8 human services organizations merged with some serious pushing and financial and capacity building support from a group of local foundations. Utah does not have a similar funders network - in fact we are one of the only regions of the country without a grantmakers association. And here is just one The local Funders Collaborative, a group of eighteen foundations led by Deaconess Community Foundation president and the Saint Luke's Foundation brought the organizations together during the recent economic downturn. Nearly all employees of the eight organizations were retained in the mergers". There's strength in numbers," said Center for Families and Children president Sharon Sobol Jordan. "We'll be better off facing these challenges together than we would as competitors going after scarce dollars." And these are not small numbers: largest partnership is the merger between the Center for Families and Children, which has a $23 million budget and 325 full-time employees, and the West Side Ecumenical Ministry, which has an $8.7 million budget and 132 employees. According to the Plain Dealer,
You can read the article describing the mergers in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
