Like Father, Like Daughter: North Marin Community Services CEO

From the time she was young, Cheryl Paddack had an inkling that helping others was her destiny. She didn’t know where life’s path would take her, but the impulse to give back was already ingrained. “I learned as a young person that serving the community would be part of my life,” she says. Now CEO of North Marin Community Services in Novato, she grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, where her father, Lorne Whyte, was CEO of Tourism Victoria for 25 years and co-founder of the TerrifVic Jazz Festival. He expected everyone in the family to participate in the annual music celebration, and Paddack began volunteering when she was a teenager. That experience set the foundation for her future career by instilling in her the value of participating in the community and taking responsibility for caring for it.

She left Vancouver Island to attend Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver, and her father encouraged her to study economics. “My dad was one of my mentors,” she explains, and she took his advice and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a double major in economics and marketing. She also did a practicum for her bachelor’s program, which took her to the Yukon, a territory in northwestern Canada, where she did environmental clean-up for the federal government and became interested in working in the nonprofit sector. She went on to work for BC Hydro, a corporation owned by the people and government of British Columbia, and her position was in the Power Smart program, which finds ways to meet future electricity needs through conservation and energy efficiency.

In 1999, she and her husband, Mark Paddack, who is an American citizen, made the decision to move to the United States. They had been thinking about their opportunities and the kind of life they wanted to create for their family, and when he got a job offer from Lucasfilm, they planned to move to Marin County. Getting into the U.S. proved to be a challenge, however. The couple and their two children, as well as the family’s Jack Russell Terrier ventured south with incorrect immigration advice from immigration. Cheryl and the children were subsequently turned back for insufficient documentation, though their dog was allowed to join Mark. They returned to Victoria and endured a rigorous immigration process for one-and-a-half years before they reunited with Mark in California, and the experience was eye opening. “It allowed me to gain new empathy and understanding toward families who are separated at the border,” she says, and the experience made her aware that she had more privilege as a middle-class white person.

Once her family was settled in Marin County, Paddack found a job at Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael. She moved on after seven years to become executive director of Novato Youth Center, and one of her priorities was exploring how to build a sustainable organization. She eventually led the organization through a groundbreaking merger that combined two well-known profits into one, after recognizing the benefits both would realize and how they could serve more people and do it better if they worked together.

Better together

“Being a connector was one of the big attributes I learned from my father,” she says. The idea for bringing the two organizations together emerged when the Novato Youth Center was creating a strategic plan. During the process, she started to interview other nonprofits, asking them, “What is the equation for a successful nonprofit?” She had interviewed two other organizations before she met with representatives of the Novato Human Needs Center and recognized that the two organizations could improve services for the underserved in northern Marin County if they became one. The merger process took a year and a half to accomplish, and became official on Jan. 1, 2018.

“I believe the success of our merger was due to the trust that was built between the two organizations during the planning stage,” she says. Among its advantages, the two organizations offered different but complementary services. The Novato Youth Center was focused on children and families, while the Novato Human Needs Center had a long history of serving vulnerable populations in poverty. Though the merger had clear benefits, it also had challenges. First, it meant enlisting the support of stakeholders and helping them to understand how they could serve people better if the two organizations merged. Paddack explains that the Novato Youth Center was rolled into the Novato Youth Center, as the larger 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.

The new organization became North Marin Community Services, but some people had difficulty accepting the new identity since they were concerned about taking Novato out of the name. It serves north San Rafael as well as Novato, however, so the new name was more appropriate, and most of those who were hesitant eventually understood the rationale for the change. Another hurdle was unexpected. The youth center had a child-care license that it had held for 30 years, but creating a new identity turned out to be one of the biggest challenges. “If you change your name, you have to get a new child-care license,” says Paddack. Acquiring the new license was a significant amount of work, and even though the effort was ultimately worthwhile, she suggests trying to avoid an organizational name change to anyone else in that situation.

“We’re the stewards of this amazing 49-year nonprofit.”—Cheryl Paddack, CEO, North Marin Community Services

Paddack believes in teamwork—another value she learned from her father— and she worked with several board members, who helped guide the merger and provided legal and other professional support. “They gave us hundreds of hours pro bono,” she says, and in further collaboration, the Marin Community Foundation was a major supporter for the costs associated with the merger. In addition, she’s had a 12-year working relationship with CFO Vanshika Nachnani and was pleased that she has been part of helping to build a strong and sustainable financial structure, which is essential if an organization is to be successful. Most of the staff and board members remained as well, and Paddack attributes much of the merger’s positive outcome to relationships and the trust that results when people work together in service of community.

Outcomes

Integrating all the activities took a year post-merger, and while the organization is larger, it makes differences on a small scale, family by family. She gives the example of an Uber driver, who was the legal guardian of two grandchildren and couldn’t work, so North Marin Community Services provided rental assistance. “We wouldn’t have been able to serve in this effective way if we hadn’t merged,” says Paddack. “I think more nonprofits can merge so we can serve more effectively.” She recognizes, though, that passion, service and legacy are involved, so it’s often difficult for people to step back and think about what’s best for the community, when they are personally invested in an organization. Nevertheless, she adds, “This is about the work. We have to separate what is best for the community and take the names and faces out of the negotiation.” She adds that as the merger rolled out, the benefits become clear to everyone. “It’s about acting as a whole and making a difference together. … We’re the stewards of this amazing 49-year nonprofit,” she says, and the merger’s success honors the work of everyone who has touched the organization for more than four decades.

North Marin Community Services has provided $1.1 million in rent assistance, kept 1,714 people in their homes and served 4,476 people at the food pantry since March 2020.

Much of the discussion in planning for the merger revolved around better case-management services while focusing on basic needs—food, housing, child care and mental health. Paying one month’s rent can make a big difference for a family at risk of being displaced, and in one case, a donor wanted to support a family, so Paddack and her team found a good match. Mental health needs are on the rise, and North Marin Community Services has a team of mental health professionals to call on, and they have been providing virtual services during the pandemic. In addition, it operates the Novato Teen Clinic, in partnership with Marin Community Clinics, to provide reproductive and mental health services for young people.

The pandemic created greater demands, but it also allowed the organization to identify the most important needs. “The pandemic has really solidified what the community needed,” says Paddack. North Marin Community Services has provided $1.1 million in rent assistance, kept 1,714 people in their homes and served 4,476 people at the food pantry since March 2020. Responding to the new demands meant triaging and pivoting to meet the needs, and 60 staff members and 230 volunteers went into action to offer hybrid and virtual activities, as well as onsite programs as soon as they were able. The child-care center transitioned to virtual student support response to Marin County’s stay-at-home order in the first months of the health crisis, but it reopened onsite services in June and has remained open ever since, offering subsidized child care. A learning hub also allowed school-age children to attend classes virtually on Zoom, if they didn’t have a computer and an internet connection at home.

In addition, “We have a fleet of vans,” says Paddack, and she explains that when the schools reopened using a hybrid model, North Marin Community Services provided transportation to take students back and forth between the learning hub and their schools. An on-site commercial kitchen produces nutritious meals to child-care clients daily. The Tuesday Food Pantry, which receives donations from the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank and Extrafood.org, began serving double and triple the number of people, including new walk-ins from individuals facing homelessness. “We’re one of the few pantries that offers a protein,” she adds. She is also chairing the Novato COVID Recovery and Response Prevention Team, which is working to make sure vulnerable communities are reached. “I’m a big fan of what the county has done,” she says, explaining that representatives of Marin Health and Human Services provided advice and trained staff on testing and vaccination facts so they could help educate the community.

Beyond the merger

Much of the work involves collaboration with other organizations and agencies in the county. Paddack explains that North Marin Community Services works with Homeward Bound of Marin, Community Action Marin and other partners to help unhoused individuals connect to services. And a major goal is to help break intergenerational poverty, so they link middle school students with 10,000 Degrees, a San Rafael organization that assists and mentors young people who are the first in their families to go to college to ensure they become aware of available opportunities. It’s a partnership that is particularly meaningful for Paddack because her father went into retail with his father when he was young and didn’t have a chance to complete his higher education. As a result, she grew up with the expectation that she would attend and complete college.

“It was not an option. It was a matter of when, not if. As such, I learned that education opens opportunities,” she says, adding that she feels honored to carry that value for education forward. They also partner with the Marin County Probation Department and Novato Unified School District to provide early intervention and support to students and families; and reduce the liklihood of later involvement in the juvenile justice system. At the other end of the age scale, AARP provides support to seniors and adults twice a week so they can access the tax credits they’re entitled to. “It’s a multi-pronged approach… We have 25 or 30 partners we work with,” she says. In addition, she reports that two buildings came with the merger. “We’re fortunate that we have two facilities,” says Paddack, and one has a room for community use. “Pre-pandemic, we offered space,” she says, and Legal of Marin, Canal Alliance and Center for Domestic Peace were among some of the users.

Leadership

Paddack has served as the moderator of the Novato Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Novato nonprofit for more than 10 years, and she addresses the notion that nonprofits are different from other businesses. “We’ve transformed that perception,” she says, explaining that nonprofits are businesses and need to adopt good business practices if they are to be successful. “Our budget has more than doubled,” she says, reporting that it was $2 million before the merger took place and is now $4.9 million, thereby demonstrating the efficacy of such an approach.

“Vulnerable leadership is important, and being humble. We learn from others.”—Cheryl Paddack, CEO, North Marin Community Services

She also serves on several committees and reports that everyone on her 12-member management team does as well. “We serve best when we’re together,” she says, and it’s a way to make sure vulnerable communities have access to services. “We’re not ever going to have the answers alone. We have a responsibility to share the information we have. I’m probably going to be on committees until after I retire,” she says. For the foreseeable future, though, “We have a lot of work to do. Recovering from the pandemic is going to be challenging,” she adds, pointing out that recovery is likely to be K-shaped, with different parts of the economy recovering at different rates. As a result, employees in low-wage jobs will be struggling and need help.

Paddack has received several awards for her visionary work to help underserved populations. Among them are a Heart of Marin Award for Excellence in nonprofit leadership in 2018 and a KPIX Silver Jefferson Award in January 2021, which was especially memorable, as she became a U.S. citizen during that time. Her father has progressed Alzheimer’s now and no longer speaks, so he can’t express himself and tell her how proud he feels. She used FaceTime to share the awards ceremony experience with him. As he watched, he had tears in his eyes, so she’s sure he understood. She describes winning the awards as humbling and gratifying.

“It’s an amazing feeling because it’s a testament to the work of our team. We’re we, not ‘I,’” she says, and she and her staff and board celebrate the awards as a team. That sentiment reflects her father’s values. When Whyte was named Tourism Industry Leader of the Year in 2007 at the annual Tourism B.C. awards, he also credited winning the award to his entire organization and staff, and he attributed the success to hiring the right kind of people and creating an environment that makes them want to stay. It was a learning moment for Paddack.

Paddack credits much of her success to feedback from others, self-reflection and vulnerable conversations. She and her staff often debrief after meetings and ask what they could have done better and how they could have been more effective. “Vulnerable leadership is important, and being humble,” she says, and she describes every day as journey and an opportunity for growth. “We learn from others,” she says, and so it’s important for those with experience to reach out and connect with others in ways that allow them to grow in meaningful ways. “I have a coaching style I’m proud of,” she says, explaining that she’s learned from others and tries to channel what she’s learned into giving back and passing on the lessons.

When someone makes a donation to the barrel at North Marin Community Services, she has kids announce the amount of the donation and ring a bell so they can be involved and show their appreciation. It shows that they count. “A feeling of success for young people in poverty is important,” she says. It’s a small gesture but makes a big impression. And at the same time, Paddack is passing on the values she learned as a youngster with empathy and kindness to a new generation. Her father would undoubtedly be proud.

Awards

Cheryl Paddack and North Marin Community Services have won several awards for their visionary work. They include the following:

Cheryl Paddack

2021 Jefferson Silver Award by KPIX and Multiplying Good

CVNL Heart of Marin Award for Excellence in Leadership

KPIX Jefferson Award

Pivotal People, Novato Proud

North Marin Community Services

Community Champion, Novato Proud

Community Pandemic Assistance Award

Marin County Supervisor Judy Arnold’s Look Who’s Getting It Done Award

Sidebar: Services

 

North Bay Community Services

North Marin Community Services offers services in five key areas.

Food

Weekly food pantry

Childcare healthy food program

Money

Budget planning

Emergency rent assistance

Tax assistance

Child Care

Preschool/Pre-k

Elementary school enrichment program

Middle school enrichment program

Remote learning

Childcare scholarships

Education

Children’s education

Teen education

Adult life skills

Health

Community health

Mental health

Teen mental health

Physical health

northmarincs.org

 

Merging Services

The Novato Youth Center and the Novato Human Needs Center merged to become North Marin Community Services on Jan. 1, 2018.

The Novato Youth Center began in 1966 as the Novato Boys Club and became the Novato Youth Center in 1983. In addition to offering a wide range of activities for education and enrichment, it offered mental health counseling and a teen clinic. It grew from serving 250 children and their families a year to 2,700.

A single mom, a pastor and the owner of a small business founded the Novato Human Needs Center in 1972, to give underserved neighbors a happy holiday season by collecting holiday gifts and food. In 1985, after a successful fundraising campaign, it opened a new resource center to provide critical safety-net services for low-income families and individuals. It grew from assisting 50 needy families to serving more than 3,000 low-income residents annually.

Cheryl Paddack recognized that merging the two would create a multi-service organization that could serve more people more efficiently. In the past year, North Marin community Services has assisted more than 9,000 people in need.

northmarincs.org