Every day, nonprofit organizations and community revitalization efforts battle for revenue.
Thrive Allen County is beefing up its arsenal with the addition of John Robertson.
An attorney by profession, Robertson, 55, has dedicated more than three decades to the non-profit industry and is poised to bring in big dollars for the Allen County health-based 501(c)3 corporation.
Robertson’s career began in securing funds for housing developments in Michigan with the civil rights community action agency called New Detroit, one of the core programs in the original war on poverty waged by President Lyndon Johnson.
Robertson has written grants in excess of $4 million over his career. Almost 75 percent of Thrive’s annual budget comes from private and public grants.
As much as a calculated, skilled approach to acquiring resources is needed, nonprofits like Thrive must be effective in engaging the community and the people they aim to serve, Robertson said. His time in Detroit and a brief stop in Alabama helped hone his skills in that arena as well.
“I’ve shown the ability to work with diverse groups, and not just tell people what to do,” he said. “A big part of this job is to listen to people and identify what their needs are. Then you can help them pursue programs and funding to meet those needs.”
That’s why Thrive brought Robertson on board, said David Toland, executive director of the Allen County organization.
“John has been a tremendous asset to Thrive because he brings both a broad set of skills and experience and a proven track record as a grant writer,” Toland said. “We have to have resources if we’re going to continue to provide what we do.”
What seems to be a perfect match almost never happened.
With very little notice, Robertson’s wife Karen’s work with Gates Corporation brought the couple and their Siberian husky, Jake, to the region, and he thought it might take some time to find employment. To his liking, Robertson found that Kansas “has a vibrant non-profit sector” and landed the Thrive gig in only a few weeks.
The similar socio-economic conditions — declining population and high poverty — that plague Michigan, Alabama and southeast Kansas, might have expedited the job hunt, Robertson said.
“Both cities I worked in lost nearly half their population in the second half of the 21st century. Here, the dramatic population loss happened earlier,” he said. “It’s ironic to move from one place to another and find something hauntingly similar.”
Toland agreed the parallels between Allen County and the other places Robertson worked made the hiring decision an easy one.
“I was really intrigued by his time spent in Flint and Detroit because while those are more urban settings, there are a lot of similarities in terms of poverty,” he said.
