by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
“An institution is not great because it’s old. It’s old because it’s great,” said daniel Memorial CEO Jim Clark at Monday’s meeting of the Rotary Club of Jacksonville.
Clark had just finished recounting some of the history of the 125-year-old agency, the oldest child-serving organization in Florida. What started as a few people helping a few children in Jacksonville has grown into a statewide organization with more than 170 employees and an annual budget of $12 million.
Attorney James Daniel founded the agency that bears his surname in 1884 to help support a local orphanage. Clark said daniel is still an orphanage but has expanded its reach far beyond Jacksonville. Today daniel serves 1,500 children statewide with 1,000 coming from North Florida.
Services range from immediate intervention and placing a child in foster care in cases of sexual or physical abuse to residential psychiatric care for foster children to daniel’s “Project Prepare” independent living that helps foster children approaching majority transition into life on their own.
“It’s a lifesaving issue,” said Clark. “We’re able to help those people become taxpaying citizens.”
Clark also said quite a few things have changed at daniel since he took over as CEO about 18 years ago, primarily in terms of diversifying the organization’s adoption services and revenue sources. What he called “therapeutic group homes” offer children more than just a place to stay.
“We have programs that are designed to help kids be successful,” said Clark.
Over the years, daniel has become a leader in the state in terms of foster care and adoption. Working with Jacksonville University, the University of North Florida and the University of South Florida, research studies have led to the development of educational materials that are sold through the daniel Institute to child advocacy organizations in 38 states.
He also spends quite a bit of time lobbying lawmakers in Tallahassee, especially when it’s time to determine budgets for social services. That has become even more important this year, said Clark.
“A nonprofit organization is managed just like any other business,” he said. “We are watching the budget in Tallahassee and preparing for possible funding cuts.”
Clark said one of the fastest-growing aspects of daniel’s services is acting as a clearinghouse for adoption resources. Fourteen years ago, the state’s “Adoption Hot Line” fielded around 600 calls from prospective parents and people whose children needed to be placed in foster care.
In 2009 daniel will answer more than 17,000 such calls.
“If ‘adoption’ is a word in someone’s question, we can answer that question,” he added. “We like to say if people are interested in adoption, they only have to make two calls. The first call is to daniel and the second is to the agency that can meet their need.”
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