LAKE COUNTY — More than a year after its formation, a group formed to facilitate and assist the community”s businesses is, itself, facing financial trouble.
Mount Konocti Facilitation (MKF) is a nonprofit organization that implements a program developed by the Sirolli Institute. According to the Sirolli Institute, the purpose of the Enterprise Facilitator is to help as many local people help themselves as possible, but MKF recently terminated the employment of its enterprise facilitator, its only employee, after its executive board concluded that it could no longer continue to pay him.
A letter sent out to MKF”s confidential clients dated Aug. 17 states that “due to current budget constraints, beginning Sept. 8, 2006, Mt. Konocti Facili-tation (MKF) will no longer be utilizing the services of Loyd Hambrick, the program”s Enterprise Fac-ilitator.”
This despite a previous allocation of $100,000 put forth by the County of Lake and a $75,000 contribution from the State Assistance Fund for Enterprise, Business and Industrial Development Corp. (SAFE-BIDCO).
MFK, meanwhile, is a little over halfway through its 30-month contract with the Sirolli Institute, to which it owes two additional $25,000 payments.
According to a July 2004 newsletter of the Lake County R&R Association, implementation of the Sirolli Institute program locally cost $289,000.
“What that covers is the entire 30-month budget — the whole contract with the Sirolli Institute is 150k and we still owe them 50K,” explained Sandra West, who took over MKF”s treasurer responsibilities on June 15. “The next $25,000 is due this September and the last payment of $25,000 is due in the first quarter of 2007.”
Because of its financial difficulties, MKF plans to negotiate with the Sirolli Institute to delay the upcoming payment due in September, said West. “We are going to negotiate with them and give them our business plan for the next two years.”
According to the minutes from last September”s Board of Management meeting, MKF was late in making that $25,000 payment to the Sirolli Institute as well.
MFK”s Aug. 17 letter said the responsibilities previously performed by Hambrick which include communicating with entrepreneurs, determining what they want to do and then gathering the resources to help them take the next steps in creating their businesses will now be taken care of by various members of their community board.
“Our goal is to provide whatever the client needs and at this point we need to determine which of our trained facilitators will fulfill that role. It could be more than one person,” said Melissa Fulton, an MFK executive board member and executive director of the Lakeport Regional Chamber of Commerce. “The reason for the board of management is to act as a resource and depending on what the client needs it could be one or four or five of the members of the board of management.”
In addition to its executive board, MFK has a 50-plus member community board of management which includes local business people and community leaders who use their various skills and experience to help build and expand new business.
Fulton said MKF is still working on compiling a skills inventory of its members. “We have 57 currently on our list and a full one-third of them have not been regular attendees. We have somewhere between 25 and 30 active members.”
Of those, approximately five board members were able to complete the full week of training provided by the Sirolli Institute with Hambrick, said Fulton.
Sirolli Institute Project Implementation Manager Ned Webb said the board members acting as volunteer interim enterprise facilitators will need to come from the group who completed the initial week-long training held last April.
In the event that MKF hires a new enterprise facilitator in the future, said Webb, MFK will have to start completely over with the training through Sirolli, which involves attending a master class every six months until a total of four is reached.
Hambrick said the training takes a minimum of two years and that, upon attending the next class in September, he would have been two-thirds of the way through the training. So far, he said, he has invested 16 months of his time in receiving the necessary specialized training.
The Sirolli Institute model states that an adequate source of funding needs to be identified to sustain the model during its initial two-year test period and that, ideally, this funding should come from a variety of public and private sources to build widespread ownership and support for the project.
Despite this, an overwhelming majority of MKF”s funding has come from Lake County government and SAFE-BIDCO, with only a small portion from fundraising efforts. Only two fundraisers have been performed since MKF”s inception, which raised a total of $13,250. MKF declined the opportunity this past June to raise funds as a beer vendor at the Cobb Mountain Jazz Festival.
“They are no longer following the Sirolli model at all,” said Hambrick. “Why would you buy a McDonald”s franchise and then sell hot dogs?”
Per the contract between the County of Lake and MKF, MKF was established to promote entrepreneurship by assisting members of the public in the start up, improvement or expansion of businesses in all sectors of Lake County.
The contract also states that MFK was to have an enterprise facilitator in place 120 days after the agreement was entered into and that MKF agrees to continuing operation of their enterprise facilitation program for a minimum of two years from the date the contract was signed. This two-year commitment by MKF to the county will be reached on Sept. 21.
When asked if MKF could be in breach of contract by continuing to operate without a full-time facilitator, County Administrator Kelly Cox said, “I don”t believe they are in breach of contract at this time. They probably would be if they went without a facilitator for several months, an extended period of time, but I don”t believe that will be the case. They have already demonstrated a commitment and ability to fulfill the terms of their contract and I have no reason to believe they will not do so in the future.”
MKF officially started helping businesses in May of 2005 and to date lists 150 clients. Of this number, 117 clients are currently defined as inactive (meaning that the client has not initiated contact with MKF within the last 90 days) and a total of 33 clients are listed as active.
How many jobs has MKF created in Lake County?
“There”s extreme ambiguity in the collection methods of the data needed in order to determine the numbers of jobs that have been created,” said Hambrick.
He said that training regarding collecting and interpreting the data was to be provided at the forthcoming Sirolli master class he was to attend in September prior to his termination.
During the county”s budget hear-ings this past week, Cox said he recommended that $40,000 be set aside for MFK. “They had requested $50,000 and our intention has never been that we would fund this forever. They need to secure other long-term financing.”
This past Monday, Cox confirmed the board approved the $40,000 allocation.
For its part, MKF has requested the county not release the funds to them until they have developed a plan to sustain themselves financially in the future.
MKF”s plan of action was further formulated last Tuesday at the board of directors” regular meeting at the Clearlake City Council Chambers.
“We had a great meeting,” said Harmon. “(SAFE-BIDCO President) Mary Jo Dutra attended and I had not met her before. It was determined that I am going to be the main contact for our clients and the main volunteer facilitator. We”re also continuing to develop our internal marketing and financial plan.”
Once their plans for reorganization and fundraising have been presented to the Board of Supervisors, Cox said the funds could be released within a few weeks.
“We”ve told them we would see how their efforts went in raising funds,” Dutra said before Tuesday”s meeting. “The idea is to have the community embrace the program. It should not just be us and the county financing the program. It”s not our program and it”s not the county”s program. It is being created as a private entity and that entity should do some fundraising.”
Contact Cynthia Davis at cdavis@record-bee.com.
