Leaders connect to better serve Kentuckiana children

Two local nonprofit child agencies, Family & Children First and The Family Place, are merging this fall. The two agencies serve similar clients and have a long association of referrals between them.

Family & Children First serves children who have been sexually abused; The Family Place is a secure site where parents can have supervised visits with children who have been removed from their homes due to violence or abuse. They also provide a preschool for children of these families.

By merging the agencies, their leaders aim to provide more help to more children and families in Louisville and Southern Indiana.

Merger grew from Leadership Network connection

Dan Fox, executive director of Family & Children First, and Pam Helms, president of The Family Place, belong to an ongoing support network of executive directors that is an offshoot of their Leadership Network Class of 2003 experience.

The Leadership Network is the Leadership Louisville Center’s program specifically designed for directors of nonprofits. Each year, the program brings together a diverse group of a dozen or so executive directors who share their challenges, receive feedback and build confidence to implement solutions.  After graduation, participants are invited to take advantage of complimentary meeting space at the Leadership Louisville Center to continue this powerful, peer-learning experience.

And that’s just what several members of the class of 2003 did. Since their graduation, the group has met monthly at the Leadership Louisville Center. In April 2007, Dan Fox and Pam Helms started talking about further collaboration between their agencies. With funding from Metro United Way, they hired a consultant and used the Leadership Louisville Center as a neutral ground for exploring the merger. The rest is history in the making. They then proposed the idea to their respective boards. Fox credits the respective boards who each did significant research. A joint board is now working together to launch the merged agency.