Michael Williams cooks at Whistlestop (IJ photo/Frankie Frost)
3/6/2011 – Marin Independent Journal
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, 37-year-old Veronica Brady helped whip up lunch for a room full of seniors, people with disabilities and other patrons at Whistlestop’s Jackson Cafe in San Rafael.Brady, who in 2003 lost her law office job and has struggled with homelessness and low-paying employment since, is learning culinary skills and earning hourly wages as part of Homeward Bound of Marin’s Fresh Starts Culinary Academy.
In what some see as a growing trend among nonprofits struggling to make ends meet in the down economy, Whistlestop and Homeward Bound have teamed up to run the cafe and boost the quality of food there.
“We wanted to give our older adults a variety of food, to make it a little fresher,” Whistlestop CEO Joe O’Hehir said. “Plus it gives the (Homeward Bound) staff their real-life training, and they get paid for doing it.
- Michael Williams cooks a cheeseburger at Whistlestop (IJ photo/Frankie Frost)
“It is a critical success factor for nonprofits to work together,” he added. “It’s very costly if we were going to do it separately. … We’re hoping that this collaboration will really give an example to other nonprofits.”
Whistlestop is covering the operating costs, including food, and pays Homeward Bound a monthly fee for the labor, which then goes to workers like Brady. The agency pays its culinary trainees $12 to $15 an hour while they’re going through the program, said Mary Kay Sweeney, Homeward Bound’s executive director.
The cafe serves about 75 people a day for lunch, and is hoping to at least double that figure to keep the cost of food low and at least break even, in part by attracting the under-60 set with inexpensive, nutritious meals. The two nonprofits will split any proceeds evenly, O’Hehir said.
“It’s a win-win situation for both agencies,” said Rocky Packard, the social enterprise manager for Homeward Bound and a chef with 30 years of experience who is running the cafe. “We’re using it as an externship.
“They’re getting a little taste of the real world,” he said, motioning to Brady and 55-year-old Michael Williams, another program participant.
- Veronica Brady holds a sandwich at Whistlestop (IJ photo/Frankie Frost)
Brady, who now lives in an apartment in San Rafael with her husband, said she started the Fresh Starts program in February 2010 and hopes to eventually attend the Culinary Institute of America and become a French chef.
“They taught me a bunch of culinary skills like garnishing and basic stocks,” said Brady, who had cooked at home for years but didn’t know the professional basics. She also earned a ServSafe food handling certification.
Partnerships among nonprofits are “something I think that all of us understand is going to be even more necessary in the current environment,” said Thomas Peters, president and CEO of the Marin Community Foundation, a substantial funder of both Whistlestop and Homeward Bound.
“What’s happening is that particularly in this environment that’s a very challenging environment for nonprofit organizations and for schools, our experience is that groups really are looking for ways to coordinate and collaborate on their work,” Peters said. He noted that in addition to economic efficiencies, the partnership “almost always results in a better and more coordinated level of service for clients or students or anyone using the service.”
Rafael Hidalgo washes dishes in the kitchen at Whistlestop (IJ photo/Frankie Frost)
Homeward Bound and Whistlestop aren’t the only nonprofits to team up that the community foundation works with, Peters said. For example, more than a dozen groups have partnered to form the Thriving Families Network, which seeks to strengthen families and help individuals achieve self-sufficiency, among other goals, he noted.
“Over time I definitely am seeing more openness (to collaboration), and it’s clearly the cuts in resources,” said Linda Davis, CEO of the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership of Marin. “What a lot of nonprofits did when the economy collapsed is we reduced our staffing. In order to get our missions accomplished, we are looking at partnerships and collaborations in a whole different way.”
Davis said her organization has been discussing at its monthly roundtable of local executive directors ways in which nonprofits can work together, and plans to put “building capacity of organizations to have meaningful collaboration” on the agenda for the Marin Nonprofit Conference in November. She pointed to collaborations that are already taking place among Marin organizations, including the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin County, Ritter Center and the Salvation Army, as well as the Marin Human Race.
“I do think it needs to happen more and more, but I think there’s different levels … from working together on a project, to a partnership to a collaboration — a merger would be one extreme,” Davis said. “It takes a pretty sophisticated leader to put the needs of the clients ahead of the turf issues, power issues. When the (Marin) Food Bank had the recent merger (with the San Francisco Food Bank), there were a lot of egos … but what they always kept in front of them was, ‘We’re going to feed more people.’”