Beth Stafford combines the ideal traits of a person running a nonprofit: Assertive on behalf of the people she serves, yet exuding sensitivity and warmth to recipients, volunteers, her board, and the whole community.
That’s how Hanna Perlstein Marcus, Manchester’s former social-services director, describes her one-time colleague.
“Once Beth develops a goal, she is virtually tireless in achieving it,’’ Perlstein Marcus said. “Sleep doesn’t get in her way,”
Stafford worked 12 years for Manchester before becoming executive director/CEO of the Manchester Area Conference of Churches 12 years ago. It is a faith-based human services organization that serves up food, clothing and shelter. It has been around for almost 35 years and covers four towns.
While it is primarily a Christian organization, it also incorporates a Unitarian church and a Jewish temple into its membership. In addition, some Muslim followers serve the poor through MACC.
“We’ve had real strong partnerships with other faith groups,” Stafford said.
MACC has a community kitchen and a well-stocked food pantry with groceries supplied from member churches and a local synagogue that daily feed the hungry. It has a 40-bed shelter.
The Church Mouse Thrift Shoppe offers gently used clothes and other items to help a family back on their feet, or to an outfit someone for a job interview.
MACC is about emergency services and not ongoing entitlement programs.
“We’re just trying to make people whole and help them get back on their feet,” Stafford said.
She speaks proudly of keeping people off welfare; helping an abused mom get food for her family; and that kids on school-lunch assistance get fed over a weekend.
MACC is also helping families eat more nutritional diets, something not always emphasized in low-income households.
“We took Kool-Aid out of the shelter and replaced it with milk and water,” she said.
Stafford started to turn things around for MACC by initiating a business approach to her outreach. She told people she needed them to “invest in the lives of people who are going to be down for a short time if you get around them … they just need a little help.”
That short-term help has paid off, with former beneficiaries now becoming benefactors. “We believe in people. We don’t look down on them,” said Stafford.
The biggest challenge facing MACC is an increasing population of mentally ill who need help, a problem Stafford says she and others foresaw.
“We took them out of institutions before we had a plan to deal with them,” she said. MACC now works with Manchester and has a clinical psychologist who comes to its shelter a couple hours a week to get the clients the services they need.
The organization started in 1977 when 14 ministers in Manchester and Bolton pooled their limited resources to hire an executive director to meet the communities’ growing needs.
MACC provides services where it is needed but mostly east of the Connecticut River. It has one member church in Hartford but that’s almost an anomaly.
“We don’t go into areas with similar services,” Stafford said.
Stafford said MACC’s strongest asset is its ability to partner and share responsibility, or as she puts it, “Many hands make light work.”
Perlstein Marcus said MACC could have thrived without Stafford’s leadership, but she has had a major impact.
“MACC might still have some presence in the Manchester region without Beth, but probably not as vibrant, sustainable, or wide reaching as Beth’s leadership has provided it,’’ Perlstein Marcus said. “Her humanitarian instincts combined with her knowledge of successful business models have put MACC in a strong position for the future. She has devoted all her energy to assure that MACC does not allow anyone who needs help to go unserved. She is a tireless advocate for those who often are unrepresented.”
Stafford ties her success to women who have helped her.
“I’ve had some wonderful mentors in my life,” she said, listing Perlstein Marcus among them.
Her career began in Arkansas after completing her bachelor’s in social work at Harding College in Searcy, Ark. Her first job was working with migrant farm workers before moving to Connecticut and working at a Head Start program. She then worked at Mt. Sinai before moving onto a nursing home and then going to work for Manchester.
“I knew I wanted to be a social worker since 7th grade,” Stafford said, “and help people reclaim their lives and get out of trouble. I love the challenge of social change. People will live up to whatever you expect.”
When Stafford first came to MACC, it was largely dependent on member churches, town and state support.
“I thought it had to be wider than that,” she said. She said at one point there were 500 homeless in Manchester, about 1 percent of its population.
“It was so exciting to think that 99 percent could take care of 1 percent,” Stafford said.
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Name: Beth Stafford
Occupation: CEO of the Manchester Conference of Churches
Location of business: Manchester
You should know: She holds a BSW from Harding College in Arkansas and a masters in management from Cambridge College
Favorite spot for coffee: “Usually there’s a Dunkin Donuts cup in my hand. I’m a Dunkin girl,” Stafford said. Any flavored coffee with cream is her favorite.
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