November i996
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina • 15
Notebook
Continued from page 12
NCexChange nabs
telecom grant
The North Caromia nonprofit,
NCexChange, which works with non
profits on telecommunications
issues, has received a $543,000 grant
from the Telecommunications and
Information Infrastructure
Assistance Program of the U.S.
Department of Commerce.
Terry Grunwald, project director
at NCexChange, says the grant will
allow the organization to launch a
demonstration of its community
information broker model, where
computer savvy workers assist local
groups with using information tech
nology and telecommunications to
address local problems.
The information brokers will
work with nonprofits, local agencies
and small businesses. NCexChange
will work with host organizations
throu^out North Carolina. Those
groups are: Center for Community
Self-Help, Greensboro; BMW
Community Development
Corporation, Northeastern North
Carolina; Downeast Partnership for
Children, Rocky Mount; N.C.
Cooperative Extension Service,
Swain County
Visit http://wvrw.ntia.gov/otia-
home/tiiap/frames.htm for infor
mation at the Commerce
Department’s telecommunications
grant program.
Service offers
address search
SearchAmerica is a fee-based
address search database available
on the World Wide Web. Searching
also can be done by phone number.
For information, visit:
httpy/searchainerica.coin.
Win free software
from Droege
Looking for a customized
database for your nonprofit? You
might check out an offer from
Droege Computing Services.
Over the next 12 months, the
Durham firm will host four regional
software developers competitions
that produce a customized database
for a selected nonprofit with chal
lenging database needs.
It works like this: Nonprofits sub
mit applications detaOing their prob
lem. One nonprofit is selected for
each competition; there will be four
competitions in the next year in
Chicago, San Jose, Boston and
Ralei^i/Durham.
Teams of software developers
gather in one place, receive the non
profit’s problem and then create the
software package to solve the prob
lem. Up to five people from the non
profit evaluate the software and
select the winner. The nonprofit gets
to take home the package, valued at
$10,000 to $50,000.
Droege soon is expected to
announce the name of the nonprofit
whose database needs will be the
challenge of Chicago competition
Dec. 10-12.
Nonprofits throughout the U.S.
stUl have time to submit their appli
cations for consideration for the
other Droege competitions sched
uled for the next 12 months.
For more information, contact
Tom Droege at (919)403-9459. Or
visit Droege’s Web site:
http://www2.interpath.net/dev-
comp.
Subscribe to the
Journal,
Call (919) 899-3742.
Unrest
Continued from page 14
when we joined the company and we
accept it as a way of business in the
professional services and consulting
world. The company has a flexible
work schedule arrangement that
allows its personnel to adjust their
work hours accordingly”
Clients and former employees
also emphasize that Capital
Consortium does a good job for its
clients.
“All along the way, their counsel
has been second to none,” says Greg
Kirkpatrick, executive director of the
Food Bank of North Carolina. Capital
Consortium is advising the Food Bank
on a $1.7 miUion capital campaign
that is only $200,000 shy of its goal
and has a trust fund worth another $1
million that was made possible
through the planned gift of a building
to house the Food Bank’s operations.
Kirkpatrick says Capital
Consortium has done more than sim
ply help the Food Bank raise money.
The firm, he says, also has helped the
Food Bank build its organizational
capacity and strengthen its board,
leadership and staff.
At a daily rate of $1,100, Capital
Consortium will receive about
$127,500 for its work for the Food
Bank - a fee that Kirkpatrick says is
well-deserved and “very reasonable.”
Still, people who have worked for
or with Capital Consortium, say its
own organizational capacity could
use some strengthening. While they
concede that most organizations face
grumbling from employees, they also
say that Bennett’s management style
has contributed to internal unrest.
“There are three things that moti
vate John - money and making money
as a businessman, politics and main
taining the political network he grew
up with, and control of projects,
clients and his staff,” says Mark
Rountree, formerly a senior staff
member at Capital Consortium and
now director of development at the
College of Arts and Sciences at the
University of Louisville. Before start
ing Capital Consortium, Bennett was
a political fundraiser for Gov. Jim
Hunt.
By comparison, Rountree says,
Bennett’s staff is motivated not by
money, poUtics or control but by a
desire to serve the nonprofit sector.
As a result, Rountree says, Bennett
has worked his staff hard and
stretched staff members’ ability to
serve clients.
Some former employees, speaking
on the condition that they not be iden
tified, say an overriding concern of
Capital Consortium’s staff has been
that working conditions do not
reduce the services being delivered to
clients.
In addition to long working hours,
these former employees says,
Bennett’s strategy has been to shift
his professional staff among clients,
unsettling employees and creating
unnecessary change for clients.
That strategy, says one former
staffer, is based on
“expediency..John’s bottom line is
financial.”
At a retreat of the Capital
Consortium staff last winter, a con
sultant presented the results of a sur
vey on employee and client satisfac
tion. The results, says the former
employee, were mixed, but indicated
some dissatisfaction on the part of
cUents.
Bennett says client dissatisfaction
“is not an issue at all in our compa
ny,” although he concedes that the
company three years ago faced a
“much, much more serious problem.
“We had a concern [three years
ago] about clients about whether they
were receiving service to their satis
faction,” he says.
One concern at that time, he says,
was that staff members were being
shifted among cUents. But he says he
ended the practice three years ago
“because some of the shilling was not
to the benefit of our clients. We have
not done that in the past couple of
years.”
He also acknowledges that
employees are expected to work
hard, but says that is in keeping with
his goal of serving clients.
“Inevitably, in any company, par
ticularly in a company our size, with
the cUent load we have, where the
number one priority is client satisfac
tion, you’re going to have employees
who feel at times they have more on
their plate than they should,” Bennett
says.
Indeed, he says, he reiterated at
the staff meeting last month that
employees are expected to work hard
to sen'e Capital Consortium’s clients.
“I think we have explained again
to the people in the company that the
priority in the company is the client
and what that means and what they
should expect in terms of their work
load to satisfy the client,” he says.
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