It happened! The merger of two local nonprofits, Operation Youth and the Teen Center, was announced over the weekend at the elegant residence of supporters Chip and Terri Roberson.
Such a development has been talked about for years, as participants in and observers of the nonprofit world have pondered how to improve overall efficiency. With fewer dollars coming into their coffers in recent years, those discussions have had greater urgency.
That’s the holy grail of nonprofits – providing benefits with minimal overhead – and different groups have talked on occasion about sharing facilities and even office staff. That happens informally now, and we note CommonBond Foundation as an example: its conference room is offered to other nonprofits, a number of which have keys and use its central location on West Napa Street for regular meetings.
For Operation Youth and the Teen Center, there was very nice alignment of mission, with their common focus on teens. Each has an existing base of operations – The Shop on Eighth Street East and the new Teen Center in Agua Caliente, respectively – and an existing clientele. This creates exciting cross-cultural prospects from shared activities, and the No Name Cafe at Sonoma Valley High School, run by Operation Youth, provides an easy location to encourage that.
That reminds us of a funny story … When the cafe at the high school was being developed by representatives from some of the local service clubs, the adults consciously decided not to name the space, wanting the students to adopt it as their own. So it was referred to, smilingly, as the “no name cafe,” with full expectation that the students would soon call it “the Dragon’s Den” or some other catchy name. But the students didn’t, and the placeholder “No Name” was never supplanted.
Is this merger to become a model for other nonprofits? Certainly, the merger of Operation Youth and the Teen Center makes sense, and there are a lot of possible candidates. Vineyard Workers Services was recently taken back under the wing of La Luz, for example. Yet Nuestra Voz is now striking out on its own, developing its own identity. The newcomer Sonoma Valley Fund began about three years ago, and it has been well received. These developments are natural, as organizations seek to energize volunteers and accommodate donors.
But the Boys & Girls Club and the Community Center? Friends of the Sebastiani Theatre and Sonoma Plaza Improvement? The Ecology Center and Friends of Sonoma’s Cemeteries? The Sonoma Valley Education Foundation and the Mentoring Alliance? While these pairs may have some alignment of interest, and while all of these groups surely would like to have more funding and fewer costs, mergers wouldn’t make much sense. In these cases and others, there are distinctions in assets, missions, and funding sources that will keep them as separate entities, and that’s just fine.
It’s been said that, after tourism and wine, nonprofits are Sonoma’s biggest industry; perhaps that’s true by some measure. We’ve always taken that saying as a compliment for Sonoma Valley residents, seemingly generous by nature and attentive to the needs of others. We appreciate the work of new co-presidents John Randall and Osias Encarnacion, the other officers and all the many volunteers supporting the new organization.
In our view, variety is the “spice” of community service, and we’re thankful to be a part of this energetic place. As a community that cares about our teens, let’s be sure to mark Friday, June 4 on our calendars now, to reserve that date for the second annual Bryant Park West fashion show in support of the temporarily named “Sonoma Valley Teen Services.”
