Fran Barrett

August 26, 2009, The Huffington Post — If you work for a nonprofit, you more than likely would have said to friends: "The salary isn't the greatest, but the benefits are good." In 30 years of working with community based organizations, I would say that providing health coverage is part of a social contract that many nonprofit organizations have made with their staff. Increasingly over the last few years, more and more nonprofits have asked staff to share costs, and while we have no numbers yet, we hear frequently about nonprofits that fear they will have to eliminate health coverage as a benefit. Keep in mind, over 500,000 people work in nonprofits in New York. What happens to these individuals as workers, the largest private sector workforce in the city, and as participants in the health care system is a matter of public policy. It is not just a note in red ink on the margins of the health care legislation.