August 17, 2006 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Hurricane Katrina sent five feet of putrid water spilling into the offices of My House Center for Learning, a
New Orleans charity that serves troubled youngsters. Faced with the moldy, uninhabitable mess, My House Center turned into a kitchen-table operation, as the charity’s staff members began managing what was left of the organization from their homes.
Such impromptu arrangements have been common among the city’s waterlogged charities. Help for some of the battered organizations finally arrived this month, when the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations joined with United Nonprofits of New Orleans, a post-Katrina collaboration of area charities, to open 10,000 square feet of office space in an old department store downtown.
Nonprofit Central, as the converted store is now called, is the result of the two organizations’ joint effort to raise the nearly $400,000 needed to lease, renovate, and staff the facility. It is now leasing offices to two nonprofit organizations at below-market rates, and providing shared space to six others free for three months. Grants were provided by the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, in Baton Rouge, the Humana Foundation, in Louisville, Ky., and the Steelcase Foundation, in Grand Rapids, Mich., among others. Used office furniture was donated by SRS Technologies, a Virginia engineering firm.
My House Center was one of the first groups to move in, after successfully completing an application process that includes review by a committee to make sure that each tenant organization has a working board and stable operations in place.
The small charity is taking advantage of Nonprofit Central’s free shared office space, with access to meeting rooms, computers, and wireless Internet access. In addition, it has support from the new facility’s staff of eight, who manage the building and assist resident charities with administrative and other duties.
There are lot of distractions working at home, says Frederica Perriott, My House Center’s program director. “It really helps to have some place to go.” (The charity’s still-soggy offices won’t be repaired until sometime next year.)
The Goodwork Network, which helps low-income entrepreneurs start businesses, and AmeriCorps, which needs office space for its grantees, have agreed to lease permanent space in the facility.
As news of Nonprofit Central has spread, so has local charities’ desire to occupy its offices, says Melissa Flournoy, president of the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations. Four groups, she says, have already expressed interest in the facility’s one remaining office space.
“A lot of people have been running their organization out of their cars or houses,” says Ms. Flournoy, estimating that 60 percent of the association’s 1,000 members were “dramatically affected” by Hurricane Katrina.
Looking ahead, the fledgling facility will undergo “evolutionary” development as its founders and staff, with input from tenants, determine the best mix of services to offer, says Lisa Kaichen, Nonprofit Central’s new director, now dividing her time between the center and serving as a manager at the GPOA Foundation in Mandeville, La., which supports a variety of children’s charities. Ms. Kaichen gained experience for her new job by helping several of the foundation’s displaced grantees return to work last fall.
Beyond simply providing office space, Ms. Kaichen says, Nonprofit Central plans to seek additional donations, both to cover its operating costs in coming years and to provide training in grant-proposal writing, marketing, and financial management to charities looking to get back on their feet.
“We have 12 months of operating costs,” or about $300,000, in hand, says Ms. Flournoy, noting that fees paid by tenants will provide just $50,000 of Nonprofit Central’s annual costs. She adds: “We are looking at this as an experiment to meet the needs of nonprofits.”
