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Sunday, February 17, 2002

By Linda A. Dickerson

Like many small start-up for-profit enterprises, nascent nonprofits tend to view their routine operations and administrative functions as a diversion from their core mission. Yet daily administration is key to any organization's ultimate success.

	Linda A. Dickerson is a principal in Dickerson & Mangus Ink., an issues consulting firm.

"Nonprofits have incredibly talented people running them who are distracted by day-to-day operations," said Jo DeBolt, director of the newly formed Tides Center of Western Pennsylvania. One of three such centers in the United States, the center provides, on a fee-for-service basis, fiscal sponsorship and co-management services to nonprofits promoting social change. The role of the Tides Center is to allow founders of nonprofits to focus on direct service provision without burdening themselves with administrative matters.

While all nonprofits may apply, DeBolt says, "We look at mission fit as the No. 1 cut." In particular, DeBolt seeks nonprofits dedicated to either issues of social justice or environmental preservation. In addition, she targets community-based efforts reaching out to underserved populations.

For 9 percent of the revenues that they generate, the Tides Center provides its clients a legal infrastructure under which to operate, complete financial services, access to employee benefit packages and other administrative services. By handling the basic administrative functions of a nonprofit, the Tides Center enables the nonprofit staff to focus on its mission rather than on daily operations.

"They're trying to do the things that they love while they're doing what they have to do," explains DeBolt. Through the Tides Center, the nonprofit essentially outsources its routine functions. By enabling nonprofit staffs to concentrate on what they love, DeBolt feels, the organizations achieve considerably better outcomes as long as the Tides Center is available to handle the business functions.

"There's a direct connection between taking care of business and the bottom line," DeBolt said, stating the obvious. But, this reality is not so obvious to many nonprofits, especially those in their infancy.

"The Tides Center is designed to really encourage grass-roots efforts," DeBolt said. "We're also a good neutral ground for broader efforts such as coalitions and partnerships."

Another target for the Tides Center is embryonic efforts with a defined task to accomplish within a specified time period. For these enterprises, the Tides Center is a prefabricated infrastructure ready for them to use. This infrastructure saves them both time and money.

DeBolt describes the role that she and her associates play as "a terrific No. 2 person who's the business person and with whom [nonprofits] can work as a team." Although the Tides Center prefers to be active with its clients, sometimes providing oversight is all that's necessary. "If nothing else, I'm just watching," DeBolt said.

Before joining the Tides Center staff, she served for a decade as the executive director of the Mon Valley Initiative, a coalition of 17 community-based organizations that share economic development as a common mission. In this capacity, she saw the myriad difficulties that confront virtually all nonprofits.

When the opportunity to work with the Tides Center became available, DeBolt thought the job was tailored to her. It was a perfect fit.

And, the Tides Center main office in San Francisco also saw Pittsburgh as an ideal environment for their concept to flourish. "They saw it as a great opportunity to encourage a progressive social agenda," DeBolt said.

Referring to a "sense that Pittsburgh was a city in transition," DeBolt said Pittsburgh represented a significant challenge as a new market for the Tides Center. "They felt that if you could [become a successful Tides Center] in Pittsburgh, you could do it anywhere," DeBolt added.

Pittsburgh's notorious fragmentation makes the region more attractive to Tides. "A lot of organizations are trying to do similar things here," DeBolt said. Because the Tides Center loans its 50l(c)3 standing to its clients, it helps to temper the tendency of nonprofits here to procreate.

"Competition and duplication is a real issue here," DeBolt said. This proliferation of organizations with related purposes is not, however, limited to the nonprofit world. Government here suffers the same fate.

"There's a tendency of the public money to spread out," DeBolt said. "This results in lots of organizations emerging. ... Who has the political will to say merge or die?"

By sharing administrative functions, once-struggling enterprises can thrive because they can, in essence, concentrate on what they do best. Rather than merging or becoming extinct, they can prosper in symbiosis with others.