Nonprofits Worry About Wall Street Woes

By Richard Lee
Business Editor

That's a question that has been occupying the minds of nonprofit representatives who attended the CEO Breakfast Series for Nonprofits, hosted on Thursday by the United Way of Western Connecticut in Stamford.

"Wall Street is in a new fundamental era now," Christopher Bruhl, president and chief executive officer of the Business Council of Fairfield County, told the 15 participants. "The time of uncertainty was Bear Sterns in June. Now we're bordering on chaos."

The financial services breakdown that has seen Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. declare bankruptcy, AIG receive an $85 billion government bailout and Bank of America buy Merrill Lynch, could impact businesses throughout Fairfield County, causing them to rethink their financial commitments to the region.

But nonprofit veteran Peter Flierl, who represented the Hartford-based Center for Children's Advocacy at the session, is unwilling to embrace a doom-and-gloom attitude.

"I'm a cockeyed optimist. Fund raising has gone down only twice in our history - in 1933 in the depths of the Depression, and in 1946 after World War II. Nonprofits can find the dollars if they're willing to get their message out," said Flierl, a principal in Flierl, Billings & Trowbridge in Greenwich. "Nonprofits are very resilient."

Diane Rosenthal, executive director of Literacy Volunteers of America Stamford/Greenwich, said her agency is looking at alternative funding options and has teamed with St. Luke's LifeWorks to co-host a golf tournament next month to help meet the chapter's annual $500,000 budget.

"The fallout is yet to be determined. You have to anticipate and look at expenses." she said, commenting that area companies have shown a deep commitment to nonprofit organizations.

But those corporations are also facing myriad other challenges including a declining based of younger, educated workers, according to Bruhl, who said Fairfield County saw a 21 percent drop in 25- through 34-year-olds from 141,437 to 111,849 in 2004.

The county also faces the challenge of educating a growing number of immigrants into the region so they can fill jobs at companies and health care facilities. In 2006, one in three babies born in the county were born to foreign-born women. In Connecticut, the ratio was one in five.

"Without international migration, we're losing population big-time," said Bruhl, whose organization represents 240 corporations and professional services firms, 60 nonprofits and 2,700 small businesses and individual professionals.

The region has benefited from being a part of metropolitan New York, Bruhl said, but the unemployment rate has risen to an abnormal 5.5 percent.

He cited the need to improve the education levels of immigrants so they can fill high-paying positions at area companies as more younger people leave the state.

"This is a crisis. This is a vote of the future against the present in the state," Bruhl said. "The new entry level worker is the boomer - 62-year-olds are planning to work into their 70s."

Michelle James, president of the Stamford office of the United Way of Western Connecticut reinforced Bruhl's comments, adding that nonprofit agencies will become more essential as demand for their services increases.

Operating with a $1.4 million budget for 2008-2009, her unit funds programs operated by 32 partner agencies, and James doesn't expect the job to get easier.

"Companies will have less to give. I had a kickoff Wednesday at GE Asset Management," she said. "They're watching what's happening on Wall Street."

- Business Editor Richard Lee can be reached at rich.lee@scni.com or 964-2236.