It takes dollars: County commissioners eye non-profit funding
By Steve Herring
Published in News on February 1, 2015 1:50 AM
sherring@newsargus.com
The number of nonprofit organizations receiving county funding, and the amounts they get, could look drastically different in next year's budget.
For the past two years, some commissioners, particularly Joe Daughtery, have questioned doling out tax dollars to nonprofits and have campaigned to curtail the practice.
In 2013, Daughtery failed in his attempt to slice county funding for WATCH (Wayne Action Teams for Community Health) in half.
He argued that the agency had a sizable fund balance and questioned why the funding request had increased.
Literacy Connections, which was cut, also drew intense scrutiny, particularly because of its English as a Second Language classes.
There are more than 100 nonprofit agencies doing "excellent work" throughout the community, County Manager George Wood wrote in a memo to commissioners.
However, the issue is not their value to the community, but whether they should be subsidized by tax dollars, he said.
People should make their own decisions on which charities to support, instead of having the county make that choice for them, Wood added.
Also, Wood, and the commissioners say any such requests should only be considered once a year as a part of the normal budget process.
To that end, commissioners have told Wood to craft a policy on how the county would deal with nonprofit funding requests going forward.
Wood is recommending that funding be tired to a nonprofit's mission and that it have a direct connection with county-provided services and its "core mission."
For example, the county helps fund the Friends of Seymour Johnson because of the base's major economic development impact on the community, he said.
Also, the county is in the business of economic development so it funds the Wayne County Development Alliance Inc., Wood said.
Officials with some of the agencies receiving the most in county funding say they not only meet that criteria, but that the county would end up spending even more if not for their services.
The county funds 22 of what it calls "outside agencies." All but two, the Mount Olive Airport ($33,281) and the GATEWAY transportation system ($94,279), are considered traditional nonprofit.
Five of the nonprofits funded in Wayne County's 2014-15 budget account for $771,232 -- slightly more than 67 percent -- of the $1,149,592 allocated for the outside agencies.
They are WATCH, $220,000; WISH (Wayne Initiative for School Health), $170,000; Friends of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, $150,000; Communities in Schools, $130,000; and Literacy Connections, $101,232.
The $1,149,592 for the 22 outside agencies is up by $98,941 over the $1,050,651 budgeted in 2013-14.
The biggest change is funding for activities involving Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.
The county budgeted $85,000 (of which $56,224.51 was paid) in 2012-13 for the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base Support Council. The county budgeted $60,000 in 2013-14 (of which $37,983 was paid).
That organization was replaced this past year with the Friends of Seymour Johnson, which the county budgeted $150,000 for in 2014-15.
As of Dec. 31, $63,167 had been paid.
The increase was to cover the expenses of adding a Washington, D.C., lobbyist and a Raleigh lobbyist to watch legislative and administrative decisions that might affect the base. Goldsboro provides an equal amount of funding.
Another $15,000 that was not in the 2013-14 budget was appropriated for sponsorship of the base's Wings Over Wayne Air Show, which is set for May.
Also new in 2014-15 is $1,000 for the Wayne County Law Enforcement Association.
WATCH Executive Director Sissy Lee-Elmore said the $200,000 pays for a nurse practitioner and physician assistant, clinical support staff (medical office assistants and front office clerks) and a medical records-screening-interview new patients clerk -- basically the people who work with patients.
WATCH operates under the auspices of Wayne Memorial Hospital, which pays Mrs. Lee-Elmore's salary.
The Goldsboro Family Y donates space for one of WATCH's three clinics, but the hospital supports the mobile unit and the campus clinic.
"We have several grants, but they do not cover the full budget," she said. "Without the money from the county, we would not have enough coming in to cover the clinical staff. We are taking on an average of 60 new patients each month. We average 1,100 patient visits per month."
If WATCH did not exist, about 50 percent of its clients would go to an already crowded hospital emergency department, which is why the hospital is "so generous" to WATCH, Mrs. Lee-Elmore said. Those visits also are more expensive.
The other 50 percent would go to the Health Department, and it does not have the capacity to serve those people, she said.
"We leverage free labs and $2 million in free medications for our patients with chronic diseases," Mrs. Lee-Elmore said. "We have local physicians who volunteer their time with us. The hospital calls us directly when they are discharging an uninsured patient from the floor or from (the emergency department) because they need follow-up within seven days. We are taking an average of one a day as referrals from them.
"All of the grants we have require local matching money. We raise $100,000 locally privately and this $220,000 from the county. Also the city has been giving us $20,000. So about a third of WATCH's total income and expenses is from local money. We are a bargain."
Like WATCH, the WISH wellness outreach program, is operated through Wayne Memorial Hospital.
The program operates clinics in six schools -- Southern Wayne and Goldsboro high schools, Mount Olive, Brogden and Dillard middle schools and Wayne Academy.
The centers are credentialed by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and 89 percent of the county public schools student population participates in the program.
Literacy Connections is using its 2014-15 county appropriations to provide for its 2.5 staff positions.
They include Executive Director Pat Yates; an agency administrator who does the bookkeeping, database entry and management, facility supervision and coordinates the volunteer program; and a registrar, a half-time position, who acts as the program receptionist, manages the organization's inventory, registers new students, manages test records and tests students every 60 hours of instruction for progress, provides student assistance and laboratory supervision.
The agency has three other positions, one half-time (financial education program manager) and two 36-hour-a-week AmeriCorps workers who serve as instructors and tutors, and as the agency's media and agency liaisons.
Those positions are funded by United Way of Wayne County (financial education program manager), AmeriCorps and N.C. LiteracyCorps and City of Goldsboro grants (AmeriCorps positions).
"Literacy Connections meets the criteria as an outside agency to the county in four ways," Ms. Yates said. "Our programs and services are appropriate to the missions and priorities of the county: education, employment and economic development. We are fully transparent and accountable, providing the county with copies of our full monthly budget, all reports and accounts that are usual or requested.
"We operate in partnership with a large number of county and state agencies to build a more effective network of services to improve the quality of life for everyone in Wayne County. We constantly seek out varied funding streams to support our programs and services, and we sponsor several annual fundraisers."
Communities in Schools uses the county funding to run the Success Coach Program at Goldsboro and Southern Wayne high schools, and Mount Olive, Brogden, Spring Creek and Grantham middle schools.
Goldsboro also appropriates some money to help fund the success coach position at Goldsboro High School.
"This money is extremely important as we serve students in Wayne County Public Schools," said Selena Bennett, executive director. "We provide an additional layer of support as we work with Wayne County Public Schools. If we did not receive this funding, we would have to make extreme cuts in the services that we provide at our six schools. The county has made a commitment to helping improve the graduation rate in Wayne County.
"With these additional positions that CIS provides to our schools, we believe we are making a difference in this county. We are targeting the middle schools and high schools where we believe we need to be placed in order to help 'move the needle' in regards to high school graduation. By targeting middle schools, we hope to intervene before a student gets too far along and has already given up on themselves. The two high schools that we have targeted have shown improved graduation rates."