New consulting ventures offer nonprofit groups much more than the sum of their parts
BY LESLIE DINABERG
The fabric of Santa Barbara’s intricately embroidered nonprofit community has some new embellishments in its design, as two consulting groups have recently announced their formations: The Crandell Company and Resource Innovators.
The Crandell Company, with ubiquitous fundraiser Larry Crandell at the helm and his journalist-writer-producer son, Steven, on deck, will partner with nonprofit organizations to help maximize their contributions to the community.
Having spent more than four decades in Santa Barbara tirelessly raising money for causes ranging from the YMCA, the Boys & Girls Clubs, Hospice, the PARC Foundation, Transition House, the Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table and just about every other nonprofit group around, the senior Crandell is uniquely positioned to contribute as a consultant. Still, he makes it clear he’ll continue to contribute his microphone duties for free.
“I’m going to still do 100 events (as master of ceremonies or auctioneer) a year,” he said, “and I would even if I had to pay to do it, because they are so much pleasure.
“I’ve been active in the field for all the time I’ve been here, 40 some years … the need is literally endless,” he said. “Only in America is altruism an extensive activity, and nowhere more than in Santa Barbara.
“There’s a tremendous amount of wealth here, but there’s an unusual amount of need, especially in the human services, which are my main thrust.”
The Crandell Company, which has already begun to work with Devereux on solidifying its relationship with the community and developing its first advisory board, will provide its services exclusively to nonprofit organizations.
“We will lead campaigns. I think that’s the key,” Crandell said. “It’s one thing to coach, stand on the sidelines, we intend to lead the campaign.”
Resource Innovators has a different business model. The venture — a partnership between Rod Lathim, Melissa Marsted, Nancy Shobe and Sam Tyler, all of whom have long histories in the local and national nonprofit world — will offer a variety of services to both sides of the charitable equation, donors, as well as the nonprofit organizations.
They see themselves as taking more of a coaching role with clients.
“We’re about empowering the nonprofits and the people in them,” said Shobe, former development director at Crane Country Day School and, with Marsted, a regular Beacon contributor.
“We want to make sure that whatever cause that donor is giving to is not to us but to a team that we help create that is so passionate and so effective that they can’t help but fund them,” said Lathim, the creator of Access Theatre, who recently managed the renovation of the Marjorie Luke Theatre and is currently working with the Dream Foundation.
“It doesn’t matter whether we’re involved or not, but we need to get the organization up to that level.”
Both companies cited the departure of Bob Bason’s Charitable Funding Services Inc. as an opportunity to have a positive impact on the local nonprofit scene.
“I have never seen a community where nonprofits are woven in more ways into just the way we all live and what we experience here,” said Tyler, a former development executive for WGBH-TV, the PBS affiliate in Boston, where shows such as This Old House, Frontline and From Julia Child’s Kitchen were funded.
Clearly there is a need for such services.
Directors of two of Santa Barbara’s largest foundations were enthused at a Crandell Company kickoff breakfast June 24.
“(They) were saying that they saw a need for consultants in development because they would get applications for funds to hire a full-time development director for a small nonprofit and they felt that that was uneconomical,” said Steven Crandell. “They were in favor of a company that could provide the expertise, obviously at a lower price than employing someone full time.”
“I know for a fact there is a need,” said Tom Reed, Unity Shoppe executive director. “There are probably six nonprofit events here every weekend and some of them make no money.”
If organizations were run more efficiently, there might be more money to go around and less competition, posited Reed.
“There’s always opportunity for development consultants,” said Tyler.
Resource Innovators has already been taking calls via word-of-mouth referrals and hopes to announce its first client within days.
“We believe that philanthropic dollars should be valued as much as your investment dollars when you buy stocks or bonds or real estate. There are many achievable ways to make philanthropic dollars have a bigger bang,” said Lathim.
That’s the kind of bang whose repercussions the community would certainly welcome.
The Crandell Company can be contacted at 879.1770. Resource Innovators can be contacted at 563.1128.
The Larry Crandell Story
Coming soon to a bookstore near you …
As a service to his first client, Steven Crandell will write a book about his illustrious father, Larry Crandell, with proceeds from the sales used to benefit Devereux.
“I really hesitated. It took me all of about 20 seconds to say yes,” joked the senior Crandell.
“Rather than be exhaustive as one thinks of in a biography, we hope to capture the essence of my father,” said Steven Crandell, who’s been writing professionally for almost 20 years.
Describing his father as both a “man of heart and also a man of humor,” Crandell said he would try to capture both qualities in the book.
“It will probably be one of the most enjoyable things I’ll ever write.”
Originally published in South Coast Beacon (2005)