Drug-Abuse Prevention Group Leader Says Principles Learned in Early Jobs Guided Her

ENTRY LEVEL

Mary Pat Angelini

Age: 48

First nonprofit job: Assistant director, Mt. Rogers Psycho-Social Program at Friendship House, Community Services Board, Marion, Va.

Current job: Executive director, Prevention First, Oakhurst, N.J.

While most 11-year-olds I knew were anxious to go to carnivals, I was more interested in organizing one in my backyard to raise money for muscular dystrophy. That was my first taste of the satisfaction of working for a cause. Since then, I’ve never thought about doing anything else.

I graduated in 1977 from East Tennessee State University with a bachelor’s degree in social welfare. While opportunities in my chosen field — school social work — were scarce, I began working with Friendship House, a home for mentally ill men and women who were being released from what was then called Southwestern State Hospital, in Marion, Va.

The majority of my clients were older people who had spent the bulk of their adult lives in institutions; all of them were on disability and living in boarding homes. Part of my job was to help them learn basic life skills, such as appropriate social behavior. However, the clients and staff members taught me as much as I taught them. The importance of kindness, the diversity of needs that individuals have, and the respect that all individuals deserve were just a few of the career and life lessons that were reinforced during my time there.

During my career, I’ve developed a number of “rules.” One of my most valued is to always keep my word. If I promise to do something, even something insignificant, I make sure I follow through. I know that sounds simplistic, but the longer I’m around, the more I see people who don’t understand how important that is.

One of my other rules is to preserve my integrity and that of my organization above all. To a nonprofit organization, there can be no greater asset. Integrity has to be at the heart of what you do, whom you hire, and how you interact with the people you serve. And integrity is crucial when it comes to earning the public’s trust.

My career choices have given me a solid foundation and a diversity of skills. In 1983, I made the decision to return to my childhood home in New Jersey with my young daughter after a divorce. Accepting a position as coordinator of vocational services with Monmouth Medical Center’s Pollak Behavioral Health Services clinic, in Long Branch, I again worked with the mentally ill, helping them find jobs. In that position, I helped to link businesses, which needed to find reliable, skilled employees, with clients, who needed to learn about basic job skills.

While the work was gratifying, I also saw a need for attention to the growing and disturbing issues surrounding substance abuse in our communities. So, when a position opened in the Freehold [N.J.] office of Monmouth County’s Board of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services, I jumped at the chance to take on the challenge.

In that post, I coordinated 38 local coalitions working to prevent drug abuse. The board did wonderful work, but I sought more challenge in my life. The opportunity presented itself when I met with one of our county-funded agencies — it was closing its doors and the phone messages were being forwarded to another agency. When I heard that I sped home and told my husband that I knew I could do this work and that I knew the agency could work. Then the board of trustees decided to give the agency one last shot and I interviewed and got the job.

Over the past decade, that tiny agency with a $125,000 budget has grown into Prevention First, one of the area’s leaders in substance-abuse and violence prevention. Our operating budget has soared to $1.4-million and we are continuing our expansion. The main reason for our success is that we’re filling the need for an organization to provide research-based substance-abuse prevention. The field of prevention has grown significantly in the last two decades.

We developed programs for children who were in jeopardy of becoming part of the cycle of addiction and violence and developed research-based programs that work for that population. We also developed workplace substance-abuse prevention programs as well as workshops on violence in the media, bullying, specific substance abuses, and other components that serve individual needs.

Once we had the “product” — good people, effective programs — in place, I needed to begin rebuilding relationships that would help us get the funding, exposure, and assistance that we needed. From my work with the county government, I had a lot of good contacts and I knew where to learn about grant opportunities. By joining other committees, networking, researching, marketing, and writing an endless number of grant proposals, we were soon on our way to financial stability and then to aggressive growth.

Throughout my career, the “rules” have served me well. I’ve kept in mind the importance of follow-through on commitments, as well as of kindness and respect when it comes to working with clients and to building relationships. However, kindness should not be mistaken for passivity — it’s critical for effective nonprofit management to be assertive, and at times aggressive, when it comes to fighting for the funding, programs, and well-being of the causes in which we believe so strongly.

My short formula for successful nonprofit management has been to cultivate the trust of the public and our key stakeholders, build a reputation for excellence, and keep our audiences informed about the work we’re doing. When these activities are done under the auspices of rule number one — integrity above all else — you’ve got the map for success. — As told to Mary E. Medland

How did your first work experiences shape your current nonprofit career? Tell us at entrylevel@philanthropy.com. Your story may appear in a future edition of Entry Level.