The nonprofits sharing space at Our Lady of the Lake Health's Community Impact Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, are celebrating the best kind of officemate situation: one that happened organically and over time.

The building opened years ago as a day center for older adults but that program ended. Now, it houses the office of Our Lady of the Lake Health's director for community impact, Monique Marino, and the offices of the leaders of about a dozen nonprofit organizations. Most of them moved in last year.

Marino is excited about the potential of the center, and the impact it could have for the community.

The nonprofit hub is the only such space in Baton Rouge, and the tenants use its office space and common areas at no cost. For the most part, the nonprofits address social determinants of health. The tenants include the Epilepsy Alliance Louisiana, Baton Rouge Area Youth Network, Dialogue on Race, and the Capital Area Autism Network.

The hub is about a mile from Our Lady of the Lake Children's Hospital and Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center. The ministries are part of Our Lady of the Lake Health, a subsystem the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System.

Celebrating a new beginning
At an open house in December, tenants celebrated the center's success and dreamed of its possibilities. Marino asked every nonprofit to invite supporters, clients, and anyone else they wanted.

"We had a wonderful turnout," she said. "We did a blessing of the building, and it was beautiful. A lot of business cards were exchanged. We were thrilled at the networking that was occurring."

Marino started working in the building about 12 years ago when she joined the system. The facility, about 9,200 square feet, had been used for different things over the years. Because it was built as a day center, it has a large training room, a formal classroom, lots of bathrooms, and meeting areas for big and small groups. There's even a greenhouse where tenants can bring their laptops to work in a sunny spot away from their desks.

Marino has a background working with nonprofits, so she had many contacts in the community, and she was part of larger collaborations that had wished for a shared space, she said. Around 2017, she invited a nonprofit called The Safety Place to use the center's parking lot to do car seat checks, a service the health system didn't offer. The nonprofit agreed and even certified some hospital employees as child passenger safety technicians. The relationship grew.

In 2019, the CEO of that group, Crystal Pichon, asked Marino if the organization could also use the building for office space. Marino and Our Lady of the Lake Health leaders agreed. The Safety Place's work continued through the pandemic, since the nonprofit could conduct car seat checks outdoors.

"It's such an honor to see this community coterie dream come to life," said Pichon. "The Safety Place and Our Lady of the Lake are longtime partners that continue to thrive in our community service-based nature ... together. It's such a blessing to consider their organization our lifetime community family."

Not long after The Safety Place moved to the center, Marino learned of another nonprofit, Dialogue on Race, that needed a home. Our Lady of the Lake welcomed them into the center as well.

Maxine Crump is president and CEO of Dialogue on Race, which offers educational programs and dialogue series to support people in open and honest conversations about race. She said that being a part of the impact center puts the group in great company with other organizations that also have vision and focus. "It means we have peer organizations working together for the good of society. … It provides for great networking and other meaningful exchanges," Crump said.

Growth and possibilities
The remaining nonprofits moved into the space last summer and fall, and others that aren't tenants sometimes use the space to host meetings and trainings for their teams and constituents.

Nonprofit organizations inquiring about space are vetted by the mission team leadership, to make sure there is mission alignment and that they'll be a good fit. Marino hasn't turned anyone down. The only ask of organizations is to be present and collaborative, and to share resources, not only with Our Lady of the Lake but with each other.

"There's a lot of borrowing and sharing beyond just the people who work there," Marino said.

Community members generally don't frequent the space, but one nonprofit, OneBReath Project, operates a boutique to provide families in need with baby and toddler clothing, diapers and formula. This is done via scheduled appointments.

This year the organizations will start planning collaboratively to access additional resources, such as for funding and training. They already share ideas at informal brown bag lunches.

Tenants recently held their first strategic planning session and drafted a mission, vision and purpose statements. As a result of their time together, they plan to prepare marketing and promotional materials and visit with a local foundation to learn about collective grant opportunities.

Angela Lambert, the senior director for mission integration and formation for Our Lady of the Lake Health in the Baton Rouge region, says she loves that Marino recognized the opportunity and fostered the hub's organic growth. The energy there is palpable, and the service the nonprofits provide is personal, she said.

When nonprofits and their leaders ask for help or refer others, they're not just giving out a phone number or website, they're introducing a friend, Lambert said.

"I think that our cups are continually being refilled together in relationship and in fellowship, and I just think we're able to accomplish so much more for the community," Lambert said. "And when we look at the needs of our community, we can't possibly own them all. We can't move the needle on everything, but together, we can, right?"

She added that as a Catholic health care ministry, everything Our Lady of the Lake does is to extend the healing ministry of Jesus, especially to those most in need. "At the very crux of it, we are committed to leaving people better than we found them," she said, "and the Our Lady of the Lake Community Impact Center allows us to lock arms with likeminded people, broaden our reach and enrich the lives of individuals and families across Greater Baton Rouge in ways we could never do alone."