COLLABORATION AND COHABITATION
Charlotte children’s agencies join forces in new center
By Karen R. Martin
“Come on in,” Peggy Eagan beams as she greets a visitor. For months Eagan, the executive director of Charlotte’s eagerly awaited Children and Family Services Center, has been working out of borrowed office space. One of the building’s tenants-to-be, the nonprofit Communities in Schools organization, has given her part of its space as the CFSC building nears the completion of construction. “Once again, a great example of collaboration,” Eagan says with a grin.
Collaboration is what the CFSC is all about. When completed in the spring of 2003, the five-story, 100,000-square-foot center will house nine organizations—A Child’s Place, Communities in Schools, Smart Start, the Children’s Law Center, Council for Children, Youth Homes, Youth Network, Community Link and United Family Services-- that serve Charlotte-area children and families. Nearly 30,000 square feet is still available for other groups—nonprofit or otherwise—that wish to rent space, generating revenue for the center.
The main focus, says Eagan, is to provide families in crisis with a central starting point for seeking help.
“Right now, we might have a family that starts at A Child’s Place on West Morehead Street, and then has to travel (about five miles away) to Sharon Amity Road to talk to United Family Services,” she explains. Soon the family can come to the CFSC, conveniently located in downtown Charlotte, and quickly connect with the necessary organizations.
The idea for the center started at least six years ago, recalls Larry King, executive director of the Council for Children. He’d been talking with Frank Crawford, executive director of Youth Homes, commiserating over the high cost of rent.
“At some point we said, ‘We ought to look at cohabitating somewhere,’” King remembers.
The momentum grew along with the city’s plans for new projects to revitalize the city center. Soon the nine nonprofits—and their boards, packed with local business and civic leaders—were talking seriously about owning and sharing their own space.
“I’m telling you, the passion that these board members brought to this project—it’s startling. It’s terrific,” King says. “It’s also comforting to know how much can get done when boards and staff are all pulling in the same direction.”
The initial capital campaign goal was $7 million and within six months, contributions plus in-kind donations brought that figure up to $10.5 million. Moreover, individual volunteers stepped-up to offer guidance regarding legal issues, leasing, construction and finance. The carpeting for one entire floor has been donated. Subcontractors agreed to lower their bids. The center received a price break on its structural steel.
“(Construction) companies said, ‘This is for the right reason,’” Eagan explains. “So they passed along all the savings they receive for doing large business elsewhere.”
The CFSC nonprofits themselves will see cost savings from their strength in numbers. By joining their telecommunications and Internet services under one provider, for instance, they estimate they’ll save a combined $5,000 per month, at the same time receiving access to high-end cabling and high-speed Internet—equipment they otherwise likely would not be able to afford.
They also have entered into a relationship with one of the nation’s largest office-supply retailers, which gave them its best business-to-business rate, saving them about 62 percent on office supplies. Additionally, they’ll share some common areas, including a reception desk, central waiting room, training rooms and conference rooms.
In the near future the groups will easily be able to share information that will enable them to provide what King calls “wrap-around” service for clients. With just one interview and one assessment, each family’s history and other important information will be available to the organizations that can best help. This past November, representatives from each group attended a national training session about effective client information sharing.
“We’ve got a five-page wish-list” of collaborative programs, Eagan says. “We really see this (center) as a beginning rather than an end.” Someday, the groups would like to broaden their collaboration beyond the walls of the building to incorporate other organizations that offer, perhaps, a health clinic, childcare resources and workforce training programs.
“We got into this to reduce rent, and it’s turned into so much more,” says King, who says he’s learned more about construction practices than he ever imagined he’d need to know.
Eagan chuckles in agreement: “For nonprofits to build a building is an unnatural act—we don’t know what’s standard practice in the construction world.” When they didn’t know, they quickly asked.
The groups also will quickly need to adapt to a new work environment. In keeping with the organizations’ promises to their boards to keep their move-in costs low, each group’s workspace will be fitted with “systems furniture” – better known as “cubes” – since the movable walls and partitions are much less expensive than fixed-wall construction. The idea of working in cubes, Eagan says, will be a cultural change for nonprofits. Certain areas, however, will remain walled and secure, in order to maintain privacy and security of clients and their records.
The most wonderful aspect of the center’s inception – the collaboration – has also been its most difficult, King adds.
“It primarily involves a change in attitude,” King says. “You need to be able to look at the needs of others the same way you look at your own (organization’s) needs. And that takes work.”
“Collaboration is not necessarily something that comes naturally to groups,” Eagan concurs. Her position, in fact, was created to foster communications among the nine organizations in order to keep everyone focused on the end result. “The biggest hurdle is communication—making sure that everyone hears the same message and understands what it means to every group, not just their own.”
Already the groups have worked out what could have been a sticky situation: storage space. Recent client records, up to three years old, will remain on site, in collective storage spaces on the center’s second and third floor. The groups were faced with the question of how to apportion such valuable space, and decided to allocate use of the space in relation to the amount of square footage occupied by each individual organization. Youth Homes, for example, will occupy just about all of the third floor—so it will have access to most of the storage space.
Eagan expects everyone involved to remain flexible with similar day-to-day issues as the center comes to life next spring, when the sounds of active children begin to resonate through the halls and families drop in to receive one-stop assistance.
“To stay true to collaboration, you need to keep an eye on that vision,” says Eagan. “No matter what the chaos is around us, that’s what we all hold on to.”
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Contact information:
For more information contact:
Peggy Eagan
Children and Family Services Center Inc.
601 East 5th Street, Suite 100
Charlotte, NC 28202
704-377-2899
Margin note:
The Duke Endowment awarded $2 million in grants to help build the Children and Family Services Center.
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