Change at YMCA: Reminder to Support Northwest HUB!

There's always more to a story than we read or hear about. Always. Life's messy and complex.

But this sure looks strange.

The Y's new Executive Director who hasn't even started yet, comes into town from Oklahoma and "delivers layoff notices" to the man he's replacing and three others: the "Interim Executive Director...[and] communications director, campaign director and senior director of health innovations."

There's a "house-cleaning" for you. Layoffs suck, and this looks like an especially unpleasant one for the organization and for those who are losing jobs.

So why is this news here?

Because the Second Chance Recyclery, the bike program administered jointly by the YMCA and Hillcrest, was under the senior director of health innovations, and the program may be orphaned, unable to find another home in the org chart.

Collecting bikes in 2012

The "health innovations" group was also the home, I believe, for the local "Pioneering Healthier Communities" project and networked with the County Community Health Improvement Partnership.

Hillcrest Program
could see change

These kinds of system health projects don't necessarily have billable hours and easy revenue streams associated with them. Crucially, they are about costs in time and in health we have externalized and made invisible, and we don't have systems to price those costs and to capture revenue accordingly. The programs require subsidy at the moment.

But since the new Executive Director looks like he wants more of a transactional, fee-for-service, "business-oriented" approach to the non-profit, programming like this will be evaluated and could be in jeopardy.

If you want a Y engaged in the wider community, it will be time to let them know. Otherwise, we may find the Y digging into a more narrow health club and gym model.

It's also a good time to support Northwest Hub - even more, it looks like it will need to be the successor entity to the Second Chance Recyclery.