The Buddy System

Pittsburgh charities pool efforts to hire a personnel manager

For more than a decade, when the Pennsylvania Organization for Women in Early Recovery had a job opening,

the hiring was done by whoever had the time. With an annual budget of $900,000 and a staff of 20, the Pittsburgh social-service organization, which helps clients recovering from alcohol and drug addiction, was too small to hire a human-resources manager.

So the work was divided among the executive director, her administrative assistant, and other staff members. “Then, if a selection was made, the administrative assistant might explain some office routines, the finance person would go over the benefits like health insurance, I would do some piece of the orientation, and the program manager would do the rest,” says Rosa Davis, executive director.

But two years ago, Ms. Davis’s group joined with two other nonprofit organizations to explore the idea of hiring one human-resources manager to work for all three charities. They won four grants totaling $331,000 and set about making detailed plans for how their Human Resources Collaborative would work. And eight months ago, after a false start with another human-resources expert, the collaborative hired Nancy Simpronio to be its human-resources director.

These days, when a job opening is posted, Ms. Simpronio screens all the candidates, handles the paperwork, and explains the benefits to new employees. Besides finding well-qualified candidates and saving the three groups’ staff members a lot of time, she has slashed the amount of money the organizations spend on recruiting workers, says Ms. Davis.

Many small nonprofit groups don’t hire a human-resources manager because they think they can’t afford one, says Ms. Davis. But, as these three groups have found, joining forces can give even small charities the clout to fill that post with a seasoned candidate. Besides making recruiting more efficient, human-resources directors can make sure organizations comply with government regulations and counsel managers on how to deal with difficult employees. And because the combined organizations represent a larger group of people — in this case, about 150 employees — they are now able to shop for less expensive, more comprehensive benefits, such as an employee-assistance program that offers an array of counseling services to workers at all three charities.

Joining Forces

The idea for the Human Resources Collaborative originated two years ago with Marilyn Sullivan, executive director of Bethlehem Haven, a Pittsburgh nonprofit group that provides homeless women with shelter and other services. Her organization had recently expanded and her staff members were concerned that the organization might not be complying fully with state and federal regulations.

“We’re not experts,” she says, “so you’re always worried about whether you’re doing the right thing.”

The solution would be to hire a human-resources director, she reasoned — but with only 34 employees and an annual budget of $1.4-million, she couldn’t afford one. So she set out to find a couple of other small charities to pitch in, with the goal of hiring one together.

She contacted two other Pittsburgh organizations with whom she felt her group would be compatible — the Pennsylvania Organization for Women in Early Recovery and the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime, which offers crisis intervention and other services.

It was a good fit, says Ms. Davis: “It’s very easy for us to understand each other because we all work with victims who have been beaten up by the world, in general. We all have a lot of the same retention issues with staff, high burnout because of dealing with victims.”

Finding Money

Together, the three groups hoped they would have a large-enough staff to attract an experienced human-resources director, says Ms. Sullivan. But they still needed a plan, and they would need to obtain the money to pay for a personnel expert.

They started with a $6,500 grant from Pittsburgh’s William J. Copeland Fund to begin the planning process, says Stephanie Walsh, executive director of the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime. That money, says Ms. Sullivan, gave them the means to hire a consultant to help them come up with a strategic plan and formalize the business agreement among the three groups.

Once the plan was in place, the three groups were able to secure more grants. Three Pittsburgh foundations are providing grants to cover three years: $162,500 from the Pittsburgh Foundation, $122,500 from the Richard King Mellon Fund, and $40,000 from the FISA Foundation.

The grant makers who supported the effort say they were enthusiastic about it from the start. Ann Marie Helms, program officer at the Mellon Fund, says the collaborative is just the kind of project her organization likes to support.

“The foundation has a history of trying to encourage agencies to work together, but that hasn’t happened a whole lot. It’s difficult to do,” Ms. Helms says. “So when this project emerged, we thought it would be wonderful to pilot something like this.”

Mellon, she says, hopes to learn from its experience with the Human Resources Collaborative and use it as an example for its other grant recipients.

“The fact that it was a collaborative was the primary thing that attracted me — to give it a shot and learn from it and perhaps expand in the future,” says Ms. Helms. “We’d been trying to encourage that kind of thinking, and here was a group that had decided to do it.”

Dee Delaney, executive director of the FISA Foundation, says she and her colleagues liked the collaborative concept because it showed innovation. “In a tight economy, when organizations share resources and reduce administrative overhead, it saves time and money,” she notes. In addition, she says, bringing in a consultant to help organize the partnership would give all parties equal say in decision making.

It took about a year to carve out a role for the new human-resources director, building in flexibility so her responsibilities could be redefined as needed, and creating an operating agreement that spelled out all the details of the collaborative, says Ms. Sullivan.

The three groups ran all the details past their executives and trustees, including such issues as accountability, communications, and how they could leave the collaborative if it didn’t meet their needs, says Kate Dewey, the Pittsburgh management consultant the three charities hired to help them.

Three Bosses

Ms. Simpronio’s office is at the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime, making the group’s leader, Ms. Walsh, her official supervisor. But Ms. Sullivan and Ms. Davis also have equal access to Ms. Simpronio’s services, and all help evaluate her work. In addition, Ms. Davis keeps records and writes reports to the grant makers that sponsor the collaborative, and Ms. Sullivan speaks to the public about the arrangement.

So far, the balancing act of working for three different organizations hasn’t fazed Ms. Simpronio. “I spin a lot of plates on sticks,” she says. “Fortunately, the three executives are very good about it. For the most part, I’m able to say, ‘I can’t do this because I’ve got this,’ or ‘This employee is an emergency.’ So I’m pretty much able to set my own schedule and priorities.”

The fact that the three groups are located near one another helps her manage her duties: The Pennsylvania Organization for Women in Early Recovery maintains an outpatient clinic in the same building as the Bethlehem Haven, and the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime is next door.

But most important, she says, is her bosses’ willingness to pool their skills and share responsibilities.

“The three executives not only had a relationship prior to forming this collaborative, but they worked hard on establishing their own ground rules,” she says. “They get along really well, and everybody’s committed to making this work.”

On the Job

In the eight months since Ms. Simpronio stepped into the job, says Ms. Sullivan, she has kept busy. She has made sure all of the groups’ employment forms comply with federal and state regulations, secured credit-union memberships for the two organizations that didn’t already have them, and reviewed regulations for continuing health-insurance coverage after workers leave their jobs. She is now in the midst of creating customized employee manuals for each organization.

Her bosses praise Ms. Simpronio for her skills and decisiveness and say she has made the process of hiring and firing run more smoothly — and inexpensively.

When the organizations need to hire new workers, Ms. Simpronio posts the jobs with state unemployment agencies and professional organizations, which charge little or nothing — a significant savings over the hundreds of dollars per newspaper ad the groups used to spend.

She also encourages the charity leaders to use their own personal networks, she says: “We have filled everything from executive managers to direct-care staff using this method.”

The human-resources manager also helps when tough personnel decisions must be made. Ms. Walsh says she used to wrestle for hours over the idea of having to fire someone. “We used to agonize over it,” she says. “You do feel bad for that person.” But, she adds, Ms. Simpronio has helped Ms. Walsh’s group “see that it’s better to make the decision rather than dragging it out. She helps us put it in perspective, that this is about performance, and unfortunately sometimes you don’t have any other option.”

Evelyn D. Savido, associate and clinical director of the Pennsylvania Organization for Women in Early Recovery, says that having someone trained in human resources has eased her workload and given her someone who can help guide her through some of the dilemmas she faces as a manager.

“She has helped me feel much more grounded as I move through some of the issues that come up around supervising staff, says Ms. Savido. “In the past, I would have informally talked to my sons, who have access to HR directors. Now when I have personnel-related issues, I call Nancy and I get an immediate response from her.”

Looking to the Future

The grants supporting the Human Resources Collaborative will last for another year, says Ms. Walsh, and, by that time, the groups hope to have developed a program to sustain the collaborative financially. At this stage, though, no plan is in motion, she says.

The Human Resources Collaborative has already hit snags — including when the first manager it hired in June of last year, before Ms. Simpronio, quit after only six weeks on the job.

Nobody saw it coming, says Ms. Sullivan, but the first manager’s departure didn’t derail the project. If anything, she says, that setback helped the group clarify what qualifications it sought in its human-resources director.

The first time around, the group decided to search for someone with a background in business, says Ms. Walsh, because it perceived that for-profit companies take a hard-nosed approach that charities often lack.

“Social workers have a tendency to give too many breaks, to be too understanding at times,” she says. “We needed someone who had the ability to step back and say, ‘This is a business, and this person has been given a timetable they haven’t met,’ and then take action to resolve the problem.”

But Ms. Simpronio’s background was a mix of for-profit and nonprofit social-service jobs, and the three executive directors felt that this was the ideal blend, says Ms. Walsh.

Because Ms. Simpronio had worked at social-service charities, says Ms. Walsh, she would already comprehend the pressures of that field: “When staff are up all night answering hotlines, she understands that. That’s how she was quickly able to gain the confidence of the three agencies with unique staffs all at once. They picked up quickly that she understood what their job was all about.”

The grant makers who provide support to the collaborative say they are pleased with the results so far. “They’ve had some setbacks, but those have been real learning opportunities,” says Ms. Helms.

Ms. Dewey’s company has advised other nonprofit clients from around the country that have formed collaboratives. The Human Resources Collaborative, she says, has managed to avoid the fates of so many that fail.

“What has struck me about this particular collaboration is the degree of camaraderie and commitment and the energy this collaborative has had,” Ms. Dewey says. “It just has that special jell. It’s very rare.”