So what do you do? Here are some ideas that other agencies are considering:

• Diversify. Can’t rely on public funding to help cover medical costs of the people you serve? Find income elsewhere. Yuri Feynberg of Life Adjustment Center is considering branching out to offer housing to veterans, and child-care and education programs for families. It’s a different direction for his brand than caring for people with DD, but Feynberg is confident he can make it work.  “Survival is a priority.”

• Expand other revenue streams. If you don’t have a mechanism for private donations, get one. If you have a mechanism, expand it. Brian Doyle of Family Services is relying more on private philanthropy, and fund-raising mechanisms can range from seeking help from private foundations to small gifts using Paypal or similar function. It’s all about marketing.

• Partner. Doyle is also expanding relationships with other organizations. The idea is to trade services and reduce costs. “Through greater collaboration and working together, we can grow those ways in which we affect those in greatest need,” he said.

“We might get painted with a broad brush stroke,” said Tom McAlvanah of AABR, a metro New York organization that provides services to people with both vision problems and developmental disabilities. “Are there mistakes? Are there problems? Of course.”

But are those problems endemic to the industry? Not at all.

“Many of the stories are very disturbing,” said Brian Doyle of Family Services – but it’s very important for the general public to be aware of the fine work being done.”

The stories, reported by The New York Times, Poughkeepsie Journal and other news outlets, highlight abuse of people who agencies serve, and state-funded payrolls an order of magnitude higher than industry averages.

“These agencies receive three times the rate for provision of services than my agency received,” said Yuri Feynberg of Life Adjustment Center. “Such great disparity allowed them to amass such an enormous amount of money to pay themselves such an enormous salary.”
It’s grating to Feynburg, who like many executives in the social service industry doesn’t have a secretary, much less a $700,000 or $1 million paycheck. In part, the reports damage his reputation, but it also undercuts the efforts of the direct-care professionals who work for him.

“They made it sound as if it was endemic to the entire social service industry,” he said. “You should see the outrage in the eyes of hands-on, direct-care people.”

Part of the responsibility lies with New York State, Feynberg said. “That goes back to the very faulty rate-setting methodology by OPWDD.  We don’t have Keystone Kops management. I don’t have a secretary; I pick up my own phone. Most agencies operate this way. The vast majority are doing a great job providing good service.”

It’s a sentiment that David Rousell of SERV Achievement Centers  echoes: “With the proper support and oversight – monitoring and supervision – these things rarely happen.”

So it’s in your best interest to reduce turnover. We asked Barbara Lehrer — founder of The Beacon Group, which places direct care professionals in facilities serving special needs clients on Long Island, in New York and Westchester County – how to do that. She said:

Barbara Lehrer -- founder of The Beacon Group

Hire well – It’s not just a matter of looking at a resume. Do the criminal background check. Check with New York’s Office for People with Developmental Disabilities or similar agencies in other states, which often maintain a database of people certified and decertified for direct care work. And when you do look at a resume, look for experience that prepares them well.

“They may be hiring people they should not have hired originally, and that may be contributing to a lot of turnover,” Lehrer said.

Train well – “There are many direct care workers who are just not trained properly. They don’t know what to expect,” Lehrer said. Make sure they do.

Place well – Different skill sets, personal and professional, lend themselves to different environments. “We have direct care professionals who love to cook. One loves to make ice cream sandwiches. We place her in high-functioning homes,” Lehrer said. “Put the right direct care professional in the right place.”

Pay appropriately – Salary and benefits should be competitive. “When agencies tell me they don’t have enough direct-care staff, they can say they haven’t been able to find them,” Lehrer said.”I think many of them say they can’t find them because they don’t want to pay for them.”

Create incentives to advancement – “Internal promotions are wonderful,” Lehrer said, and opportunities to increase skills via training are even better, creating a more valuable employee while building loyalty.

Create a supportive environment – Create an employee-of-the-month program, or maybe a bonus for good service. Get out of the office and meet your direct-care professionals in their work environment. Provide new employees with a peer mentor. Show them you care.

Keeping good staff is important. The people you serve respond better to people with whom they’ve built a relationship, Lehrer said. And it costs serious money to hire and train personnel.

Its website is a backbone from which much of the organization’s outreach is based. Delarc offers a blog, online contributions section and good descriptions of its mission, history and services.

But it also offers an online support group, many videos that both show its services (and increase its Internet visibility), and a clear description of how its restraint-free philosophy and ban on aversive behavior techniques make it an industry leader.

“People can get a good idea of the culture of our organization,” said Catherine Tweedie, director of community relations.

Delarc is a relatively small Arc. NYSARC is the other end of the spectrum, with much the same vision.

NYSARC’s focus is policy and practice rather than direct service, but it has the same needs. So it provides access to its Legislative Advocacy Network and resource library. And attractive to grant providers, it includes its financial statement and an active blog that discusses policy and industry news, as well as family-oriented information.

“For us, the website is all about the ability to provide consistently good, relevant information,” said Ryan Goodenough, NYSARC’s director of communications. “Through this consistent messaging and education in our field, we stand the best chance of providing impact in development. Once this recognition is established, their affinity for this organization will grow and we turn that affinity into donations.”

Charitable foundations do the same thing. If you’re looking to get a grant from such a foundation for a program, capital expense or even operating costs, you must keep that in mind.

So look at your website from the point of view of someone with money to give you. Does it introduce your organization to the world in a compelling, winning way? Does it embody your brand? Does it start a relationship with the reader? That’s exactly how your letter of inquiry works.

“In our training, we teach that the funder-grantee is so much about the relationship,” said Cheryl Loe, communications project manager for The Foundation Center, a New York-based organization that helps link non-profits to the foundations that can help fund them. “Grantmakers are going to look at the web site as any donor would—the key factors being content, design, usability, and accessibility.”

You can build many of the functions of an application for a grant right into your website – that grant makers can access as a validation tool, or that you can incorporate into your own application package.

So are these pieces of information on your site?

• A concise, yet complete, description of your services, and where you provide them.

• A brief history of your organization. Many foundations want no more than 200 words, which is about how many you’d want on a website page.

• Mention (and perhaps certification) of your 501(c)(3) status.

• A financial statement or your latest 990s.

• Metrics that show your success.

And those are just the validation tools. You need to show the grant provider you’re the better investment, so your website can’t be just an online business card.

“When using the Web as a fundraising and donor-engagement tool, give donors the information they want from your organization,” Loe writes, citing an article from Fundraising Success. “They shouldn’t have to look elsewhere, such as Charity Navigator or GuideStar, for those details. Make it easy for them to find it on your site.”

You need to show:

• You’re an active, vibrant group by posting consistently to a blog to showing your social media feeds.

• You have other revenue streams, from subsidiary businesses that employ the people you serve, to fundraisers and even direct donations. Consider an online donation function.

• You’re a thought leader by addressing issues and developments related to your core mission, such as giving families tips for dealing with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

• You help enable people to act in their own interests by giving frequent calls to action and information of value to the people and communities you serve.

And understand, your website needs to address all your constituencies, from the people you serve, to potential donors, policy makers, volunteers and even customers. “The best sites have a clearly defined target audience, but they also may provide information for other constituencies,” Loe said.