Blogs

By Anna Bisaro, New Haven Register

Photo Credit: Catherine Avalone — New Haven Register 

NEW HAVEN >> As Aly Tatchol Camara biked to the very edge of Criscuolo Park, fishing poles slung on his back, he found he would not be alone at Grape Vine Point this cold, March evening.

Two poles already rested on the stone wall, lines dropped into where the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers meet before emptying into Long Island Sound. A 13-year-old boy told Camara through his shivering that he hadn’t had any luck yet that night in catching anything. The boy said he was there to try to bring fish home to his family.

Just to the right of the poles was a sign from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protectionwarning that if anyone spots raw sewage in the water, they are to call and report the sighting.

Combined sewer overflows, contaminated storm water runoff, lawn fertilizers and lingering chemicals from dozens of power and manufacturing plants are just some of the pollutants hurting Greater New Haven watersheds. All three rivers in Greater New Haven — West, Mill and Quinnipiac — are on theimpaired waters list of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

While pollution limits activities like swimming and paddling in these rivers, it also poses a significant risk to those who consume fish from them. Thestate Department of Public Health advises that any fish caught from the Quinnipiac River should be consumed only once a month, due to the dangerous contaminants present in fish tissue. Blue crab from the Mill River should not be eaten at all, the department warns in its 2016 consumption guide.

Camara, 51, said it was still a little too early in the year to catch much, but he said he likes spending his summer evenings at the edge of Criscuolo Park. A native of West Africa, Camara has been in the United States since 1996, he said, and he now teaches African dance and drumming in New Haven.

He mostly fishes for sport, releasing much of what he gets, he said. Fishing in the evenings keeps him away from television and out of trouble, he said with a laugh.

“This is a place for us to spend time,” Camara said. “You meet a lot of friends here.”

CONTAMINATION THREATS

Based on the health advisories from the state health department for 2016, fish in the Quinnipiac may be contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, commonly referred to as PCBs. The recommendation that any species of fish caught in the river only be consumed once a month applies to both high-risk and low-risk groups.  Continue reading . . . 

L-R Erika Vergara, Sister Doretta D’Albero, and Sister Mary Ellen Burns standing in front of their offices in Fair Haven.

In 1906, a small congregation of nuns from the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus left their home in Tuscany to perform missionary work in New Haven. The United States was in the midst of a great wave of European immigration, and the Sacred Heart sisters were called to help other newly arrived Italians in need. They took in orphans, taught sewing classes, provided religious instruction to children, and assisted new arrivals with the difficult transition of starting over in a strange place.

A century later, sisters from the Sacred Heart congregation are once again helping recent immigrants find stability in Greater New Haven. Located in the former convent of Saint Rose of Lima in Fair Haven, Apostle Immigrant Services offers legal assistance to immigrants trying to navigate the dizzyingly complex immigration system. The core of their work is resolving visa issues that risk breaking families apart or are preventing individuals who are stuck abroad from reuniting with families already in the United States. Many of the clients come from horrific war zones or countries with oppressive governments.

“The stories you hear make you think twice about ever criticizing or complaining about anything,” says Sister Doretta D’Albero, an accredited Bureau of Immigration Appeals representative with Apostle. Continue reading.

The second election for student representatives to the Board of Education will be Thursday, April 7 and Friday, April 8 in all New Haven Public high schools across the district. Last year, several members of City Hall, the Board of Alders and the Board of Education volunteered to monitor the elections in the schools.

Volunteers are needed for the following roles:

          Election Day observers:  

           -- Stationed in each school to ensure that the process is going smoothly.

          -- Also need extra volunteers to help with actual election process (checking in students, etc) in the larger schools like Cross & Hillhouse

         -- Between the hours of 7:30am-2:30pm, for as many or as few hours as your availability allows

         Ballot Counters:

         -- Work with Committee to count paper ballots after elections close

         -- Begins at 3:00pm on Friday, April 8 and continues until counting has finished, for the duration of the count

If you can help out in any way, please contact Randy Goldson at nhpsstudentvoice@new-haven.k12,ct.us or 347-295-5931. Please let us know the capacity in which you are volunteering, your preferred school and/or role (if applicable) and the hours that you can commit on each day.

Tickets are available now for the 11th Annual Spring Cocktail Party & Auction to benefit Family Centered Services of CT on May 5, 2015 at Amarante’s in New Haven, CT. 

Reverend Dr. Frederick “Jerry” Streets, nationally known for his research and work with victims of trauma will be speaking about leading and living “A Purpose Filled Life".

Doors open at 5:30 for the Auction Preview.  Tickets to this sell-out event are $75.00 per person.  Tables of 10 at available for $ 600.00 and tables of eight are available for $480.00.  

Family CT has sought to develop and implement innovative programs that protect children from harm and ensure their healthy development.  

To purchase tickets visit www.familyct.org 

New Haven CT- Cheryl Burack, Executive Director of Family Centered Services of CT has been selected to represent the CT Coalition for Child Development Education (CCCDE) at the 15^th World Congress of the World Association for Mental Health in Prague, Czech Republic to be held May 29-June 2, 2016.   Burack will be giving a Poster Presentation and discussion on behalf of the group and co-authors, Robert Margolies, Ph.D. and Janet Pozmantier, M.S.W. 

The mission of the CCCDE is to provide all Connecticut high school students with prerequisite knowledge to prepare for the early care of human beings.  A long term vision is to build child development centers in high schools, where teacher and community day care is present, providing a community service as well as teaching platform for educational activities. In her role as a member of the steering committee of CCCDE, Burack has advanced its mission and philosophy that parenting is life’s most important endeavor, and is the underpinning or our entire social structure and function. Eighty to ninety percent of youth will become future parents. Yet there are few educational requirements that prepare future parents with information concerning child development, infant mental health, and parenting preparedness. Scientific understanding in the latter areas has been burgeoning and is readily available for educational dissemination. The group is helping to address this issue in its pilot teaching programs.

Burack, a leader in the area of child welfare, has served as Executive Director of Family Centered Services of CT for over 27 years. Family CT is a private nonprofit community-based organization dedicated to ending child abuse, neglect and victimization across the life span.

Founded in 2001 the CT Coalition has successfully lobbied for child development to be included in the state curriculum as an elective. The Coalition has held state wide forums at the Capitol, testified before the Education Committee and the Task Force on the Achievement Gap and worked to include the issue in the State Early Childhood Plan called, Ready by Five: Fine by Nine. With funding from the Graustein Memorial Foundation and the Napier Foundation, the Coalition has developed a dynamic child development course now available without charge to middle and high schools in the Connecticut. For more information about the CT Coalition for Child Development Education visit: http://ct-coalition-for-child-development-education.org .  For information about Family Centered Services of CT, visit www.familyct.org.

The Concord Leadership Group via Associations Now has completed their 2016 survey of 1000 CEOs, board members and others to provide some lessons about nonprofit strategic planning, CEO succession planning and other nonprofit matters. I would pose that 1000 responses is certainly worth a heads-up.

I must observe that the survey authors have a pretty negative feeling about the nonprofit sector (read their forward) and even their interpretation of the survey responses was pretty negative - more negative than even I generally believe. For instance, one result is I that 70% of nonprofits having strategic plans. This is great news!

And maybe it's just good marketing on the author's part,but I found the points for "why" strategic planning pretty good.

Specifically, for those who do strategic plans, they are:

More likely to collaborate with other nonprofits
More likely to have boards “open to taking calculated risks”
More likely to evaluate its CEO annually
More likely to have a process for measuring leadership effectiveness

These would indeed be great resulting outcomes from planning, presuming of course, these are actually results from strategic planning processes versus just values and beliefs shared in the survey.
WHAT GETS A BOARD TO SUPPORT STRATEGIC PLANNING?
BY MARK ATHITAKIS / MAR 28, 2016

A new study suggests that strategic planning remains a struggle for boards. A clearer picture of life without a strategic plan may help.

We don’t seem to be getting much better, as organizations, at strategic thinking.

That’s one of the main takeaways from the Concord Leadership Group’s “Nonprofit Sector Leadership Report,” a study by the nonprofit consultancy of more than 1,000 CEOs, board members, and other leaders. Some of the results echo familiar points: Nonprofits are weak at succession planning, for instance (only 77 percent have one, pretty good compared to other surveys), as well as CEO evaluation (only 61 percent of boards do it annually).

It’s not surprising, either, to see that so many organizations are weak at strategic planning as well. According to the survey, 29 percent reported not having a strategic plan, and 19 percent of those that said they do have a plan said it’s not written down.

Which must make those quarterly board-meeting prep sessions rife with intrigue.

“Problems are best expressed as real threats rather than specific solutions.

But one thing the survey does a good job of highlighting—in a way that isn’t often done—is finding the correlations between strategic planning and other measures of success for an organization. Those with a written strategic plan were:

More likely to collaborate with other nonprofits (83 vs. 76 percent)
More likely to have boards “open to taking calculated risks” (65 vs. 51 percent)
More likely to evaluate its CEO annually (36 vs. 21 percent)
More likely to have a process for measuring leadership effectiveness (75 vs. 50 percent)

It seems almost commonsensical, then, to put in the time to put together a strategic plan. So why do we resist it?

Partly, to put it simply, because it’s hard. “Many board members, at least in my experience, in their day jobs they’re not necessarily used to being in roles that require them to think or act or work strategically,” Jolene Knapp, CAE, told me in January. And many boards, uncomfortable with the rigorous process of environmental scanning and self-contemplation that goes into a useful strategic plan, wind up with ones that mostly ratify what they’re already doing (or not doing). So much so that I proposed killing the term “strategic plan” and replacing it with something that hinted more strongly at the forward-looking nature of the document. (I still like “futures committee” as a term for the task force charged with this work.)

The advice of the Concord Leadership Group survey is to boil down the strategic-planning process to four straightforward questions:

What are we doing, and why are we doing it? This is effectively the mission statement, with a nod toward the changing environment in the industry.
How are we going to get it done? This lays out the goals and objectives for the span of the strategic plan.
How will we fund it? This can mean dues, nondues revenue, and donations. But as the study points out, this can also identify partners and collaborations that can support a nonprofit’s work.
Who will we tell about it? That is, how will the goals be communicated to the staff who will implement it, the volunteer leaders who will hone and expand it, and the public who will support it? (The last particularly meaningful for associations that do government-relations work.)

Beth Gazley and Katha Kissman, authors of the bookTransformational Governance, based on their research on association leaders, echo that rough outline, and point out some of the ways they can encourage boards to actually begin to do the work that goes into it. In many cases, highlighting the perils of doing nothing can do the trick. So can getting the board to look squarely at the problems it faces. “Problems are best expressed as real threats rather than specific solutions (which come later),” they write. “Some boards and CEOs in our study reported member dissatisfaction, apathetic board members, missed opportunities, and other real threats to their association’s future.”

Strategic planning is never going to be easy, if it’s done well. But clarifying the stakes of not doing it, talking through the benefits of the process, and making the process as painless as possible can help make that essential work happen.

What do you do to get your boards engaged in the strategic-planning process, and how do you make that process effective and meaningful? Share your experiences in the comments.

A Much Happy Spring To All....

April if the month of Poetry. Today, I would to bring forward a writer residing at 22 Cypress Ave John William DeForest.

DeForest is well known for his writing genre The Great American Novel.

Or the more general movement of literature toward realism, and he also wrote poetry.

Born in Seymour (known as Humphreysville) he was the son of a very prosperous cotton manufacture. DeForest spent must of his time overseas writing and creating literature and poetry.

One of his most scholarly works is entitled The History of the Indians of Connecticut, from the Earliest known Period to 1850.  He served in the Civil War in the 12th Connecticut Volunteers. He is also praised for his work Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty. He was a contributor to The Altantic Monthly and other magazines.

Photo is from Wikipedia:

He died in 1906 from heart disease in New Haven.

All the best,

Patricia B. Illingworth 

The Quinnipiac River is home to an array of aquatic plants and animals, as well as waterfowl like the white heron. Learn more about The Quinnipiac River at www.thequinnipiacriver.com

Grants Support Research into the Sources and Effects of River Contaminants an Anti-Pollution Public Education Campaign, and the Continued Development of a Recreational Trail along the River's Edge.

New Haven, CT (March 28, 2016) – The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven is pleased to announce that $117,700 in grants has been awarded from the Quinnipiac River Fund to support 8 programs that study and restore the river and surrounding ecosystem, provide education and improve recreational access. 

The River flows 40 miles from west of New Britain southward to Plainville, Southington, west of Meriden, Cheshire, through Wallingford, Yalesville, North Haven and into New Haven Harbor.

“The Quinnipiac River historically had many industries on its banks that discharged their waste, metals and chemicals into it, so it is now taking much effort to get the river clean once again,” said Nancy Alderman, chair of the Quinnipiac River Fund’s advisory committee. “The grants for this year will once again contribute to the ongoing work of restoring the river’s health.” 

Grants and distributions from the Quinnipiac River Fund are recommended each Spring by the advisory committee consisting of Alderman, President of Environment and Human Health, Inc.,  Gordon Geballe, Associate Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Roman Zajac, Professor, Department Chair of the University of New Haven’s Department of Biology & Environmental Science. Committee recommendations are brought to The Community Foundation’s Board of Directors for approval. Since being established in 1990, the Fund has distributed $2 million in grants. 

Learn more about the Quinnipiac River and projects supported by the Quinnipiac River Fund, along with the history of the river and recreational opportunities at www.thequinnipiacriver.com. 

The Quinnipiac River Fund is a component fund of The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. It was established in 1990 by a court settlement of litigation between the Connecticut Fund for the Environment, the Natural Resource Defense Council and the Upjohn Company concerning wastewater discharges from Upjohn’s plant in North Haven.  The settling parties agreed that distributions from the Fund were to be used “to improve the environmental quality of the Quinnipiac River and the New Haven Harbor and the watersheds of these water bodies, and otherwise to benefit the environment of these resources.” 

Thanks to the generosity of three generations of donors, The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven awarded over $30 million in grants and distributions in 2015 from charitable assets of more than $500 million and composed of hundreds of individually named funds. In addition to its grantmaking, The Community Foundation helps build a stronger community by taking measures to improve student achievement, create healthy families in New Haven, promote local philanthropy through www.giveGreater.org® and The Great Give®, and encourage better understanding of the region. The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven’s 20 town service area includes: Ansonia, Bethany, Branford, Cheshire, Derby, East Haven, Guilford, Hamden, Madison, Milford, New Haven, North Branford, North Haven, Orange, Oxford, Seymour, Shelton, Wallingford, West Haven and Woodbridge. For more information, visit www.cfgnh.org or follow The Foundation on Facebook (www.facebook.org/cfgnh) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/cfgnh).

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven announces The Great Give^® 2016, The Foundation’s seventh community-wide online giving event to raise funds for local nonprofits serving Greater New Haven. Over a 36-hour period from May 3 at 8:00 am to May 4 at 8:00 pm, gifts made to over 400 participating nonprofits will be eligible to be matched; more than $190,000 in matching funds and prizes for nonprofits is available. Grand prizes will be awarded to the nonprofits that attract the most number of individual donors ($15,000), get the greatest number of new donors ($10,000), raise the most money ($5,000) and more. Gifts will be matched on a pro-rated basis with additional funds by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and Valley Community Foundation. Local businesses and corporations, including Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Liberty Bank Foundation and others, are offering prize and match money during the 36 hours. Additional features for donors have been added. A list of participating nonprofits, prizes and rules is online at www.thegreatgive.org. 

The Great Give^® is the annual giving online event on giveGreater.org^®, a local resource for learning and giving created in 2010 by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven to increase philanthropy in the Greater New Haven region of South Central Connecticut. Since its beginning giveGreater.org^® has distributed over $4 Million to local nonprofits. Donors wishing to support their favorite cause or charity can visit giveGreater.org^® to find information on local nonprofits, including their mission, governance, programs, financials and community impact. Donors can also stay connected by visiting www.facebook.com/givegreater and following @givegreater on Twitter. The Great Give^® 2016 is being held in conjunction with Give Local America’s day of giving.

Thanks to the generosity of three generations of donors, The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven awarded over $30 million in grants and distributions in 2015 from charitable assets of more than $500 million and composed of hundreds of individually named funds. In addition to its grantmaking, The Community Foundation helps build a stronger community by taking measures to improve student achievement, create healthy families in New Haven, promote local philanthropy through www.giveGreater.org^® and The Great Give^®, and encourage better understanding of the region. The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven’s 20 town service area includes: Ansonia, Bethany, Branford, Cheshire, Derby, East Haven, Guilford, Hamden, Madison, Milford, New Haven, North Branford, North Haven, Orange, Oxford, Seymour, Shelton, Wallingford, West Haven and Woodbridge. For more information, visit www.cfgnh.org or follow The Foundation on Facebook (www.facebook.org/cfgnh) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/cfgnh).

As a nonprofit, community based dance school, New Haven Ballet (NHB) offers classical ballet training to a many throughout the City of New Haven.

“We provide the highest caliber of classical ballet training in the region,” says Artistic Director Lisa Sanborn.

Boasting a roster of 500 students, from 3 – 18 years old, some of these students practice up to 6 days a week perfecting their skills.

“They are tremendous athletes. They cross train, very seriously, but they’re also artists,” says Sanborn. “It’s really something very special that we are looking for in these students.”

Continue Reading

Board member recruitment is never an easy task. But let's say your nonprofit is successful in identifying a candidate, is the criteria for selection singularly a set of skills, knowledge, expertise and lens that make the candidate the "right" fit? I would propose there to be one more element: passion for mission. And how to measure or determine passion? While action (lots of experience or knowledge about the mission is an indicator of passion, I pose that the candidate's understanding of the organization's theory of change would be a clear indicator of fit.

Theory of Change answers three questions: what is the issue, concern or interest that calls for action; what is the solution or action around this issue; and what is the desired result? If a prospective candidate's answers or perspective to these 3 questions is consistent with the board's, fit is highly likely. If the candidate does not have any perspective consistent with the board's own collective declaration of responses to these questions, then the candidate, in my opinion, is likely not a good fit. As an indicator, an individual's understanding of and willing to engage around the theory of change will assure the rest of the board that a future partner has been identified.

Less than a decade ago, before the dramatic and sadly increasing disparity between "the haves" and "the have-nots" (now an issue in the presidential campaign), luxury brands typically dispersed their giving to a wide range of nonprofits: culture, education, health and a range of social service organizations all doing good in many creative and altruistic ways. The luxury brands that gave, a generous percentage of their marketing budgets did little to promote (many thought “tout”) their good corporate citizenship...

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/269739/wake-up-call-for-nonprofits.html ;

Are you a good listener who enjoys being with other people? Have you been looking for a way to have an impact on someone else’s life? If so, please consider becoming a volunteer for Regional Hospice and Home Care. 

Hospice Volunteers are needed in the New Haven area as Regional Hospice and Home Care expands its services becoming the exclusive hospice provider at the Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven.

Training will be provided. After training, the volunteer’s schedule is flexible.

Interested applicants should contact Mary Beth Hickey (MHickey@RegionalHospiceCT.org / 203-702-7415) or complete a volunteer application on our website: https://regionalhospicect.org/volunteer/online-volunteer-application/

Thank you for your consideration!

Regional Hospice and Home Care’s team of experienced clinicians have been providing physical, emotional, spiritual and bereavement support to children, adults and their families through our palliative and hospice care program for the past 30 years. Regional Hospice and Home Care is a nonprofit, state-licensed and Medicare-certified home health care and hospice agency. Now, with the opening of our new private-room, specialty hospital for palliative and end-of-life care — the Center for Comfort Care & Healing — Regional Hospice and Home Care can bring that same hope and compassionate care close to home and under one roof. For more information, visit www.RegionalHospiceCT.org. Follow us on twitter: @RegionalHospice. Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/RegionalHospiceandHomeCare.  

Naugatuck Valley Community College Nursing Class of 2016. Photo courtesy of CT League for Nursing.

There are a myriad of different options when choosing a nursing career and the Connecticut League for Nursing (CLN) is ready and available to help individuals make informed decisions about their futures.

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, the region’s permanent endowment and largest grantmaker to area nonprofits, invites local nonprofits to participate in The Great Give® 2016.

Participating nonprofits can earn special prizes in addition to the donations given online by individuals. The Great Give® 2016 is the seventh major community-wide giving event on giveGreater.org®, taking place for 36 hours starting 8:00 am on May 3rd and ending 8:00 pm on May 4th. More than $170,000 in matching dollars and prizes will be provided by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, the Valley Community Foundation, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Liberty Bank Foundation and other generous community sponsors.

Nonprofit organizations serving the region and that are interested in participating must register by April 1, 2016 at www.thegreatgive.org or by calling 203-777-2386; eligibility requirements apply.

Businesses interested in supporting the nonprofit community through prize sponsorship are asked to contact Sharon Cappetta, Director of Development, at 203-777-7071.

Thanks to the generosity of three generations of donors, The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven awarded over $30 million in grants and distributions in 2015 from charitable assets of more than $500 million and composed of hundreds of individually named funds. In addition to its grantmaking, The Community Foundation helps build a stronger community by taking measures to improve student achievement, create healthy families in New Haven, promote local philanthropy through www.giveGreater.org® and The Great Give®, and encourage better understanding of the region. The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven’s 20 town service area includes: Ansonia, Bethany, Branford, Cheshire, Derby, East Haven, Guilford, Hamden, Madison, Milford, New Haven, North Branford, North Haven, Orange, Oxford, Seymour, Shelton, Wallingford, West Haven and Woodbridge. For more information, visit www.cfgnh.org or follow The Foundation on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo courtesy of FISH of Greater New Haven Inc.

Volunteers for FISH of Greater New Haven Inc. deliver free bags of food to more than 1,100 homebound individuals in New Haven and surrounding areas every month. This includes 350 families, 75% of which include elderly and children.

“We deliver to people who are homebound or going through some type of hardship,” says FISH Executive Director Joy Johannes. “For instance, they’ve had a surgery and it’s difficult to get to the grocery story, they have a child who’s going through a major medical treatment, they’re elderly, they’re handicapped.”

Read more here. 

Mrs. Joseph Sheffield, in the picture, was the first President of the all women Board of Managers of the Home For the Friendless, now known as Mary Wade Home. The Home began in 1866, following the Civil War, when a group of ladies representing the Churches of New Haven, were inspired to begin a program to aid women and children. A parcel of property was acquired at 118 Clinton Avenue at the corner of Pine Street in Fair Haven in September, and the Home opened in December. Mrs. Sheffield served as President from 1866 to 1868.

Maria St. John was born on May 22, 1801 and in 1822 married Joseph Earl Sheffield. Mr. Sheffield wrote of his wife of many years, "Blest with a most devoted wife, with whom I have lived happily for over fifty seven years, mother of nine children to whom she as devoted constant care, love and affection." Mr. Sheffield was one of Yale's greatest benefactors and continued to support the school throughout his life. Their home on Hillhouse Avenue is now one of the buildings of the Yale Sheffield Scientific School.

Testimonial to her in the 1889 Report of the Home for the Friendless, "Great loss in the death of Mrs. Sheffield, first President, one of the founders, and one who always retained a deep interest in the work, and who was ever ready to help by her generous pecuniary aid." Mrs. Sheffield died on April 21, 1889 and is buried in the Grove Street Cemetery.

David V. Hunter

I think it's quite common for many folks to assume that it's the Exec or CEO at a nonprofit who calls the shots. But what happens when the board, a nonprofit's legal owner, calls the shots?

In the case of the Clearwater, Pete Seeger's nonprofit environmental organization, the CEO stepped down citing his own disagreement with the direction the board had decided to take. The board decided that renovating their ship, the source of mission, was more critical than spending money on their annual music festival. While both "vehicles" serve as a source of mission, the ship is critical to mission and must be maintained. The CEO, as the following USA Today article describes, had a different take on what should be a priority. Kudos to the board though for a) making a decision and b) accepting the consequences. On the other hand, once the board set the path around the sloop, isn't the how this would be paid for the job of the CEO? Might deciding that the concert is a no-go be micromanaging and in-turn, usurping the authority of the CEO?
Decision to cancel annual Croton Point fest, focus on repairs to flagship sloop, caused division in Hudson River group

The director of the Hudson River environmental group Clearwater has resigned in the midst of an internal rift over last week's decision to cancel the group's long-running annual music festival at Croton Point Park.

Peter Gross of South Salem, who served as Clearwater's executive director since 2014, said in a statement released by the group Wednesday that he was stepping down over "significant differences between his and the organization's vision to the path to building a stronger future for Clearwater, and dealing with the organization's longstanding financial and structural challenges."

The announcement comes a week after the board of directors of the Beacon-based environmental group voted to cancel the 2016 Great Hudson River Revival so it could devote limited financial resources to restoring it's flagship, the sloop Clearwater.

The boat, a replica of the sloops that sailed the Hudson River in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, is undergoing $850,000 in needed renovations.

In an announcement last week, the Clearwater board said that, due to cash shortages, it had to choose between the sloop and the annual festival, which has been held since 1979. It has been held at the Westchester County-owned Croton park every year since 1999.

The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, flagship of the environmental group by the same name, is undergoing $850,000 in repairs. The cost led to the cancellation of the group's annual music festival and has now prompted the resignation of its executive director. (Photo: File photo/The Poughkeepsie Journal)

The sloop was launched in 1969 by legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, who founded the group on a mission to raise awareness of the plight of the Hudson River, which had been plagued by decades of pollution from waterfront manufacturing plants.

But Anne Osborn, president of the Clearwater board of directors, said Wednesday that there was still disagreement within the group after the decision was made to focus on repairs to the sloop. Gross and others, she said, felt Clearwater could repair the boat, yet still host the festival.

“I think it’s what it says: Significant differences between his and the organization’s vision of the path to a stronger future," Osborn said. "One vision, his vision, is we can have a festival and use that income stream. The other was it is way too risky. Focus on floating the boat. So we did.”

Related: Pete Seeger, activist & folk singer, dies at 94

Osborn said about 75 percent of the repairs to the flagship sloop are being reimbursed by the state. But she said it was uncertain if the reimbursements would come in time to stage the two-day summer festival.

The group says the event has averaged about $162,000 a year in net income over the past six years, but only $31,000 last year.
Buy Photo

Clearwater's Great Hudson River Revival, held annually at Croton Point Park, was canceled this year amid a budget crunch at the environmental group Clearwater. The group's executive director has now resigned in an internal rift over the cancellation of the festival. (Photo: File photo by Peter Carr/The Journal News)

Clearwater officials said they plan to move forward with the 2017 festival, and that a series of local music shows will replace the larger event throughout the year. Those events will help raise money for the group. For instance, a show in Ulster County last weekend raised $12,000, Osborn said.

“I think it’s hard to be an effective leader when your troops are marching in the other direction," she said. "(Gross) would’ve loved in his heart of hearts to have put the festival on. He would’ve liked to have done both, and perhaps the income stream from early tickets sales would’ve been really helpful in getting the boat restored. But the folks who do the festival felt differently.”

Greeetings to All,

Long journeys - long stories briefly describes the Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven. In light of this description, the Society is celebrating its 40th Anniversary of its birth in 1976. This Society has accumulated vast amounts of photos, oral histories, books, films, and other vintage pieces of information relating to the Jewish heritage, culture, education, and Jewish values of in New Haven for the past 40 years.

There has been many a program relating to their heritage. Come March 27th, Joshua Sandman, PhD will be speaking at Congregation Beth El-Keser Israel at 10:00am. He will be speaking on Israel and the Middle East Direction.

Then the Society has been extremely active in the "Ethnic New Haven Historic Neighborhood Tours" Project . Where the first Historic Neighborhood Tour will include Dixwell Ave, Wooster Square Area, and Downtown New Haven. And on March13 the group will kick-off this Neighborhood Tours Project at 2:00pm with the "Ethic History of New Haven: Pre 1630 through 2010 and Beyond"  exhibit at the Ethnic Heritage Center at 270 Fitch Street on the SCSU Campus. The exhibit is wonderful!!! - it is a must see.

We must bestow many, many kudos to this Society for their untiring work in keeping their heritage alive for many generations to come and in co-joining with other groups as well.

If you need more information concerning the Society and their work, the telephone is 203.392.6125, website www.jhsgnh.org, or email jhsgnh@yahoo.com. 

Thank you,

Patricia Illingworth

Grove Street Cemetery