipses earlier 21st-century challenges like The Great Recession and the more recent COVID pandemic. He points out that the former demonstrated just how long it can take a population to recover from drawn-out and widespread financial hardships, while the pandemic’s far-reaching struggles brought some relief to offset that widely felt impact.
“We were serving 95,000 a month at the height of COVID, we’re serving 180,000 now,” he says, adding that cuts to the Commodity Credit Corporation alone slashed access to more than half a million pounds of food annually. “It keeps escalating. The difference with COVID was … funding was available to help those neighbors in need. The impact that we’re going to see here with SNAP benefits, SNAP education, Medicaid—we’re going to continue to see that 180,000 a month increase. But funding to support that is going away, as well as the support to people who are just barely making ends meet.”
United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey, an organization assisting those who live in poverty, is facing similar challenges as more households rely on a helping hand to get through tough times. While President & CEO Bill Golderer notes that “we exist for this” and concedes that COVID’s one silver lining was providing the United Way team with a blueprint for overcoming difficult times, the cascading effects of increased need and protracted instability do exacerbate the issues setting back already vulnerable communities.
“We’ve doubled down on what we’re already doing and look for ways to deepen it, so it’s looking for willing partners to address and meet the needs we’ve identified,” he says. “People need family-sustaining jobs, and the question is: How do you get there? You can’t reach for a better opportunity if your current state is utter instability, and I believe that these changes are not carefully considered. I don’t think they’re forward-looking or long term.”
Not all of the challenges are symptoms of difficult times. Joanne Rosen, chief marketing and public affairs officer for Samaritan, views the organization’s biggest hurdle as an opportunity: the stellar reputation it’s built over 45 years since its founding “as one of the country’s very first hospices.” Being so visible in that sector, though, means that its neighbors don’t always know they can benefit from a range of offerings beyond end-of-life care.
“We want to help people access our other services, which are really helpful medical practices under our Samaritan umbrella for patients and their families at any stage of their health care journey,” she affirms, adding that the nonprofit’s goals center on delivering individualized, life-enhancing services through everything from in-home hospital care to companionship—whether through volunteers or robotic companion animals—to support groups. “That’s the bottom line, and quality of life is different for every person, so we are guided by our patients’ goals of care, their wishes, their values.”
The team at Saddler’s Woods Conservation Association acts as stewards of 25 acres that are both rich in local history and an opportunity to learn more about the region’s unique natural beauty. Executive Director Janet Goehner-Jacobs says it can be a daunting task to balance caring for nature with its maintenance, accessibility and preservation, especially with the uptick in foot traffic that followed more and more people discovering the urban forest’s appeal since the pandemic.
“The pain point is just that ongoing battle of the actual work that we do with the decades of fragmentation and neglect that the woods endured before we really existed, before we were trying to save the woods. … Now we have to take care of them,” she says. “We’re at the point where I have to limit registration, I have to limit the amount of volunteers. We have really maintained a high manager-to-volunteer ratio so everybody has a team leader, because we can’t have just one person managing 25-30 people when there’s sharp tools involved.”
Serving the community doesn’t stop with meeting present needs and anticipating future ones: It also involves education. And whether that’s the likes of public conversations, roundtable discussions, informative programming and empowering today’s talent to meet tomorrow’s needs, it’s a significant component in nonprofits’ undertakings that addresses issues, shares ideas and offers solutions.
“Board members and committee co-chairs are attending events, they’re learning more and more about issues that have an impact on the region, they’re putting programs together along with their staff that bring in information not only to the organization and their colleagues, but internally to their own businesses,” Asselta says. “They’re always learning. And whatever knowledge and information they’re picking up, they’re bringing it back, they’re sharing it—and that’s what strengthens the business community. It’s everyone working together.”
“The core enterprises that we have are habitat restoration, community education and scientific research,” adds Goehner-Jacobs. “There’s no way that we’re going to reverse trends if we don’t really educate people of all ages. It became very clear when we were working to save the woods from development that there was just a general struggle for people to understand its value and what it’s doing for them, like what is carbon sequestration or why does it matter that we have trees for stormwater? … As we’re developing our programs, we are really able to expand that from preschool programs where it’s going on a walk and picking up a leaf and talking about its shape all the way up to the PhD level.”
While developing programs and other educational content demands a flexibility to meet audiences where they are, it also means implementing internal and external changes to meet the needs of today with strategic direction that’s both responsive and collaborative.
“We’ve been innovative and expanding our services to meet the needs that we see in our community with the expertise, the resources and the infrastructure that we have,” Rosen says. “We’re doing more over the years, and education, advocacy and community partnerships have always been important. There’s more and more collaboration with nonprofits—in fact, we’ve taken the lead on what’s called the Social Isolation Loneliness and Connection Collaborative, and so we have over 50 community partners that we work with that serve different vulnerable populations.”
Leading with clear objectives that focus on current issues while building toward a stronger future also helps volunteers, donors and professional partners ensure that everyone works in tandem to best support a shared mission.
“Sitting on a nonprofit board also helps us stay in touch with the realities of running a nonprofit on a day-to-day basis: Our legal advice must account for strained budgets, mission-based priorities and decision-making, and having volunteers perform duties that would normally be performed by employees,” Guerin explains. “Being active on nonprofit boards absolutely helps Parker McCay better understand how to serve its nonprofit clients.”
And those volunteers, donors, supporters, external partners and, of course, internal teams working behind the scenes to best serve South Jersey’s nonprofits comprise the teamwork amplifying their impact.
“Our state, fortunately, is committed to serving those neighbors in need from north to south,” Wasiak says. “We’re blessed with support from the local government and legislators, and our volunteers. We’ll have corporate volunteers coming in to help us sort food. … We can’t do it alone, so volunteers from local networks, local corporate partners, other nonprofit partners are always very helpful, but our most critical need is always monetary—that helps us be intentional in the purchase of healthy, nutritious food.”
And just as they’ve faced down seemingly impossible, heartbreaking conditions before, those fighting for their neighbors know that hard times have a way of demonstrating just how many good people will answer the call to care for their community together.
“When people say, ‘I know exactly what help you’re asking for and I’m willing to offer it,’ that gives someone a sense of not being alone,” says Golderer. “There are two kinds of people in our community: the go-to people and the go-around people, and the go-to people are showing up as they always have. The thing that’s powerful about the future is the people who have been historically dependable, while new people always find their way into."
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Author: Madeleine Maccar
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