About Town: Not-For-Profit Leadership Summit

Today's Not-For-Profit Leadership Summit pulled 600 of the region's health, arts, education, environmental and outreach advocacy groups together in Tarrytown.

The event was sponsored by the United Way of Westchester and Putnam and the Westchester Community Foundation. Non-profit volunteers, board members and staffers worked on topics from social media to work-life balance to managing employees in tough economic times.

At the event, County Executive Robert Astorino announced an initiative designed to help Westchester’s extensive network of non-profit agencies find ways to cut overhead and work together.

Astorino announced that Dr. Grant Mitchell, the commissioner of community mental health, will take on added duties as outreach coordinator to the county’s non-profit sector.

As such, he will develop recommendations over the next three months on ways the county can help the non-profit agencies reduce costs so it has more funds to spend on services.

“What our non-profit network does is incredible, “ said Astorino. “Large and small, these social and cultural agencies are staffed with dedicated, knowledgeable professionals. Westchester could not get along without them. Under my plan, the county would help facilitate their efforts to work together and with the county to cut costs and become more efficient.”

Astorino said that Mitchells’s new tasks will include building and strengthening relationships with all segments of the non-profit community, identifying ways the county and non-profit agencies can create efficiencies, and developing new business models that will apply efficiency savings to offsetting losses in revenues.