The following is a conversation between Eric Weingartner, CEO of The Door and University Settlement, and Denver Frederick, Host of The Business of Giving on AM 970 The Answer WNYM in New York City.


Eric Weingartner, CEO of The Door and University Settlement

Denver: It can be exceptionally difficult to navigate the maze of social services in New York City. You go to one place for healthcare, another for free legal advice, and still another if you are seeking mental health counseling. But what if all of these and many more services and programs were available to young people all under one roof? What would the impact of that be on their lives? We’re going to find out from my next guest. He is Eric Weingartner, the Chief Executive Officer of The Door and University Settlement.

Good evening, Eric, and welcome to The Business of Giving!

Eric: Denver, good evening. Thanks for having me. Delighted to be here.

Denver: So although I introduced you as the  CEO of The Door and University Settlement, there’s a third entity that’s involved in your portfolio, and that’s the Broome Street Academy. Tell us how these three entities are all connected. 

Eric: The University Settlement is the oldest settlement house in the country, formed in the late 19th century. In 2000, the University Settlement and The Door became affiliated when The Door was strategically in a tough spot – not particularly well-funded and not particularly well-managed – and their affiliated organizations that share an administrative back office. Programmatically, though, independent 501(c)(3)s, independent not-for-profits that programmatically function as unique standalone entities. Broome Street Academy is The Door’s charter high school.

And so, Broome Street is a charter high school, serves kids 9 through 12, and is uniquely the only charter high school in New York State that is strategically positioned to take in kids that have a background in either foster care or homeless. So, 50% of the students in our high school have that background. And also, uniquely, Broome Street is located within The Door, and the purpose of it is that – and I guess we’ll talk about it today – The Door is a very broad human services organization exclusively dedicated to kids that are 12 to 24. And so, all of the programming that is within The Door is embedded into the day-to-day of the kids at Broome Street. 

The Door is seven or eight deep programmatic interventions, all integrated into one not-for-profit. And so, it’s a deep, deep dive into healthcare, which includes: primary care, mental health care, and a big emphasis on family planning, reproductive health care, sexual health; a deep dive into training kids for jobs through job placement, internships, and preparation for college.

Denver: So interesting. Let’s speak a little bit more about that because you have a nationally recognized, one-of-a-kind integrated model serving 11,000 kids. Tell us how this model works. 

Eric: So, it’s an anomaly. Government and private philanthropy do everything they can – I don’t think purposely – to essentially assure that a not-for-profit like The Door cannot emerge because most not-for-profits in New York find themselves as being particularly good at one or two things, with a few ancillary programs that support a main intervention –  healthcare, legal service, foster care, housing. 

In the early 1970s, a group of volunteers thought about the idea of a holistic, integrated intervention whereby multiple programs, multiple services would be available to at-risk young adults. And over time, that scaled into being The Door. One of the central conditions to The Door is that we are located and operate in a big space. So, we are situated on the corner of Broome Street and Sixth Avenue in Soho, as unlikely a place for a poverty-fighting juggernaut as you could find.

Denver: For sure.

Eric: We do not identify as being a community-based organization. We’re a citywide organization that draws 11,000 kids a year to this central place in Manhattan, almost equally distributed between Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, with a little bit of less representation from Queens and Staten Island. 

But fundamentally, The Door is seven or eight deep programmatic interventions, all integrated into one not-for-profit. And so, it’s a deep, deep dive into healthcare, which includes: primary care, mental health care, and a big emphasis on family planning, reproductive health care, sexual health; a deep dive into training kids for jobs through job placement, internships, and preparation for college. 

At this point now, we have 18 attorneys doing civil law with an emphasis on immigration. We feed kids all day long with a food program that runs from breakfast through dinner. Every night, any kid at The Door and our staff eat for free as part of our model. 

Denver: Nutrition-wise.

Eric: We’re the drop-in provider for homeless kids in New York City, so the city has designated The Door as the drop-in site for vulnerably-housed kids or homeless kids. And of the 11,000 kids we see a year, almost 25% of them are either homeless or vulnerably- housed.

Denver: Goodness. And they can take a shower there; they can do the laundry there… some of the real basic things.

Eric: We can dive into the depth of all this. And then categorically – what else am I missing? We have a massive arts program that runs all year and all summer, which is part of the glue that attracts kids to come to us; sports, recreation, and we just opened a brand-new gymnasium.

The presumption is that of the 30 to 50 new kids to become members of The Door every day, they do an assessment.  They tell us why they’re there, and they’re there for so many different reasons. But, fundamentally, the secret sauce is that 75% of the kids that come to The Door use four more services while they’re with us, and they come for very different reasons.

So if you were a fly on the wall in our intake system, and we were going to look at the case of three kids that were becoming members of The Door today, you could have a young woman who’s there because she’s in a sexual relationship with her partner and is there for birth control. And next to her is a young man who’s fearing being deported, who’s from Guatemala, who is in desperate need of an attorney to help figure out benefits and figure out status and figure out if they can stay in this country, go to college or go to high school or access healthcare. Next to that kid could be a kid who is a college student who needs a job, and we’re going to put them into a training and get them connected to a job;  a kid next to that kid, who is street homeless, most likely has an acute mental illness, potentially a substance abuse issue, who needs a real deep intervention, and is incredibly unstable. 

So, you have this very unique cocktail of 11,000 kids who coexist in a very unique space. But, fundamentally, if we’re doing our job right and the youth development principles that are the fabric of The Door, we can make sure that almost any kid that comes to The Door can get everything they need to stabilize and advance within our system. It’s a very unique condition because, fundamentally, the not-for-profit world is set up to put young adults, put adults, put families into position to get a service and get a referral to do the other things they need. What poverty folks understand well, public policy folks understand well, is that families that are at risk, young adults that are at risk, rarely have one thing going on. 

Denver: That’s right. They’re linked together. 

Eric: There’s this cocktail of, using a health word, comorbidity where it’s never just unemployment and depression. And if it is unemployment and depression, The Door’s model essentially props up this question: If I put behavioral health services and employment services in the same building, will I get a better outcome on both if they’re operated together?

Denver: Behavioral scientists will also tell you that friction is a big thing that stops people from getting the help that they need. So, if you go to one place and you’re being helped, and they refer you to another, it’s a production very often – you got to get on a subway; you got to find out how it all works – and that can have such a fallout rate right there.

From just listening to you, Eric, too, I get a sense that a lot of these young people might come because they’re lonely. There’s a community there, even though you’re not a community-based center; there’s a sense that there’s a community.

Eric: There’s a huge piece of what The Door is about, but I didn’t mention in our initial sort of rundown of services…that kids come to The Door to hang out all the time. And we are particularly welcoming to communities that find themselves marginalized. Almost 20% of the kids that come to The Door, which is a big number– 2,000, 3,000– identify as LGBTQ.

There are tons of kids that come to us who need recreation and want movie night and homework help and a place to have dinner with peers, with like-minded folks. 

Denver: They’re connected.

Eric: Folks ask me all the time: If I had my druthers, would I move The Door into one of the boroughs? Into an area with a higher concentration of poverty? The Door actually has a pretty immediate plan to expand, and we’re looking to, in effect, double our platform by opening a second Door in the Bronx. But right now, I’m pretty pleased that we’re actually in Manhattan because there is something about leaving your neighborhood, going to the city, and taking on something serious in SoHo, which is really a nice oasis for kids. Every night, we’re open ‘til 8:00 or 9:00.  We walk kids to the train. We get them on the train to get them home. 

Denver: That’s good. 

Eric: But from 7:00 in the morning ‘til 9:00 at night we’re like a mini-city. There are 800, 900 kids in our building for everything from high school equivalency, to job training, to have dinner, to take a yoga class, to see their doctor, to see their therapist, to meet with their lawyer. It functions like a little metropolis.

Denver: Behavioral scientists will also say that we think that it’s the individual characteristics of a person that determines their decisions and their actions, whereas it’s only about 30%; 70% percent is your environment. When you change the environment, you can change an awful lot of things, and being where you are changes that environment and gets them to think differently and go to a different place in their brain.

You also have early childhood and mental health services there. Speak a little bit about those. 

Eric: Each of the individual platforms within The Door sort of stands alone, almost like a unique not-for-profit. On the mental health side, we have about 1,200 kids engaged in clinical mental health services. There are two places at The Door where we are out of capacity: one is on mental health, and one is on legal. I could double both departments and still have more kids left. 

We have about 1,200 kids that are in clinical services now, and it’s not just low-grade – the blues. There’s some deep trauma, real deep mental illness, schizophrenia, bipolar, real post-traumatic stress and trauma that’s dominating a lot of the experiences of kids that are with us. It’s probably the most untreated condition of anything that I see of the 11,000 kids that come to The Door in a year, and if I had a magic wand and a new pot of money, it would be the place that I’d expand first. 

I don’t think that’s unique to The Door. I actually don’t think it’s unique to young adults. I think it’s probably the most untreated condition in New York.

Denver: Everywhere, I would say.

Eric: And depending on culture and ethnicity and background, there’s still a reluctance to uptake mental health. 

There’s still a stigma (around mental health). The differential between treating it and getting kids back on the track to be able to thrive academically or in a workforce environment is massive, and we see it all the time, that it is the differential.

Denver: There’s still a stigma around it. 

Eric: There’s still a stigma. The differential between treating it and getting kids back on the track to be able to thrive academically or in a workforce environment is massive, and we see it all the time, that it is the differential. 

There is a community within this building where kids feel happy. 

There is not a depressive vibe that runs to the place. It is upbeat. There’s music playing. We have activities all through the year and all day that are celebrating the kids that we have, and everything is about being progressive.

Everything is about a celebration. Everything is about moving forward, and it’s about finding what it’ll take for every kid that’s in that building to thrive in the way that they need to thrive.

Denver: You know, this is such an interesting place. Eric. Describe the vibe of it – what it sounds like, what it looks like, what it feels like when someone walks through that door.

Eric: Denver, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to turn people on to The Door, and I invariably just don’t take “no” for an answer when somebody says, “Just tell me about it on the phone.” It’s one of these places where you have to come visit.

Denver: I bet.

Eric: Because it’s not eight cubicles and a waiting room. It’s 75,000 feet in a gray, uninspired building on the outside, but when you walk in, it’s incredibly vibrant. There’s art everywhere; there are kids teeming through the place. Half the time, I can’t tell if a staffer is a participant or a staffer because nobody’s wearing a suit except for me when I have a real meeting. It’s seven floors of vibrancy.

And so, you’re walking past the cafeteria into the art studio, into the dance studio, up to the employment lab, past the law firm. Our high school is essentially two floors of the building, and when you get to the fourth floor and walk into Broome Street Academy, you forget that five seconds earlier, you were in a clinic that looked like a doctor’s office, and now you’re in a high school with lockers and big posters and drama club and debate club. And so, it is a little bit like a department store.  

And when you walk through, and you listen, “This is mental health. This is legal. This is our high school. This is our clinic,” you start to really understand that there is something visceral about The Door in that you see this interconnectivity of programming and can understand that it’s not just this database that sits behind the walls that shows that kids are connected to different activities. There is a community within this building where kids feel happy. 

There are a decent number of kids that come to The Door whose lives are in real crisis. There’s a lot of sadness behind their life experience. But when you get to The Door, the place is upbeat.

Denver: Contagious. 

Eric: There is not a depressive vibe that runs to the place. It is upbeat. There’s music playing. We have activities all through the year and all day that are celebrating the kids that we have, and everything is about being progressive. Everything is about moving kids forward, from: “We’re the float in the Gay Pride Parade that wins the dance contest every year,” to our Halloween party, to the prom that we have for our high school. Everything is about a celebration. Everything is about moving forward, and it’s about finding what it’ll take for every kid that’s in that building to thrive in the way that they need to thrive.

Eric Weingartner and Denver Frederick inside the studio

The Door is this place where if you care about this work, if you’re interested in youth development and advancing the lives of at-risk young adults, The Door is really the crown jewel of where you want to come work.

Denver: I think to your point about happiness, I’ve always looked at happiness not in terms of your current state but in the direction you’re heading in– whether it’s gotten better or if it’s gotten worse. So even if they have some really challenging times, they know by being at The Door, it’s getting better, and that instills some happiness, as opposed to the other way around. What are some of the challenges?

Eric: Denver, can I say that at the root of that is our staff. Our staff is excellent, and the funding constraints about who we are… everyone at The Door should get a big raise. But fundamentally, The Door is this place where if you care about this work, if you’re interested in youth development and advancing the lives of at-risk young adults, The Door is really the crown jewel of where you want to come work.

We rarely find ourselves struggling to attract talent. The folks that drive these programs, our workforce programs: the woman who runs our legal services division – every one of them is an industry superstar. And for me, it is a privilege to be their colleague, and their teams are remarkable.

Denver: You just try to get the obstacles out of their way so they can do what they’re born to do.

Eric: Without question, they would say “Eric, just get out of our way.”

Denver: Or get our problems out of our way.

Eric: Or maybe they’d say, “Go raise me some more money.”

Denver: Well, let’s continue with that. Let me ask you a little bit about the corporate culture and what you try to do to shape it and influence it to make it such a special place in which to work.

Eric: Yes. Well, I’m new-ish to it. In the beginning of December, I’ll turn 50.

Denver: Happy birthday!

Eric: Thank you.

Denver: That’s a big one.

Eric: I guess it’s a big one. Out of college, I did Teach for America and then worked for Teach for America for a short period of time. But since my mid-20s, I’ve been essentially a not-for-profit staffer, worked in City Hall twice under Mayor Giuliani and Mayor Bloomberg, and then spent almost a decade at Robin Hood.

And so I came to this big administrative role in my mid-40s, and the culture was something I had to get used to. But, fundamentally, at The Door in particular, it is an intense life because there are a lot of kids in our building. We have a mosaic of contracts that put tons of pressure on us to be able to meet the numbers of the folks we need to serve… in some cases, meet pretty rigorous outcomes with a very difficult population.

And so, you have these two colliding forces driving The Door: One is you have this general feeling that we need to run a youth development, appropriate, upbeat, very intense set of services that are meeting kids effectively; and on the other side, you have staff working in a more traditional, professional environment, trying to be great business people, great program people at the same time… all balanced against an infrastructure that’s pretty lean. 

So, it never feels anything but intense, and it’s the right makeup of somebody to be able to thrive at The Door for a longer period of time. Our line staff tends to be very young. Our managers are more seasoned, which is not to say that they’re old, but they’re more seasoned. And thank God they’re there because they have big industry knowledge and can really be mentors to staff. You can’t coast at The Door. Every day is pretty intense.

…the not-for-profit system, in general, is broken. I think that the government and, to some extent, philanthropy put an unrealistic burden on not-for-profits to do Herculean work on budgets and contract sizes that are inadequate.

Denver: Well, I think kids will make it that way. Young people just make it that way. They’re there. 

Talk a little bit about your business model. I know that there’s a lot of government funding involved, and I also know that you place a premium on the ability to raise private philanthropic dollars. Talk about that and how you see those two things working together.

Eric: So, in a macro sense, I would say – and I say this having been a government person and a philanthropy person – I would say that the not-for-profit system, in general, is broken. I think that the government and, to some extent, philanthropy put an unrealistic burden on not-for-profits to do Herculean work on budgets and contract sizes that are inadequate.

Denver: True. And restrictions, as well, on what they can do.

Eric: And restrictions, and just arcane qualifications and requirements about how we use money and how we report money, almost in a way that it inherently assumes fraud, which offends me to my core.

Denver: They assume the worst intentions. 

Eric: Yes. It’s almost like we’re assumed to be criminals, even though we are fundamentally a division of the city, no different than the police department. The Door takes government money – state, city, federal – and we put it to work on the behalf of at-risk kids, and it’s presumed that we are going to mismanage that money, which, to my core, offends me. I think there’s a little bit more trust on the philanthropy side.

But, fundamentally, we are a $36 million operation. About 65% to 68% percent of that cash is government cash. The rest is private money, which takes the largest form of foundation money, then corporate money, and then individual giving. I spend the lion’s share of my time trying to do better for The Door and Broome Street on the private side because the general operating support money that is unrestricted is what I need more than anything so that I’m not just running good programs, but I actually have a computer, I have a CFO, I have an elevator contract.

Denver: You have a strong organization. 

Eric: I have an infrastructure that lets me run.

Denver: A strong infrastructure…and do all these other things.

Eric: I essentially chase down infrastructure health all day long. We’re increasingly blessed to have a board that is dynamic. I sort of feel like it’s my job to be The Door’s cheerleader, to introduce to New York City heroes The Door because, by and large, the city understands that business and philanthropy should come together. And so, I’m constantly on the lookout for people who understand how unique The Door is and want to be part of bringing magic to what happens on Broome Street.

… I don’t wait around for government or philanthropy to ask me about whether or not I got a bang for my buck. A good not-for-profit wants to do that in every case.

Denver: As you mentioned a moment ago, Eric, you were at the Robin Hood Foundation, so you know all about measuring impact, and so few nonprofits are confident about that. I think three-quarters of them have said they don’t know how to go about it. So, share with us how to go about it and how you measure impact at The Door.

Eric: I think that having been at Robin Hood and, to some extent, having been at the city before being in this job was a super training ground. I actually don’t think about impact any differently now than I did when I was at Robin Hood. Robin Hood, I think, is exceptional. I left there as in love with the place as I did when I got there. The guy who runs it, Wes Moore, is superb, and the staff that works there are also superb. 

What Robin Hood always got right was that “We’ll give you a big check. We’ll give you a lot of dough, but we’re going to ask you all the questions that will tell us whether or not two things are happening: One, programmatic impact is clear; and two, whether or not the infrastructure of your not-for-profit is clear.” 

Those two basic buckets of questions is how I think about whether or not The Door is healthy. And so, whether or not a funder asks me or not, I care about whether or not I’m able to prove that if I allocate $100,000 to mental health, I want to be able to know what is the tangible result of that $100,000 being put to work. And it could be in the measurement of whether or not a pre- or post-test shows an improvement in mental health. It could be on the jobs case about whether or not someone finished training, got a job, stayed in that job for a period of time, had some wage change. But I don’t wait around for government or philanthropy to ask me about whether or not I got a bang for my buck. A good not-for-profit wants to do that in every case.

Denver: To get better.

Eric: I don’t want to spend $100,000 on anything, not unless I think it has an impact. So, at the core of how I manage and how the team at The Door thinks about programming, we do that whether or not government or philanthropy asks us for that. The flip side is when government or philanthropy asks us to document questions that we don’t think are the central ones, and then we have to just make a decision on our own whether or not we want that money or not. Because if we’re going to get a big check, $500,000, to do something important in the legal services realm, if we’re not being asked to produce the outcomes that we think are really the central ones, we just won’t take the contract. 

We don’t take on programs that we don’t think are core to our values or core to how we think about measurement but, by and large, we need the money, so we try to make it work.

Denver: You don’t want to chase the money. 

Eric: We don’t take on programs that we don’t think are core to our values or core to how we think about measurement but, by and large, we need the money, so we try to make it work. The private money is easier than government money.

And if you look at the best not-for-profits in New York City and my peers– places like Good Shepherd, or Children’s Aid Society, or DREAM, or places where there’s a lot going on – some of them do it all in one building; some of them don’t – but you’ll rarely find these superb not-for-profits that haven’t thought about this continuum. What’s unique about The Door is that we’ve just figured out how to do it all in one building, and I do think that that’s a big difference.

Denver: Do you believe, Eric – beyond what you said before about maybe opening another facility up in the Bronx – that this model is replicable and scalable across the nonprofit world, knowing how nonprofits work, funders work, government works? That it could be taken across the country and in different places as a way to really address poverty and challenges that these young people face? 

Eric: I fundamentally do. And when I was explaining to my father why I was leaving Robin Hood, and his general question was, “Have you lost your mind?” 

In part, the draw of The Door was that—

Denver: He’s a brain scientist, so he can ask that question.

Eric: He is a brain scientist. 

Fundamentally, 65% of the dough that drives The Door, that public money, isn’t unique to New York. And so, if we picked 10 cities that have the same fundamental issues that New York City does – at-risk young adults who need health care, who need jobs, who need access to high school remediation, who need legal services – by and large, that money and that condition of funding is present in most American cities. And so then the question becomes: If you aggregate programming, and you do it in a way where youth development strings through a set of contracts under different types of services, could you actually get better outcomes for kids if you centralize that programming? My inherent guess is: yes. 

And so, you don’t need The Door in New York City to go to Los Angeles or go to Houston, Texas and actually start a new Door, though that’s something that maybe we would consider, but a smart social services entrepreneur, or a smart City Hall person can and should create the condition where their destination is for young adults, where it’s not just a one-trick pony, and that’s super important.

And if you look at the best not-for-profits in New York City and my peers– places like Good Shepherd, or Children’s Aid Society, or DREAM, or places where there’s a lot going on – some of them do it all in one building; some of them don’t – but you’ll rarely find these superb not-for-profits that haven’t thought about this continuum. What’s unique about The Door is that we’ve just figured out how to do it all in one building, and I do think that that’s a big difference.

Denver: I do, too.

Eric: When I was at Robin Hood, and one of our grantees would say to me, “Look. We served a thousand people and got a thousand people connected to employment.” And then the next point was, “and we also sent 150 of those thousand to mental health programming,”  I inherently didn’t believe that that referral was that meaningful because unless that not-for-profit could tell me that those 150 referrals got all the way down to finishing some level of treatment, and they could show me some sort of outcomes results… it was in the ether. 

Denver: That’s right. 

Eric: I don’t believe that referral is changing the lives of kids. I don’t believe the referral is public policy. I think a referral is what it is, and there’s a big, big leap for a young adult who is 18 years old to travel to a brand-new organization and engage in mental health services because somebody you trust told you to go there. 

Denver: That’s where the friction comes in. People just don’t do it.

Eric: And I think that government— it’s not lost on me. When I took this job, I marched down to City Hall.  I marched down to OMB and said, “Don’t you realize that you all are the only ones that have the power to create a condition where not-for-profits can, in effect, collaborate and put multiple sets of deliverables within their structure? You can incentivize that because you are the driver of the core of the bulk of this money,” and I think it takes a courageous mayor to actually stand up and do that.

Denver: And they have to appreciate how people actually live their lives, and that is the difference. Nonprofits… and sometimes the government doesn’t do it. It’s the way they would like them to live their lives, but it’s not the way they live them.

Let me get you out on this, Eric. Eleven thousand young people every single year, lots of uplifting stories. Tell me one that really made an impact on you.  

Eric: There is a young man who was a student at Broome Street Academy, who came to this country from Africa, having been orphaned. He didn’t speak the language. He came to us in the ninth grade. He lived part of the time on the floor in his brother’s apartment in the Bronx. He lived part of his time in a back room at Starbucks because he befriended the manager of a Times Square Starbucks, and he lived part of his time in a homeless shelter. He came to The Door at 7:00 in the morning every day so that he could have breakfast. Then he’d go to Broome Street Academy, our high school, and he’d stay at The Door until we kicked him out at night because he had nowhere else to go.

He graduated. He aced the SAT. He was a superb student, and under our current federal administration, he wasn’t eligible for aid because he wasn’t legal. We hustled our tush off to make sure that a school – a private school, a private college – would give him a full ride, and he’s a sophomore in college.

Denver: Great.

Eric: He used every service that Broome Street and The Door had. He ate with us. He was part of our youth council. He was in our arts program. He was a student with us. And if The Door hadn’t been there for him, he would not have thrived. 

Denver: And that’s why you do this work. 

Eric: And that’s why we do this work. 

Denver: Well, Eric Weingartner, the Chief Executive Officer of The Door and University Settlement, thank you so much for being here this evening. Tell listeners about your website, how they can become involved or financially support this fabulous work. 

Eric: Great. Well, The Door is www.door.org. Our gala is on November 20. Tickets still available, so join us if you’d like. But get in touch with us, and we’d love to have folks come visit. And if you’re a big company and/or others who want to be involved, we’re always looking for folks to help The Door thrive. 

Denver: Thanks, Eric. It was a real pleasure to have you on the show. 

Eric: Great to have you, Denver. Thank you. 

Denver: I’ll be back with more of The Business of Giving right after this.

 

Eric Weingartner and Denver Frederick

 


The Business of Giving can be heard every Sunday evening between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Eastern on AM 970 The Answer in New York and on iHeartRadio. You can follow us @bizofgive on Twitter, @bizofgive on Instagram and at www.facebook.com/businessofgiving.

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