How has the social-services landscape changed in San Diego County?
It has become a lot more sophisticated. Originally, we were hiring people from the community and training them. There weren’t a lot of college graduates from the communities at that time. But now we have people who have graduated from Stanford, Harvard, Cal-Berkeley, San Diego State. In the past, these people would not come to work in a community organization. The sector has matured a lot. People see career opportunities in the nonprofit arena. People also want to work in a job that they can see is making a difference. Over 900 put in applications for my job — college presidents, bank presidents. Those people in the past didn’t see the nonprofit sector as a viable one, but they do now. What does that mean for organizations? What it means to the disenfranchised or marginalized community is that there is a sustainability to these groups. They won’t be going away. They’ve become institutions. They’re not the grass-roots organizations they evolved from. You started out as an organizer. Wa
