The founder of Future Chefs can focus on her nonprofit's mission of training city youth for jobs in the food industry because she has enlisted the help of one of the country's top nonprofit innovation centers to take care of the business end.
"If I had to take time away from fulfilling our mission to get up to speed on how to manage the business end of this, I would have failed," said Toni Elka, founder and executive director of Future Chefs.
Boston's Third Sector New England manages Future Chefs' budget, does its payroll, negotiates its leases, does its yearly audit and helps with hiring and diversity issues. The group even extends a tax-exempt umbrella for Future Chefs and other early stage nonprofits.
"Third Sector is a trusted partner with a great track record that provides stability and helps us grow," said Elka, who started the organization herself using Boston school kitchens, but now has six full-time employees and a new teaching kitchen in the South End. The organization has placed 85 students in restaurant jobs including 16 at Aramark at Fenway.
The "Third" in Third Sector stands for the nonprofit world, or the third pillar after government and business.
The nonprofit sector is certainly no slouch in the Bay State, where one of seven workers or some 455,900 employees is employed at a tax-exempt entity, according to a recent report by the Boston Foundation. Massachusetts nonprofits generate $234 billion in revenue annually.
And Third Sector, founded in 1959, has been at the forefront of promoting social justice and helping nonprofits working for change to grow and add workers to fulfill their missions.
"Traditionally, working in the nonprofit sector has not been seen as worthy as toiling in the corporate sector," said Jonathan Spack, Third Sector's executive director. "Nonprofits do pay less than corporations, but there's an opportunity to effect change. What we try to do here and advise our clients is to make it a respectable and desirable career path for young people with good benefits and pay that can support a family. So it's not just something people do for a year or two, but stay on as a career."
Third Sector's mantra is that well-managed organizations are key to attracting and maintaining talented people looking to make a difference in the world. It doesn't just preach good management, but practices it by doing the administrative work for 41 nonprofits, in addition to Future Chefs.
Third Sector also helps its nonprofit clients find new chief executives and create leadership paths for talented employees. And Spack says that 91 percent of the nonprofit executives that the organization has placed in the past five years are still in those positions today.
Another important part of the organization is its grant-making Inclusion Initiative that helps nonprofit clients hire a more diverse workforce that's reflective of the communities they serve.
After 22 years of giving grants to 102 organizations, Third Sector has changed gears and is now directing funds not to individual nonprofits, but to networks that include businesses and faith-based organizations.
"Networks seem to be a more effective way to make change faster," said Ayeesha Lane, program manager for Third Sector's Inclusion Initiative. "Diversity can sometimes just be about numbers. But just because you hire minorities, it doesn't mean they will stay. What we do with our nonprofit clients is to help them develop inclusion in the workplace. That means making people feel they can bring their whole selves to work, and that their perspectives and cultural insights are seen as valuable."
Third Sector doesn't just give money, Lane added. It provides ongoing support and advice even to nonprofits that received grants years ago.
Third Sector owns an eight-story building on South Street that it bought in 2003 and, in addition to its staff, its floors house dozens of other organizations that fit its mission for social change. Those nonprofits provide job training and tutoring, pursue economic development and justice in poor communities, or focus on disability rights and sustainability issues, such as urban gardening and green practices in restaurants.
The basement of the building has a large, shared office area, where smaller nonprofits pay a reduced rent for incubator-like work space.
Third Sector supports itself from rent and by charging for its services, but not just any nonprofit qualifies. Third Sector takes a percentage of its clients' budgets to pay the employees that handle those nonprofits' business matters. Most clients are in Boston, but some are in other parts of the country.
Third Sector doesn't kick nonprofits out of the shared space as a for-profit incubator space might.
Some groups, such as the Chefs Collaborative, a nonprofit that supports sustainable practices in restaurants, have been there for five years. The SAMFund, a group that supports young adult survivors of cancer, is a longtime tenant, as is Tutors for All, which hires some 300-350 college students every year for paid federal work-study positions as tutors for Boston school students.
Organizations can choose to stay under Third Sector's 501(c)3 tax-exempt umbrella or strike out on their own.
But Future Chefs' Elka said Third Sector works for her because it is as passionate about managing nonprofits as her group is about helping students get excited about, and find work in the food industry.
"Boston is a place known for its tech innovation, but our nonprofits are also some of the most innovative in the country," Elka said. "What Third Sector does for nonprofit management is a perfect match for us and is a great model for the rest of the country."
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