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The lack of funding from the Juvenile Welfare Board will leave Girls Inc. of Pinellas without a third of its budget.
By ANNE LINDBERG, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 20, 2003
PINELLAS PARK -- Leaders of Girls Inc. are reeling from a massive funding cut that will likely force the group to abridge some of its programs.
It's unclear which programs will be affected by the Juvenile Welfare Board's decision to eliminate its $256,533 contribution to the agency, said Betty Crames, executive director of Girls Inc. of Pinellas. The JWB's contribution represented a little more than a third -- about 37 percent -- of the group's $700,000 annual budget.
The cuts are the latest in a line of troubles for Girls Inc., which Crames said had endured financial woes since the early 1990s but managed to resolve its problems beginning in late 2002.
"We have no problems financially if we're not cut this substantial amount," Crames said Friday. "We have a tremendous amount of assets and very little debt."
The JWB disagreed; fiscal concerns were one reason listed for terminating its funding. Lisa Sahulka, director of programs and financing for JWB, also said Girls Inc. was not living up to the terms of its contract to provide services to a set number of kids.
Crames denied the charges and blamed JWB, saying a succession of contract overseers each had different viewpoints.
"Their staff turnover has been phenomenal, I've never seen anything like it," Crames said. "It's just being changed midstream."
Sahulka said the JWB is updating its strategic plan, making sure all the agencies it supported were performing up to par as well as meeting the board's goals. A "quite extensive action" affected 46 of the 142 programs that JWB funded.
Some of the numbers:
JWB eliminated 14 agencies, including Girls Inc., from the list of 75 it funded. In some cases, money that would have gone to those programs will go to other agencies to finance similar programs.
Among those cut are the Bayhead Teen Center in Largo and Hospice's Children's Family Support program.
And while 19 programs were eliminated from JWB funding, others were merged or relocated to other agencies.
Some of those programs include the Healthy Families Support Initiative sponsored by Morton Plant Mease, which will be consolidated with the Department of Health's Healthy Families program. The Urban Fellowship program sponsored by the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance Human Services and Development will be run out of the Sanderlin Center.
The cuts ranged from about $5,000 to a high of $256,533, which went to Girls Inc., which has traditionally provided after-school and summer programs for girls 5-17 that focused on career development, self-sufficiency, health, leadership, sports and culture.
The non-profit organization was founded about 40 years ago as Girls Clubs. The three clubs in St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Pinellas Park merged in the early 1990s as Girls Inc.
By 1997, the group was running $40,000 in the red. In August 2000, it withdrew as the operator of Play and Learn, a preschool day care center run out of the Walter Fuller Community Center.
In February 2002, the group closed its St. Petersburg site after JWB cut $50,298 from its annual allocation.
But the problems were not just financial. In June 1998, the JWB gave the organization $60,665 to provide a teen pregnancy prevention program. A site visit in May 1999 showed the program being offered was not the one JWB had agreed to support, according to JWB records.
JWB agreed that the financial standing of Girls Inc. has improved since Crames took over in late 2002, but said the organization "is still not healthy from a financial perspective."
Among the concerns cited in the JWB report are high administrative fees -- about 20 percent of the program; and a "dramatic" increase in the percent of income that goes to salaries.
Additionally, the JWB report said Girls Inc. has failed to serve the number of kids it agreed to help -- 417 girls instead of 500.
Crames said she could not comment on things that happened before she took over. But she denied Girls Inc. is in financial trouble.
She also denied the group has violated the contract. The problem, she said, is that Girls Inc. had opened a before-school program that served little boys. The idea, Crames said, was to provide needed services for girls and their families. But JWB told Girls Inc. it could not count the boys as part of the program.
Despite the problems, Sahulka said JWB would continue to fund gender-specific programs, just not directly to Girls Inc. A solution would be for Girls Inc. to operate its program under the oversight of the YWCA. JWB would provide the money and the YWCA would make sure it was spent correctly.
"We will not fund Girls Inc. directly," Sahulka said.
But that might not be something Girls Inc. is interested in doing, Crames said. Even if a merger is on the horizon, Girls Inc. has not decided on a partner.
The Juvenile Welfare Board eliminated funding for 19 of the 142 programs it supported. Here are some of those programs and the amount they were receiving.
Hospice's Children's Family Support Program -- $92,181
Marriage and Family Center's Family Foundation -- 66,291
Girls Inc. of Pinellas -- 256,533
Friends of the Deaf's Neighborhood Family Center -- 204,094
Area Agency on Aging's Fitness is Ageless program -- 34,157
City of Largo's Bayhead Teen Center -- 52,761
Consumer Credit Counseling -- 68,762
Pathfinder's Retooling for Challenge -- 23,986
Sgt. Allen Moore's Safehouse of North Greenwood -- 147,577
Suncoast Center for Community Mental Health's Homeless Outreach Support -29,291
UNO Fed. Community Services' planning grant -- 5,000
YWCA of the Suncoast's Project Worth -- 10,382
Bethel's Black History Pageant -- 5,000
YWCA Week Without Violence -- 5,000
Heritage Festival -- 5,000
Stageworks -- 5,000
-- Source: Juvenile Welfare Board