Non-Profit Leadership: The Clintonville-Beechwold Community Resources Center

The Clintonville-Beechwold Community Resources Center (CRC), out of Columbus, Ohio, is a legacy of love and hope. That legacy has come from a variety of thoughtful decisions about stewardship to ourselves and to our community that have left a tremendous impact on our organization. Perhaps you’ll discover some inspiration from what we’ve done and apply it toward your own endeavors.

CRC was started by the congregation of the North Broadway United Methodist Church in 1971 and nurtured by support from other churches, organizations, businesses and individual members of the community through almost 50 years.  In that time, tens of thousands of lives have been enriched by our nonprofit.  CRC promotes self-sufficiency while respecting individual worth, rights and dignity.  All people who come to serve or be served are enriched.

One of the things that makes CRC different is our commitment to serving our community — including staff members. One of CRC’s core beliefs is that each individual is valuable in our society, and we apply this principle to those we serve as well as to those who serve:  our employees and volunteers.   The reason our staff stays committed to CRC’s mission is the flexibility they have in accomplishing it.

For example, we work hard to encourage a culture of giving. Our philosophy is characterized by our respect for the self-sufficiency, social integration and self-determination of the people we serve alongside. We work to cultivate this environment through our recruitment, hiring, promotion and retention strategies.  CRC hires top-notch social workers and gives them the tractability needed to carry out our mission.

We also embrace diversity and self-worth.  In addition to hiring and retaining staff, interns are included in the weekly staff meetings, where their particular talents are shared and utilized. We once had an intern from Israel who helped greatly in serving the Muslim family service (food pantry) clients. International social workers have given us insight into cultures and community needs around the world.

Our results have paid off. In 2011, we used an assessment tool provided by the United Way to measure our organization’s cultural competency.  In part of this study, we looked at average tenure for the social assistance profession and found that the average person stayed in the profession for two years and nine months. Tenure in all professions averaged about four years during that same time period.  On the other hand, CRC’s average for management staff was almost nine years, which is more than three times the industry average.

We are proud that CRC is unique in the commitment and longevity of our staff.  Many of our program directors, social workers, support staff and trustees have been here for at least a decade, if not two decades.  We retain our staff because, once you start working for CRC, and you see the results of our service to our staff and to the community, your work becomes a labor of love.