May 15, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
Family Resources and the Parental Stress Center were two Pittsburgh organizations working only blocks from each other on the same cause: preventing child abuse and helping kids who suffer from it. So it made sense that over the years, the groups had flirted with merging or creating some type of collaboration. A couple of years ago they even wrote a document they called a joint vision statement.
But the two sides could never agree on what a combined organization would look like, who would run it, and what the board makeup would be.
Then, in the summer of 2009, a budget impasse in Pennsylvania meant the state couldn’t pay its bills, and like other nonprofit groups that relied on government contract money, the Parental Stress Center faced a fiscal crisis. Family Resources stepped into lend the center roughly half a million dollars. It also started a process to acquire the group.
“They would have gone out of business because of the cash-flow problem,” says Walter Howard Smith Jr., executive director of Family Resources. “If they had done that and declared bankruptcy, there would have been a gap in services.”
Instead, he says, Family Resources last year acquired the Parental Stress Center, taking over its facility and absorbing its programs and contracts.
Judge Lisa Pupo Lenihan, president of the center’s board, says the decision to fold was very emotional for many of the longtime trustees but that the group, which had suffered layoffs, had no choice.
“Some board members thought that Family Resources got the better deal, but in the end, it was a good thing for our clients,” says Judge Lenihan. “It turned out to be the best way for us to serve them.”
