Innovative Solutions for Non-Profits

During this fiscal year, a multi-year project with the providence in-town churches association (pica), olneyville housing, and the rhode island community food bank resulted in the relocation of the food pantry serving the olneyville neighborhood to a new site provided by olneyville housing. This was accomplished with a $10,000 grant from Innovative solutions.during 2013, the diocese of providence announced their intention to close the food pantry that they had been operating for many years, serving low income families in the olneyville section of providence. With no alternative food pantries nearby, a vital service would be lost to this community in need.to avert this loss, Innovative Solutions convened a meeting of the rhode island community food bank (fb), olneyville housing (oh), and pica (operator of the largest food pantry in providence). As the provider of food to the pantry, the fb agreed to continue to provide this service and to provide a grant for new equipment, if a new site could be found in the neighborhood. Oh agreed to provide space for a new food pantry, rent free.early this year, with funding provided by Innovative Solutions, the united way, and the fb, the new site was opened. It has been operating successfully, serving more families than the prior location, and has operated at better efficiency as a result of combining much of the overhead of the previous pantry with pica's.another of Innovative Solutions' successes this year was the technical and financial support provided to the merger of big brothers and big sisters of the ocean state and big brothers of rhode island. Both of these organizations shared the mission of mentoring at risk children between 7 and 14.originally established as big sisters of rhode island, in 2010, recognizing a large demand, they changed their name to big brothers and big sisters of the ocean state (bbbsos) and expanded their mission to include boys. They are the state's largest mentoring organization, serving over 500 children each year.big brothers of ri (bbri) is a smaller organization serving 100 boys each year and in recent years began to suffer the financial pressures that many Non-Profits experenced during that period. In 2014, faced with the potential closing of their agency, we began merger discussions between bbri and bbbsos. During these discussions, it was discovered that, by closing the bbri site and relocating their operations to the bbbsos site, and eliminating redundant management staff, the combined agencies would become financially viable. Forecasts are also that they will be able to serve additional clients without increasing overall cost.a memorandum of understanding was signed, and bbbsos took over management of bbri. The combined organizations will continue to be called big brothers and big sisters of the ocean state. The final documents for merger are being prepared, and at the closing (within the next 8 weeks), Innovative Solutions will provide a $5,000 grant to support the one time costs associated with this merger. These include combining accounting and human resource systems, and legal and accounting expenses.also, this year, very extensive work was done with the nickerson community center (ncc) in providence. Founded in 1884, ncc provides: after school programs, early childhood education, non-clinical case management, youth and adult recreational programs, senior programs and veteran's housing to low income families in the olneyville, manton, and valley neighborhoods of providence.during calendar year 2013, as a result of numerous management changes and poor financial management, the agency was faced with closure and the neighborhood was faced with losing this important resource.because of the work Innovative Solutions had done with the nowell leadership academy (charter high school serving single parents and pregnant students with online learning), we were aware that they were looking for a site for a providence campus. A deal was brokered with ncc to rent space in their building for this campus for $50,000/year. While this did not solve ncc's financial problems, it did provide time for ncc to find an appropriate merger partner.again, Innovative Solutions stepped in. Two years ago, we had provided financial support and consulting to the merger of rhode island's two ywca organizations. This merger had proven to be extremely successful, and we were aware that the ywca was looking to expand their services to providence.as the ywca has experience in providing many of the services the ncc does, there seemed to be the basis for merger discussions. Innovative Solutions convened a meeting between the executive director of the ywca and the board president of ncc.after lengthy discussions, ncc agreed to contract with the ywca to manage operations of ncc while merger discussions continued. This step alone saved ncc over $100,000/year, at a time when they were literally weeks away from closing.the problems that the ywca faced in a final merger were numerous. Perhaps, the most significant was the over $3,000,000 debt of ncc. Financially, the operations of the combined organizations was viable; however, they would not be able to support the debt service going forward.we also needed legislation passed to assure that the ywca would be property tax exempt statewide, and the veteran's administration to agree to the transfer of their contract with ncc to the ywca upon completion of the merger.all of this was accomplished. New legislation was passed in the state legislature's most recent session. Verbal assurance has been received from the veteran's administration with written documentation expected shortly. The debt has been reduced by the sale of some underutilized properties and we are in negotiations with ncc's banks and are confident that the remaining balance will be significantly reduced. The final debt will be satisfied by bonds that are scheduled to be released in the next two or three weeks.a memorandum of understanding has been signed and Innovative Solutions has agreed to provide $10,000 in support of this merger at the closing which is anticipated to take place in late calendar year 2014.

See attached statement - "additional information"