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(upbeat inspiring music) - Hi, I'm Rhea Jha.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the operations and finances of organizations from all sectors.

And nonprofit organizations have been particularly hard hit.

Nonprofits can struggle with fundraising during the best of times, and COVID-19 has amplified these challenges.

on this episode of "Digging Deeper," Penn State President, Eric Barron, talks to Anne Ard executive director of Center Safe, and Michele Crowl, executive director of the Discovery Space.

- Well, thank you both for joining me.

You know, this is an incredibly important topic.

Actually, a close friend of mine was discussing how it was that the university was functioning.

And then he made this comment that, you know, "A lot of businesses are affected, but many ways it's the nonprofits in our communities that are struggling the most."

So perhaps you could, we could begin by you describing how it is that you're functioning during this time of, of high-COVID cases.

Anne, do you wish to go first?

- Sure.

I'd be happy to start.

And I think what I can say probably applies to Michelle as well.

Although, she can respond for Discovery Space, but I think one of the challenging things is that so much of what we do is person-to-person, face-to-face, right?

So we really had to pivot.

We work with victims of domestic and sexual violence.

And so, we provide advocacy, and shelter, and those kinds of services, and all of a sudden going from seeing people in an office, or having people in shelter, to working with people remotely, to keep them safe and to keep our staff safe, that has been a real challenge.

- And does this mean the density within the housing is also has to be less?

- Oh, well we have, we actually are no longer sheltering onsite because our shelter is communal.

While we have individual bedrooms, we've got shared bathrooms, and shared kitchen facilities, and laundry facilities, so we've been actually working with local hotels to provide shelter off-site.

And that's worked fairly well.

Our staff can continue to have contact with folks, and the hotels are struggling too.

So, they've been very accommodating with us.

But, it's expensive to shelter people offsite for extended periods time.

- I bet it is.

And that sort of self-supporting atmosphere is harder to deliver on.

- It is.

It is much more difficult.

- And, Michelle, how about Discovery Space?

- Yeah, we sort of have two arms to the organization.

So, we have the Science Center, which most people think of first.

We also opened a maker space right at the beginning of 2020, called The Rivet.

The Rivet is for teens and adults.

It's been open on weekends with very limited programming, as you can guess, very small programs, but we've been able to do things like at the beginning of April and May.

we were making face shields for community organizations, nonprofits that couldn't get them right away, but needed them right away.

The Science Center side, exhibit gallery is closed, which hurts.

We are doing virtual programming, which is, you know, mixed feelings because a lot of kids are on Zoom all day.

But, the thing that hurts the most, I think is that all of our community partnerships and collaborations have halted.

So, we actually work a lot with Penn State students and faculty, whether it's research grants that, you know, it's easy for us to have kids on site.

We work with Penn State faculty for IRB approval.

We have grad students thirsty to collect data.

None of that can happen right now.

We've work with the College of Engineering, and a variety of other ones, science, psychology, health and human development, to be broader impacts on grants.

None of that can happen right now.

So we're pushing forward as much as we can in the virtual world, and looking forward to getting back to normal.

- You know, so I appreciate that.

This is an operational struggle that is there, and it makes a lot of sense what you've both said.

And I know that the Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofits also says that in this time of COVID, and stresses, and being sort of bound in space, that there's also an increased demand for services.

Are, you now, I realize that here in this programming, we have two very different types of nonprofits, which in my mind makes it all the more interesting, but are you seeing a change in demand as well?

- Our numbers and the demand for services at Center Safe stayed fairly constant through the spring and the summer.

What we are seeing now is an increase, and our staff are very concerned about what's going to happen when the moratorium on evictions at the end of this month.

When there is no more stimulus money available for families who are in need.

Because not surprisingly, a lot of our clients are the folks who have the very fewest resources.

And so, I think there's a concern that as the pandemic continues, and there's not an additional influx of financial support, or as people are being evicted, that that's going to have a really negative impact.

And we're starting to see that a bit already.

Our increased numbers for shelter, have our numbers, the requests for shelter have increased over the past month.

- Mm-hmm.

And, the third part of this, or a third part of this is your revenues.

And so, could you perhaps, maybe starting with Michelle, give us a little sense of the financial impact that you're feeling.

- Yeah.

We closed in March.

And if you look at sort of our yearly cycle between March and August, we make most of our earned income from programming, whether it's field trips, onsite, afterschool programs at schools, summer camps, things like that.

And we've been talking to our network of Science Centers across the country about how do you make up for that, right.

It's probably going to be longer than a year in total that we're closed.

And so it's true for us.

Contributions are down from individuals and foundations.

There have been a few bright spots, though.

We have formed a new partnership with AccuWeather.

Jeremiah has made a donation to us to support us while we're closed, and also to create a new meteorology-themed exhibit.

And so, those kinds of things have been sort of keeping the staff going.

It's exciting to think about, but the financial impact is real.

In the Science Center field, they're talking about it being five years till we get back to what we used to be able to do.

So we'll see, but we're being very frugal and pushing forward with, like I said, small programs at The Rivet.

We know teens and adults are interested in connecting socially while staying safe.

And so, some of our programs are three or four people and they can stay very far apart in our maker space, and it gives teens, for example, a safe space to hang out with friends and socialize without the risk of spreading the virus.

- Anne, how about you?

- You know, for us, and I always need to lead with saying that I am incredibly, I am just amazed at the generosity of this community because our, we have not seen a drop in our individual donations.

In fact, we may have seen a slight increase, and that's really positive for us.

We also have managed to have an influx of funding through the Cares Act.

And so, that's been helpful as we've had to pivot to provide remote services.

It's really helped us sort of shore up our technology to be able to do that, to be able to have support groups online, that sort of thing.

What we will miss, well, two things, actually.

One, is what we miss in the short term is the ability to meet with donors sort of face-to-face and tell our story to help people understand why the need is continuing.

Why it's critical, and those opportunities.

We thought we might be able to do some of that remotely, but I think it's been difficult because people are working remotely, or going to school remotely all day long.

And so, doing another event remotely has lost its charm.

I think you can say the other thing that I think is concerning for me is the long-term impact of this in terms of so much of our funding comes from state and federal grants.

And if the economy doesn't improve in terms of the state economy, for example, the recent budget was approved flat funding, which right now we're grateful for, but I think the long-term impact on the economy is worrisome because we just don't know.

That all kind of rolls downhill to us.

- So, Michelle, are you doing different types o f ways to raise funds?

I know from personal experience at Center Safe has a lot of things that are really face-to-face.

I know less about your fundraising activities, but are there different things that you're trying, and doing, and how are your donations doing?

- Yeah, we, you know, we're a Science Center, so we're a place that likes to gather groups of kids and families together to learn science and technology and engineering.

But, we've been trying to do some of that virtually.

We've been making kits for community members so that they have the resources at home to do science, especially if they're not getting it in schools.

And we have a little bit of support to do work like that and to do the afterschool programs, to especially rural communities who we work with regularly, in-person.

Like many other nonprofits, we've tried a variety of things.

We've hosted some really interesting chats.

We called Nights to Discover because our annual fundraiser was closed or canceled.

And we're working on some new things, stay tuned.

But it's tricky.

It's tricky.

We have cut back expenses.

We haven't laid off anyone completely.

We haven't furloughed people, but we we're being very careful about expenses as we move forward.

- And, and how much of that fundraising is for contributions to the space versus the financial funding that you need to operate?

- So a little over half of our income is donations.

Fundraise dollars from people.

The other half is earned income.

And that's where that line item is very small right now.

And what it has illuminated is the fixed costs we have, right?

The challenge of paying full rent for a really large building.

Our landlords were as generous as they could be, but we're operating at about 20%, and paying all of the rent and utilities and things as we were before.

It's a challenge.

- Yeah.

It is a challenge.

So do either of you feel that that you're at risk because of COVID in terms of the operations?

I mean, Center Safe provides substantial and very important services.

And I don't know who would take your place if because of the costs of hotels, and things like that.

- Right.

And we're the only people in Center County who provide that service.

And so, I don't, we have, are part of a network of support, the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape.

And so, there are a lot of sort of, we have a safety net.

Let me say.

That doesn't mean that we might not get to a point where we have to think about cutting programs or cutting services, or laying off staff, because again, 15 to 20% of our budget is raised locally every year.

And so, if we can't do that, then that's going to have a significant impact on our programs.

But I don't think that we're in danger of closing our doors.

I think that the need is too critical, and we've really developed a significant safety net and the collaboration that we have with other community organizations, I think, will keep that from happening.

What I don't want to see happen is a significant reduction in services, because people really depend on what we do.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And how do you see issues that are related to keeping your personnel safe?

- Oh, yeah.

I mean, and I would be, this is probably true for Michelle as well.

You know, we're trying to figure out how we can continue to provide the services while maintaining safety.

So we, for example, we've limited the number of people in our buildings.

We run a safe custody exchange and supervised visitation program, and they've toggled back and forth in the past nine months between providing services onsite and in-person and providing services remotely.

And that really varies by what they're seeing in the numbers and whether or not some of their clients are infected because, you know, with a small staff, one person goes down, and is in close contact with another person, and, you know, before you know it your staff's right out, and out of commission for two weeks.

So that's been a challenge.

- And Michelle?

If you're closed, maybe it's not an issue.

- Well, we're not in danger of closing permanently.

We do know that the school year, last year and this year have been very disrupted, right, for kids of all ages and parents too, who now have to help their kids through their learning online.

And so, we're working really hard to be there.

We know that science may get sort of pushed.

If time constraints exist, you have to get in math and reading and writing.

We understand that.

So we can be a resource for the science enrichment piece of that.

We've been limited in what we can do just because of expenses.

Even before the pandemic, we've been very careful to keep the cost of programs to school and community groups low so that they can afford to participate.

We'd rather be busy doing things than busy making a profit, necessarily.

But, but it's getting trickier as people become Zoomed out, Right?

- Yeah.

- It's been harder.

Yeah, well, you know, I know that in the case of my granddaughter, who would be perfect age for Discovery Space, you know, every weekend they're going, "Where can we go?

What can we do?"

So that she has an opportunity to be able to, you know, do something that's mentally stimulating, and is out of, in their case, a New York City apartment, and to enjoy themselves.

And I suspect there's quite a bit of pent-up demand at this particular point.

- Yeah.

We've put a number of things on our website.

A lot of science centers have done it just for that same reason, right.

Parents, if a rainy weekend, and what do you do?

And so, we're hoping that that parents rediscover their love of science through doing it with their kids.

- So I know that both of you are talking about the thought of whether you're Zoomed out and in terms of fundraising.

And, Anne, I'm really pleased to hear that, you know, donations are coming in there.

And Michelle, that you have an important member of the community that is making sure.

But, what do you think is the level of awareness that many of our nonprofits that so clearly support our community and surrounding areas are really in a very different position because of COVID than than many other activities.

I mean, we're always hearing about whether a restaurant will make it, or something like that, or what.

But, what do you think is the level of awareness of our community about all of these different nonprofits that support our community?

- You know, I think that that sort of gets back to the question about, in some ways, the issue of fundraising through events, which a lot of nonprofits, especially smaller ones, tend to use.

And those are as much about friend raising and public awareness of the need and the work of the nonprofit as those are fundraising events.

And so when you can't do that, that becomes much more difficult.

You have to rely on your social media presence or the, you know, sort of word of mouth or making sure that you've got some story about you in the paper.

And luckily, there've been some partners in this, the local media have been helpful about sort of getting the word out.

But when you can't actually do the kind of interaction that you're used to, I think that's really hard.

- I just heard a statistic that 75% of non-profits have sort of fallen off people's minds.

Because unless they're directly in need of a service that they get, you know, they're not out and about at community events, they're not bumping into people at restaurants, they're not going to events to support them.

So, that's really scary for a lot of our non-profit friends.

- Yeah, this does seem like it's one of those moments since we're all sort of cocooned in our spaces.

And so we're thinking about our spouses, or we're thinking about whether we get to see our parents, and whether kids are going at the school or not.

And so we're not having that same sort of feeling about what is happening to a lot of other folks in our community.

What, in your mind, is a path back to normal?

I mean, is it just being able to open your doors, finally?

- I will say, go ahead.

No, go ahead, Michelle.

I mean, we care about helping kids see science and engineering as a future career, or, you know, a pathway to something interesting and a good future.

And COVID has brought science to the forefront.

The hard part about that now is the misinformation that's out there.

So when we can focus on the facts, and what's really going on in communities, and how we do things like stop the spread, it's great.

And so a lot of science centers are trying to sort of leverage while understanding that people are kind of tired of talking about COVID, leverage the fact that, you know, look what science can do for us.

And a lot of science centers are being very clear that they will not open until there is a vaccine, and it has reached a certain percentage of the population.

- So sadly, we are out of time.

It went awfully quickly.

Maybe just in a quick answer, how long do you think it'll be before you're back to normal?

- For us, I think we're hoping through the spring.

I think we're, I'm sort of looking at June as close to normal, but it's gonna take awhile.

It's gonna be a process.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

We're thinking late spring, early summer until we can open our doors again.

And we're hopeful that summer camp will happen.

- Well, I really appreciate having the two of you join me.

Hopefully, we've just added to the awareness level about the important nonprofits within our community.

So I really appreciate that you taking the time to be with me this morning.

- Absolutely.

Thank you for having us.

- Yeah.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

So thank you for being here, Dr. Barron.

From a student perspective on this topic, not for profits, what do you think are some challenges students are facing right now trying to run a nonprofit?

Because I know there's so many organizations on campus, moreso than they normally would.

- Yeah.

So there are a lot of different challenges.

I think if you look over the spectrum of nonprofits that are organized by students, you see that overwhelmingly, they're designed to help other people.

And so, this is a commitment on behalf of students, really in service to society.

And, and I think we heard, and I'm sure it's very similar for the students, but I think we heard the different types of challenges.

One challenge is the extent to which the success depends on face-to-face interaction and having that personal touch or connection in order to help people.

And a second challenge is whether or not you have the resources in order to be able to do it because we had that kind of moment of out of sight, out of mind, as we're all, as I put it cocooned in our own levels of space.

And then, for the student population, it is even more challenging because we've limited the number of people that can be together.

So if your nonprofit is part of a team, or group of students, or is dependent on other students helping you, then that means even the collection of individuals in who are working to achieve a goal is limited in terms of their numbers, and their distancing and their level of interaction.

So, I think there are three big challenges.

- Mm-hmm.

No, yeah, definitely.

And, like, as you said, a whole, there's like a huge thing with nonprofits with that face-to-face interaction.

And I'm assuming that a lot of these clubs will go around campus, or to the hub, to kind of get people to donate, or, you know, do things for their cause.

But what recommendations do you have for students right now that they could be doing at this time, like maybe using social media or, you know?

- Yeah.

So, you know, I have one, one part of the advice, which is, "Hey, hang in there because this too shall pass."

And second is people have to be innovative.

And we heard that you can over Zoom, or you can be Zoomed out or, or whatever the right sort of sense of that is so, so doing the next event, and the next event online can be challenging.

But our students are very adept at social media, and very adept at finding communication mechanisms that are different than sitting around a table or sitting in front of a group of people.

So, you know, I think, and I encourage people to think in innovative ways.

And you might just discover that there are, there's some other advantages in there.

I know we saw it in THHN, as we changed, switched from canning, and a lot of concern that the social media efforts with THHN really helped raise a lot of money.

So I think it's possible.

Delivering the services is a little bit more of a challenge.

- Definitely.

No, I definitely think that students can definitely utilize online outlets and social media, as you said, and just be an innovative as Penn State students are.

So thank you so much for talking to me about this subject.

- My pleasure.

- Support for Digging Deeper comes from the Penn State Alumni Association.

Connecting alumni to the university and to each other, the Alumni Association is powered by Pride, Learn more at alumni.psu.edu.

And from viewers like you, thank you.

(air whooshing)