The Glasser/Schoenbaum Human Services Center existed for more than three decades primarily as a physical space to house nonprofits. But leaders there last week announced an expanded mission, focused on being a place where service and ideas come together.

“We are more than a landlord and one-stop center for people in need,” said Kameron Hodgens, executive director and CEO for the center. “This is a place for convening leadership.”

It’s an evolution that’s been in the works for some time, but came even more into focus with the pandemic, when many professionals working both at the Glasser/Schoenbaum center and the 17 nonprofits housed there ended up working remotely. Fortunately, with different structures making up the center, each organization was able to make calls independently on their own in-person staffing.

Of course, providing space remains a critical and somewhere rare mission in Florida. There are centers similar to Glasser/Schoenbaum in Tampa and Miami but nowhere else; a similar facility is planned in Charlotte County as well.

A new mission statement for the organization looks further than providing work space, committing the center “to connect, support, and sustain a network of human service nonprofits for a stronger community.”

That means greater importance to the Campus Connection portion of the mission in service of creating a greater collective impact. The center today hosts 90 programs staffed by 215 professionals and 1,600 volunteers across all the nonprofits there. The 17 groups together have combined annual budgets totaling $17.6 million. In 2019 alone, some 24,700 clients within the community were served in some way through programs at the Glasser/Schoenbaum center.

Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has placed even greater stress on social service agencies. Hodgens notes only one nonprofit left the center in the last year, and that one was in the process of doing so before the pandemic began. None of the remaining agencies have so much as asked to go on a payment plan with the rent.

In the past, the center has tried to create a sense of community through group lunches, though strategies like that had to be put on hold because of the health crisis. But the center has continued to pursue ways to create synergies using video-conferencing technology.

“We’re sharing information the community really needs, about CARES money, about sustaining the operations here,” Hodgens said.

And Hodgens expects many of the operational changes in the past year for nonprofits, as with all businesses, are hear to stay even as the coronavirus begins to pose a less immediate and wide-sweeping effect.