A recent board meeting of the Las Vegas-Clark County Urban League saw a state official laud the still-new nonprofit organization for its ramped-up efforts in the past six months.
The $4.5 million organization is officially 4 years old but most of its grants have come in the past 18 months. It has added several programs since December.
Those programs include one to help former prisoners rejoin society, another for youth and still another for helping parents read with their children — all told, “an impressive amount ... to launch” in so little time, Gary Gobelman, grants administrator for the state Health and Human Services Department, told the Urban League board.
Then he launched into a three-page, 19-item report on things the organization needs to do to make sure it adequately manages the nearly $3 million the state oversees.
Nearly last but not least, Item No. 17, developing a system to track cash flow, was “the biggest, I think everyone would agree,” Gobelman said. The report said this was important because there are “concerns about agency ability to meet its ongoing obligations.”
A few days after the meeting, Gobelman said the Urban League has a system, but “we had difficulty following it.”
Until a new system is created, he said, “we aren’t going to know if there’s a cash flow issue.”
Ray Clarke, Urban League chief executive, said he agreed with the state’s assessment of the situation and added that his organization would come up with a new method to track cash flow by September.
Board members also discussed the need to consider cutting back some programs, just in case they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, financially speaking.
“We need to take a hard look at programs,” said board member Ray Specht, who is vice chairman of Toyota Financial Savings Bank. “I’m not advocating that we cut back, just, in the interest of fiscal responsibility, I think we should take a look.”
Clarke said it was important to put the issue “in context.”
“We’re not doing anything different than other nonprofits,” he added, describing the process of tying programs to his organization’s “strategic plan.”
In any case, he said, the effect of any cutbacks “on the community and the staff would be minimal.”
Staff will prepare a recommendation about programs in 30 days for the board to consider, Clarke said.
Asked if the need to track cash flow better was related to the need to consider cutting programs, the chief executive said, “they’re related because they both have to do with the budget.”
•••
On July 1, a government agency obtained something it needs for a lower price after shopping around as normal people do, instead of spending more just because it can.
The agency, the Southern Nevada Workforce Investment Board, found an office with rent less than half of what it had been paying since 2005. The board hands out millions in federal dollars to local nonprofit organizations to train people for jobs.
It had been paying more than $25,000 a month in rent for three times as much space as it needed for the past three years.
No longer.
The agency’s new digs, near West Lake Mead and North Rancho boulevards, will cost about $10,000 a month. Bottom line: During the next year, $187,000 in public funds will go to help out-of-work and underemployed people instead of into a landlord’s bank account.
John Ball, 16 months into his job as executive director, said he can guess only that the agency’s former cavernous and pricey headquarters was chosen in 2005 because the budget appeared flush at the time, having gotten increases in federal funding for four years running. The trend was reversed that same year, however, and funding didn’t go back up until this year — now more than $8 million.
The allotment to the agency is based on unemployment rates and lost jobs. So Ball says he’s keenly aware of what having more money means, and where it should go.
“The reason we have more funding is because citizens are in a sinking economy,” he said. “So everything we can do to help them should be done.”
From the Las Vegas Sun
Posts
