Nonprofit Leaders Discuss Challenges and New Ways Forward at Express Sessions Event

Leaders from seven of the East End’s nonprofit organizations — all of them women — gathered at the Southampton Arts Center on Jobs Lane in Southampton Village on Thursday night, November 7, for an energetic and productive panel discussion and networking event.

It was the latest “Express Sessions” event, hosted by The Express News Group, and was hosted the same day that The Express News Group published a special insert titled “A Helping Hand,” which aimed to shine a light on the many nonprofit organizations that meet various needs and provide enriching programs for community members of all ages and all walks of life.

The mission of Thursday night’s event and the accompanying special publication was to shine a spotlight on the often underappreciated work of the many local charities and volunteers, to talk about the challenges they face in a difficult economy and a post-COVID world, and to provide an ongoing resource at 27east.com that catalogs the many organizations and shares information about how to get help, and how to support them financially or by volunteering, during the holiday season and all year long.

Thursday night’s panel discussion was moderated by Express News Group Executive Editor Joseph P. Shaw, and featured Molly Bishop, executive director of Heart of the Hamptons; Susie Roden, president of the Coalition for Women’s Cancers; Bonnie Cannon, the executive director of the Bridgehampton Child Care & Recreational Center; Andrea Grover, executive director at Guild Hall; Dr. Georgette Grier-Key, the executive director of the Eastville Community Historical Society; Kasia Klimiuk, co-director of Our Fabulous Variety Show; and Christina Strassfield, executive director of the Southampton Arts Center.

Shaw began the discussion by asking each nonprofit leader on the panel to talk about the biggest challenges they face in running and sustaining their organizations, with a particular focus on what the pandemic was like for them, how they had to pivot and adapt during that time, and the challenges they’ve faced since coming out of it.

There was an obvious and stark challenge that all the women agreed was also at the forefront of their minds — raising enough money to meet the needs of the community members they serve. That has only gotten harder over the years, and while the pandemic certainly exacerbated the need, in many ways it has only gotten worse since then.

Heart of the Hamptons meets many community needs but its main focus is operating a food pantry at its new location at the old ambulance barn in Southampton Village. Bishop spoke about what it’s been like in recent years.

“Our numbers have skyrocketed since COVID and most of it is unrelated to COVID, but more just the crisis of affordable housing out here,” she said.

It’s a situation all East End food pantries are facing.

Both Bishop and East Hampton Food Pantry Director Kitty Merrill, who was in the audience and spoke during the panel discussion, presented eye-popping numbers that drive that point home. Bishop said that, before the pandemic, Heart of the Hamptons was distributing 65,000 meals per year. This month, they just passed the 400,000 mark. It represents an 800-percent increase from pre-COVID times, she said.

Merrill shared that, in 2021, the East Hampton Food Pantry spent $134,000 on food. Two years later, while only serving roughly 200 more families than it had in 2021, the pantry spent $320,000 on food. The pantry is receiving the same amount in grant funding, Merrill said, despite the fact that prices have increased sharply and despite the fact that it is serving more and more numbers of families every year.

“For everybody, clients are up and donations are way down,” she said.

The panelists also agreed that one of their biggest challenges is trying to educate the public and make people understand that, despite the reputation of the East End as being a playground for the rich, an area of wealth and prosperity, many people are struggling.

Bonnie Cannon spoke to that challenge, and others.

“We’re a historically Black community-based institution that serves all marginalized children and families on the East End,” she said. “We’re been doing that for the past 70-plus years. One of the challenges is making individuals aware of all the things we do, and then for people to realize that being here in the Hamptons, you have the same issues that marginalized and underserved people have in urban areas.”

Roden spoke about a time when she had lunch at the home of a wealthy would-be donor on Gin Lane in Southampton Village. She said that potential donor questioned the idea that there was poverty in the Hamptons.

“I said, ‘Who’s watching your kids? Who’s mowing your lawn?’” she said, recounting the experience, and calling poverty in the Hamptons “our hidden shame.”

“I think that’s one of the biggest problems — they don’t realize that this little community, the local people, we’re struggling and we need help desperately.”

With the East End overrun with wealthy second-homeowners, particularly during the summer months, it would be tempting to draw the conclusion that fundraising is a piece of cake. But that has not been the case for many of the nonprofit leaders.

“Even though we do have a certain number of patrons, it costs a lot,” Strassfield said of what it takes to provide quality arts programming and enrichment for the community. “It used to be that Guild Hall, the Parrish Art Museum and Southampton Hospital were the three main groups. But now you look around and there are so many. And every group from the city also comes out here in the summer to do fundraising.”

And, of course, it takes more than one person to do this all. The nonprofit organizations have the ability to hire full- or part-time paid staff, depending on their size and the scope of what they do, but they all rely heavily on volunteers as the lifeblood of their organizations. Finding people with the time and energy to donate to nonprofit work has also become a challenge, the leaders said.

“For the Coalition and Lucia’s Angels, I hate to say this, but I’m getting older,” Roden said. “And a lot of our volunteers are aging out, and we don’t have a lot of young men and women who have the time to volunteer. Like all organizations, we need to help our ladies going through these struggles, so it’s a difficult time for us.”

Cannon illustrated how depth and breadth of what many nonprofits do is often underestimated, and takes a lot of work, energy and engagement.

“I can’t be successful for the child by just providing food or health care,” she explained. “It’s about health and wellness, economic wealth equity, education, mental health, housing, the whole gamut of the family, the parents, working conditions, the environment. When you’re looking at and dealing with all those different entities, there’s a real need for resources and funding.

Cannon highlighted that the goal for many nonprofits is not simply to meet the most immediate needs in the moment, but to empower people and help them move toward a more secure and sustainable future.

“We don’t want people to stay hungry, to stay in need,” she said. “We want to help them with the needs they have so they can move on and uplift themselves. It takes a lot for us to be successful in that.”

While the organizations must rely heavily on donors and the community at large to sustain their efforts, both from a financial point of view and with volunteer manpower, they also have learned over the years to lean on each other, learn from each other, and help each other out where they can.

The creation of the East End Fund for Children is a perfect example of that. The brainchild of Dan Shedrick, the organization — which is essentially a coalition of seven nonprofits that meet the needs of children and families in one way or another — was created during the pandemic as a way to help meet the moment of crisis that those organizations found themselves in. Joe Guerrera, the owner of Citarella, became a big donor and supporter for the East End Fund for Children, and it has stayed together and thrived even with the pandemic in the rear view.

Finding more ways to collaborate like that, Cannon and the rest of the leaders agreed, was essential to moving forward.

The leaders of arts and culture-centered institutions like Guild Hall, Eastville Community Historical Society, the Southampton Arts Center and Our Fabulous Variety Show spoke about the vital work they do. While they may not be meeting the needs of families experiencing food insecurity or needing to access vital aspects of health care, they discussed why what they do is essential as well.

“During the pandemic, what helped you get through?” Grover said, posing a question she answered. “The arts — books, television, etc. It contributes to mental well-being and longevity. It’s a lot more of a necessity than many people know.”

People of all ages deserve that kind of access, and Our Fabulous Variety Show has been a big boost to the community in that department, providing affordable and free access to performing arts education for children.

Klimiuk spoke about how she and co-director Anita Boyer have had to adapt and pivot over the years, from being “nomadic” in terms of locations where they could host their programs to working with students in outdoor settings during the pandemic, whether that meant bringing a tap board to someone’s backyard to give tap dance lessons, or host shows and rehearsals outdoors.

“We just found a way to make it work, because if you’re in the arts, you know that the show must go on,” Klimiuk said.

OFVS now has more permanence in terms of location after partnering with Project Most to host classes at the Neighborhood in East Hampton and also at the Most Holy Trinity School. Like many other organizations, it has also evolved to meet the needs of the children and families it serves.

“We’ve evolved over the last few years into more of a creative youth development organization,” she said, adding that it uses training in performing arts as a way to teach children how to collaborate and communicate and become leaders.

Listening to the leaders describe the various programs they’ve sustained despite the enormous headwinds they face, and the new initiatives they’ve undertaken to meet evolving community needs, it is clear that they all work incredibly hard, and are forward thinking in their approach to providing care for everyone. But they also did not sugarcoat the challenges, the vast and growing needs, and just how imperative it is to find a way to collaborate, bring in more help, and educate the community about the dire need many of their neighbors are facing.

Grier-Key referenced Bill Pickens III, the beloved patriarch of the SANS neighborhoods in Sag Harbor, the historically Black summer enclave, when speaking to those points.

“The late great Mr. Pickens always used to say, ‘There’s unity in the word, community,’” she said, while continuing to speak about her organization and its multi-faceted mission. “We’re not just a hub for arts and culture and history, but we also have to be that community that’s needed.”

That could mean being a place people can go for information about getting a ride to a COVID vaccination site, or simply being an organization that older people can rely on for maintaining vital social connection through events like the annual Fish Fry.

Feeling the pinch of the surge in need and in cost, at the same time as a dip in the number of volunteers they can secure, a big part of the discussion was how the nonprofits move forward and not only sustain but grow their mission. Many of them agreed that other entities need to become more involved. Cannon would like to see movement at the local government level to create something akin to the Community Preservation Fund that could help support local nonprofits financially.

The realities some people face are stark, and sometimes need to be stated in stark terms to drive home the point. Roden did that well.

“Cancer is hard enough, but then when you throw in poverty, you’re screwed,” she said bluntly during the discussion. “I don’t know how else to say it.”

Despite the challenges they all face, the women on the panel did not give off a collective sense of fatigue or defeatism. Rather, they expressed hope and a sense of purpose despite being clear-eyed about the obstacles they face.

Grover pointed out that the panel was entirely made up of women, and said that while she wishes more men would step up to the plate — while also acknowledging that there are many good men involved in the industry as well, even if they are the minority — that it’s not a coincidence that so many nonprofits are led by women.

“I think it’s because this work is a calling, and it comes from a place of compassion and devotion,” she said. “There are good men who do this work, too — but I think it’s in our nature.”