Merger’s size was overstated

To the Editor

I found your article on the Second Harvest-Foodchain merger (“Two Food Charities Join Forces in One of Biggest Non-Profit Mergers,” May 4) very useful. However, I think your title and overall slant were a bit misleading.

To suggest that this union is “one of the biggest non-profit mergers” to date is erroneous. Virtually all of the hundreds of non-profit hospital mergers have been much larger by any measure.

Another interpretation may be that this is one of the largest non-hospital, community-based agency alliances ever. Again this would be incorrect: hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of community-based-agency mergers have easily exceeded this one in size. My staff and I have facilitated many larger mergers ourselves.

I suspect that the intent of the piece was to communicate the idea that this is one of the largest mergers among non-hospital, highly visible organizations.

Whatever the intent, this merger is certainly only among the first mergers of “brand-name” organizations. Reservations aside — and your article did an excellent job of identifying common concerns about mergers among non-profit leaders, as well as the answers to them — it is safe to say that more and more non-profit leaders are beginning to see mergers as a viable strategic alternative for the future, and not as a taint of failure. When that happens, they discover the power of mergers to create lasting institutions for the 21st century.

Tom McLaughlin
Non-profit management consultant
BDO Seidman
Boston