When the Human Service Chamber was founded in 2010, it had two distinct missions: (1) To serve as “one voice” with and for the health and human services sector, and (2) To provide professional services that would create efficiencies so that nonprofits could focus their precious resources on serving the community.

Since its inception, providing “one voice” through government engagement has been our focal point in service to the health and human services agencies of this community. But providing professional services was always on the afterburner.

That changed in March 2020.

It was clear that nonprofits needed better access to high-quality professional services—legal, human resources, accounting, and more. So we began cobbling together generous businesses and individuals who could provide expertise to our membership in these and other areas, all of which have been beneficial to nonprofits over the last 30-plus months.

Now, thanks to the Herculean work of our Director of Membership & Community Engagement, Bhumika Patel, and thanks to two separate and transformative gifts from extremely generous partners, we are delighted to announce a dramatic expansion and improvement of professional services offerings for the nonprofit sector.

In the coming months, thanks to the support of The Columbus Foundation, we will be providing professional services including finance and accounting, fundraising, and cybersecurity/IT.

And thanks to the City of Columbus, we will be providing human resources services, as well as hiring two full-time staffers who will provide support to our members on communications, as well as on environmental and energy sustainability.

With these collective efforts, we believe that our community can do something that no community has done before: Create equitable access to an array of high-quality professional services for the health and human services nonprofit community, saving significant dollars. With these savings, our nonprofit leaders can redirect precious dollars into supporting not only the people they serve, but the people they employ.

We believe the consequence of this effort will be a stronger and more efficient health and human services sector that is prepared for the rising tide of community needs anticipated in the years ahead.

We’re grateful for the chance to facilitate this work with the same urgency and efficacy of services that our members provide day after day.