Arbor Update

Ann Arbor Area Community News

Washtenaw Co's largest Social Service Agency to Close it's Doors

25. May 2007 • Chuck Warpehoski
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The Ann Arbor News reports that the largest nonprofit social service agency in the county, will be closing in September.

President of the HelpSource Board, David Christiansen, is more tactful than James Carville, but he basically said “It’s the economy, stupid.” He says, “It’s the economy, a 2-ton weight that has strained everything to the breaking point.”



  1. This is really, really bad news.


       —David Cahill    May. 26 '07 - 03:41AM    #
  2. Actually, it might not be as bad as it sounds.

    I was speaking with someone who works with a lot of human service agencies in the area. He doesn’t expect a big disruption of service. Rather, he expects other nonprofits to pick up the caseload pretty easily.

    As I understand it, Helpsource’s orgin is as a nonprofit doing what people say should be done all the time, “you all are helping people, you should merge into one big group.” So they did.

    Well, mergers rarely work in the for-profit sector (Daimler-Chrysler, AOL-Time Warner), nor do they often work in the nonprofit sector. So, from what I hear, Helpsource has been shakey for a while.

    Part of the problem is that with so many different programs without a common theme, it’s really hard to answer the question “What does HelpSource do?”


       —Chuck Warpehoski    May. 29 '07 - 08:57PM    #