Fascinatingly enough, many nonprofits nationwide do not often
merge. However, two Boston based
charities have gone outside of the norm. With over seventy years of
experience combined, Pine Street Inn and hopeFound, the two
main Boston-based organizations fighting against homelessness, have
joined forces.
This combination of minds and talents does not, surprisingly
enough, mean there will be a resulting increase in the eight
hundred beds the two agencies currently have, nor any notable
expansion of personnel to report for the new group. The central
goal is to get the combined over 1,700 men and women associated
with these administrations into permanent housing and to make this
transition easier than ever before.
One way of alleviating the stress and difficulty of homelessness
from these individuals lives is that initially with the Pine Street
Inn, homeless people are constantly kept involved in job training
programs while at hopeFound they were put through a job placement
program. Participants would frequently be referred from one
organization to another, close to 70% of the time, so a more
central merged administration with everything at the peoples
disposal is far the superior.
Mary Nee, the former Executive Director at hopeFound recently
had breakfast with Lydia Downie, the head of Pine Street Inn. The
consensus was that hopeFound was in essence finding that it would
be extremely difficult to keep their services going at the level
that would make them proud. Instead of faltering as a long-serving
nonprofit agency and abandoning their clients in need, Nee and
Downie determined the best course of action would be to merge.
The merger will go under the name of just The Pine Street Inn
which will engulf everything hopeFound had to offer to establish an
even better quality and breadth of service. Discussions have been
going on over the past year because $50,000 was needed from the
Catalyst Fund which supports voluntary collaborative ventures and
mergers among nonprofit organizations. Mayor Thomas M. Menino had
nothing but praise and support to say regarding these groups and
their strategic and careful considerations in coming to this
choice. Nee, who will now serve as a consultant during this
transition, and Downie hope to be a model of success for nonprofit
mergers worldwide. The Pine Street Inn ultimately will keep
improving their programs and efforts as they strive to officially
end homelessness in and around our great city of Boston.