By Harvey Lipman
STAFF WRITER

Bergen County's United Way is a completely different entity than it was five years ago and most of the change is attributable to Tom Toronto.

The world of philanthropy was undergoing dramatic changes in 2002 when the United Way board hired Toronto as president and gave him the mission of steering a new direction.

People weren't interested in handing their money over to the United Way for its leaders to decide what charities would get the cash.

"Donors were designating where they wanted their money going. We were becoming just a mail drop," said James E. Healey, chairman of the local United Way board. "We had to find a way to make a big impact in Bergen County without a lot of money."

Toronto had been heading up fund-raising campaigns for various United Way client companies and developing marketing plans for the organization when the board named him president.

"I took the passion I had for marketing and I turned it to the human-service side," he said. "We know we can run a multinational campaign on behalf of a corporation, but we're Bergen County's United Way. Let's get back to our mission. We're going to help people in a concrete way."

But perhaps the biggest change under Toronto was refocusing the charity -- homing in on a few key issues he felt could achieve the "big impact" the board was seeking.

To Toronto, those key issues were finding a way to connect people in need with services, preventing small needs from growing into catastrophic ones and figuring out how to help keep low-income working people from sinking into poverty.

The answers he came up with: the 2-1-1 phone-referral system; the United Way's Compassion Fund, which provides emergency cash assistance; and an ambitious plan to develop a revolving-loan fund to finance the construction of affordable homes for the working poor.

The money for the loan fund comes from wealthy donors whom Toronto has been able to convince of the value of building the homes.

His background on the business side of the United Way and his comfort in dealing with corporate leaders have been much in evidence there, said Robert Jones, president of Children's Aid and Family Services in Paramus.

"He can speak business-ese. He's comfortable working with the business community, which not all not-for-profit leaders are," Jones said.

In Jones' view, one of Toronto's biggest accomplishments has been pulling together a somewhat discordant non-profit sector in Bergen County.

"In some parts of the country, you find United Ways are powerful leaders of the community," said Jones, whose organization receives about $10,000 of its $15 million operating budget from the United Way.

"We never had that kind of culture in Bergen County," he added. "We used to have 70-some-odd community chests, all focused on their particular communities. What he did successfully is get the not-for-profit leadership to work together, even to get to know each other."

Some non-profit leaders, particularly from groups that no longer receive United Way funding, have criticized Toronto's decision to narrow his organization's focus.

But they fail to understand that the non-profit world has undergone a sea change, Jones said; donors now expect organizations to prove they deserve funding.

"He's ahead of the curve," Jones said "A lot of my colleagues don't understand that it's a different world. You've got to be able to raise your own money. If Tom has a problem, it may be that he takes it for granted that people understand how things have changed."

Patricia Espy is the executive director of the Center for Food Action in Englewood, which receives no direct funding from the United Way. But Toronto has made sure his agency is available to help non-profits in other ways, she said.

"The United Way staff can be conduits to help us make connections and find contacts in government or the business world, and that can be very helpful," said Espy.

"Tom is an easy scapegoat for people who aren't happy with the changes," Jones said. "But he's one of the most mission-driven, morally centered people in our field."

E-mail: lipman@northjersey.com