Building Inclusive Communities: David Dubinsky’s Leadership at Pomeroy Center

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspodi and today’s guest is David Dubinsky. is the CEO of the Pomeroy recreation and rehabilitation center in San Francisco, a nonprofit that provides essential support for children, teens and adults with developmental disabilities and brain injuries.

Their mission is to help individuals thrive by offering recreational, educational, and vocational programs, including access to one of the area’s only therapeutic pools. Under David’s leadership, the organization continues its storied legacy, ensuring vital services are available to the community. He has a history of guiding teams towards growth while fostering a caring environment. Among his achievements, David is a graduate

of Leadership Contra County and is recognized for speaking at various engagements on topics related to developmental disabilities and rehabilitation. Before becoming CEO, he spearheaded strategic projects in other nonprofit roles, focusing on advocacy, inclusion, and program expansion. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits

that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. Imagine being able to give your employees free access to doctors, therapists, and prescription medications. And here’s the fun part. The program actually puts more money in your employee’s pocket and the company’s too. One recent client was able to increase net profits by $900 per employee per year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at abbagbenefits.com.

Now back to our guest today, the CEO of Pomeroy Recreation and Rehabilitation Center, David Dabinski. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

David Dubinsky (02:03)
Glad to be here, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (02:05)
So David, before I get into some of your work history, I understand that while you were studying at Clemson, you had an unusual opportunity to study under the head of the London School of Economics while you were there. Can you tell me about that experience and how it’s kind of shaped your approach to leadership?

David Dubinsky (02:25)
Yeah, it was very interesting. I, when I graduated from Clemson with an undergraduate degree, I was not really in economics at all. And I had met a professor ⁓ during my undergraduate studies who I ran into after graduating. And he asked me if I was interested in the graduate program. And I said, yes, for economics. I thought it was kind of an interesting subject, though I didn’t take a lot as an undergrad.

And he told me it was going to be a very interesting program because Wilfred Beckerman, who was at that time the chair of the London School of Economics, very prestigious school, was going to be ⁓ my professor. And I would be assigned to him during my two years’ stint ⁓ as a graduate student. So I looked him up and thought, well, what a unique opportunity to have somebody so learned and so well known in that field.

coming to Clemson University. So Wilfred Beckerman had a style of teaching that he described as very common at the London School and throughout that particular college where the students would come to his class. He did not allow us to bring in pens and papers or recorders. At the time, this is a little bit before you’d have a.

cell phone or a laptop with you. And all we could do is listen to his presentation. There were nine of us in the class. And what that led to were these nine students walking out of an hour and a half lecture frozen at what it is we were supposed to have learned that day. so, yeah, there was a dialogue.

Anthony Codispoti (04:16)
Well, at least there was some sort of a dialogue in class, though, right?

David Dubinsky (04:21)
But oftentimes, you know, he would lead the dialogue and expect us to learn. He’d ask some questions during the class. But what it really led to was all of us getting together after class at one point or another and sharing with each other what we thought we learned. What was interesting about that is I learned as much or more from my

co-students as I did from Wilfred Beckerman. And at the end, that was exactly his point. That was exactly what he was trying to teach us to do. We didn’t know that at the time, but he wanted us, he said, you know, you all are in this graduate class. Some of you are going to go on and get a PhD. Some of you are going to go into management. Some of you are going to be teaching other students. But you need to know that

You’ve got to continue to learn and you can learn from everyone around you. You can learn from your students. You can learn from your coworkers. You can learn from other managers. And I think that set the tone for me to be collaborative in my management style. It still continues today. I think of everybody I meet as a potential teacher and I want to learn from them what they have to offer.

And I think that ⁓ other good leaders, other good managers also know, they learn to surround themselves with people that tell them what they need to hear and not necessarily what they want to hear. And that is, ⁓ to me, a very strong leadership skill, something I pass on to people I’ve worked with over my career. To always make sure that when you look at people,

you think of them as somebody that has a lot to offer to you as much as you have something to offer to them.

Anthony Codispoti (06:26)
I like that. So you were learning some pretty heady things from this, you know, professor from the London School of Economics. And, you know, then you get together with your peers and you’re like, what do think that meant? And rather than assuming that you had all the answers, because this is new stuff, you’re trying to wrap your head around, you’re all learning from each other. And that has opened you up to the style of leadership and management that you still use today. Assume that everybody that you walk into a room with has something to teach you, right?

David Dubinsky (06:55)
Absolutely. Everybody has value. Everybody has an idea. the concept of kind of the old autocratic style of leadership, well, I’m the leader, so I know best. Is it really valid in my world? I think you have to look at everybody, whether they’re brand new. You know, I work with 150 employees here at Pomeroy, and some are just out of college. They’re 22, 23, and some are 70.

But it’s not about their age or gender or anything else. It’s about listening to what experience they have to date. And it’s amazing ⁓ what ideas people have as long as they feel comfortable and safe in sharing them. You can learn from every single person.

Anthony Codispoti (07:44)
Hmm. So prior to Pomeroy, you spent 32 years at Source America, which is a leading job creator for people with disabilities. Spending one decade, let alone three, with the same organization is pretty unusual in today’s world. Can you tell us about the work that you were doing there and why it was so meaningful to keep you engaged for so

David Dubinsky (08:08)
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting because that would that your comment about working with one company that long probably doesn’t happen much today as it used to. But when I when I joined that organization, it was very new. It really started in 1976. I came aboard 1981. So it was a fledgling nonprofit.

with an office in a suburb of Washington, D.C., Bethesda, Maryland. There were like 17 people. We were scratching to get by. know, the CEO at the time was a retired three-star general from the Army, Ivey Johansson. you know, he really believed in the mission. The mission was to use the federal procurement system to find

contracts that we could then place with community-based nonprofits all over the United States, and then those nonprofits could employ adults with disabilities to do the work. And, you know, the world was changing at that time. So the government was looking to contract out things that they had traditionally done in-house for many, many years. So there was tremendous opportunity.

We got into a tremendous growth pattern. think when I started working there, had a few hundred, know, a few thousand employees working, maybe 2000 across the country. When I left there was almost 50,000. It was in this, you know, big, huge growth. When I was pretty young, you know, I changed jobs frequently there because

we were in such a growth mode and I was doing good work for the organization. So I think what happens when you’re in an organization like that and you’re being given more and more responsibility and changing jobs, it’s not like working for the same organization. know, suddenly you’re doing things that are very different than what you did before. It’s almost like working for a new company. And then

about halfway through that period of time. And again, this is old fashioned now, Anthony. This probably doesn’t happen much today. But I’ll never forget ⁓ Ivy Johansson walking by my cubicle in Bethesda and asking me if I liked California. And I said, well, you know, I’ve been there a few times with work. You know, yeah, I kind of like it. It goes good.

I need you to start there a week from Monday. I’m opening up a new office in California, right? So pack your bags and that’s your new home. So, you know, off I went. At the time I had a wife and four kids at home, but off I went to California and bring them later kind of thing. But it was good for me. I had to build an office from ground up. had to hire staff. had to…

you know, get our mission, our name well known on the West Coast at that time. It wasn’t. And it was an exciting time. And I got to tell you, the first 10 years of that job were like the very first 10 years of working at Source America all over again. So that’s how that

Anthony Codispoti (11:46)
What do think they saw

in you to send you to the other side of the country to open up this new office?

David Dubinsky (11:55)
Well, I really believe it goes really back to those graduate school days where I could go talk to people that I didn’t know. We were working with a lot of civilian federal agencies, the General Services Administration. It was an example, a lot of DOD agencies, Department of Defense. I would go and meet with people that were in procurement and talk about our program and how we wanted

people with disabilities to do some of the jobs they had available. And I was very comfortable doing that. ⁓ And I think very passionate about what I was doing and very successful then because people tended to trust what I was telling them that we would be able to do this job and people with disabilities could do the job. And people were interested in that. They didn’t always believe it, but they were interested in it.

as one success led to another. And when I went there, ⁓ we had a few contracts in California and one in Arizona. When I left there, we had contracts in Guam, Saipan, Hawaii, American Samoa, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, everywhere that I served. And the organization became very well known in its sphere.

⁓ and is still pretty well known today.

Anthony Codispoti (13:26)
And so you’re employing, are they all ⁓ US citizens in all these different territories or not necessarily? You’re just finding local people that.

David Dubinsky (13:33)
Yeah,

they’re all US citizens. All the territories, not everyone knows that, you know, for example, Saipan is part of what’s called the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. That’s a US territory, just like Puerto Rico. Guam’s a US territory. American Samoa is a US territory. And then, of course, California was a big state in the program.

Anthony Codispoti (13:51)
Okay.

David Dubinsky (14:00)
I used to laugh at people because when I grew up ⁓ in the East Coast, people used to think about this mountain, I think it was like Mount Hamilton or Washington, somewhere in Vermont, where the sun would rise first, where people would see the sun in the United States. They had their logo about the sun always rises in the US here first. Well, actually, was in Guam because Guam,

was on the other side of the international dateline of full US territory. It was always the day before. And so I used to say, well, you know, I work in a place where the sun in the US rises and then being in California where the US or Hawaii where it sets at the end of the day too. So it was an interesting part of my life working for Source America in that part of our country.

and serving a lot of different people in a lot of very diverse areas. And I loved it. ⁓ I got to, after that 32nd year, I finally got to a point where I needed a change and that led me to the Palm Re Center. I have nothing but fond memories of all of that work and the people that I met and worked with all those years.

Anthony Codispoti (15:26)
And so as you’re going into one of these US territories, call it Guam, ⁓ how are you finding the local residents that can do the work that you need to do?

David Dubinsky (15:38)
Well, Guam is a good example. I actually made an appointment with the governor and the United States Congress representative and let him know that I was coming there and I wanted to try to bring work to Guam. Now Guam, did know, had a Navy base at one end of the island and an Air Force base at the other end. And so there were federal contracts available and there were probably local companies doing those contracts, but none of them were probably employing

adults with disabilities. And I knew there were rehabilitation agencies. You do your homework, you know, learn a little bit about the community, make some phone calls, and then basically fly there and sit down with people and talk about your vision. What did you think it could look like? And when I first went to Guam, you know, and I looked at these big military bases and some of the civilian sites on the island, I said, you know, I think one day we could have

one or 2000 people with disabilities who are at home here in Guam, without any means to earn money, working on these federal sites, bringing money to their family, allowing their family members to go to work themselves. would really help the economy, a local economy. And in fact, we did all those things. that was just part of

of the job was to have people see your vision. Not always easy to do, really. You you’re talking about your vision. They have to see it. They have to believe it can happen. And then you have to really make good on it. And sometimes, you know, we would start out on in a small way and then allow it to build. And I think it’s that’s how you grow most businesses.

Anthony Codispoti (17:38)
So what was the biggest thing you learned about yourself while at Source America?

David Dubinsky (17:48)
Well, number one, that no matter what, you should always be honest with people. had the I always felt like I was honest, but I was also beyond honesty, very transparent. And people would always talk to me about that. know, Dave, you just seem you know, you come in here and you talk not only about your strengths, but the weaknesses you talk about.

what we could do, you also talk about the risk of doing it. And, you know, you’re not like a lot of salespeople I know that only really emphasize, you know, the positive. I, I, I said, well, I think the main thing is I never really wanted to oversell. I wanted to make sure that people understood what I could tell them about the risks of working with me as well as the joy and the value of it. And that

I was a firm believer that the value would always exceed the risk, but there were always risks. And I really believe people appreciated that. I still today feel, I mean, I always felt like that helped me ⁓ as a person trying to sell what it was I was selling, you know, which was really a vision and a new way of looking at our society.

But also what it told me about me is that I wasn’t afraid to tell people the truth, the whole story.

Anthony Codispoti (19:27)
Well, you wanted

people to make decisions based on complete information. No. That’s a sensible way to go.

David Dubinsky (19:33)
Exactly. not just tolerate,

but give them everything that I know.

Anthony Codispoti (19:40)
So how did the opportunity to join Pomeroy come about?

David Dubinsky (19:44)
Well, you know, working my old job with Source America was a lot of days and nights traveling. And after moving to California in 1994, I ⁓ had traveled over a million miles with United, and I was close to that with Delta and other airlines and away from home a lot. And to be honest with you, one day I just woke up and I said,

I need to do something in my own community that mirrors what I’ve been doing in other communities, but I want to really do it hands on in my own community. And I made that, it was shocking, I think, to the executive leadership at Source America and my peers that I would leave after all these years, all these perks you get.

And if you get to 35 years, you have all these perks. I was at 32. And I decided to walk away and look for something in my community. And it just so happens, I had worked with the Palmory Center. I knew the Palmory Center. And I was walking down Market Street in San Francisco, and I met a guy that I know. I hadn’t seen him in a few years.

He asked me what I was doing. I told him right now I’m doing some consulting work. I’m looking for a full-time position with a nonprofit, hopefully in the city or in the San Francisco Bay area. And he goes, I have a friend who’s recruiting right now. And he gave me his number and I called him. We had lunch the next day. And two days later, he introduced me to the board at the Pomeroy Center. And I met with them.

A short while after that, they offered me the position and I was ecstatic because it was exactly what I wanted to do. the program was really interesting. The program had been going downhill. I knew it was going downhill. I mean, everybody did. ⁓ It was something that a lot of people felt the program might not survive because so many

programs like this one that serve very severe disability, very expensive to do. You don’t get a lot of money in support to do the work that we do. And, but I saw that as a challenge because I had seen, the other thing I had seen were programs that were able to turn around. And one of the big advantages of my prior job with Source America working with

over 400 nonprofits across the United States is that you’d seen it all. You’d seen programs go bankrupt. You’d seen programs grow. But what you saw, you could pick out characteristics of what were leading both to their conclusion, whether they succeeded or didn’t succeed.

Anthony Codispoti (22:57)
What were those commonalities?

David Dubinsky (23:01)
It was mainly belief. It was belief in the mission enough that you could convince others that your mission was valuable. And if you had that, and your staff had it, and your board had it, you most likely were not going to fail.

It was a belief that the community is abundant in resources, not starving, that the services that you provide had value, that people see that value and they want to support it. And, you know, one of the things that was happening here is it was contracting, you know.

There was talk when I interviewed with the board about closing the pool and I had taken a tour and I’m looking at that pool and it was dirty. It needed renovation. But I was like, my gosh, no, no, you don’t want to close one of the things that brings the community into the center. In fact, you want to expand it. You want to clean it up. You want to make it beautiful. You want you want the community to come in because that’s a door.

for them to see other things that are going on at the center. And just to give you an example, I think the year I started here nine years ago, the pool had like $180,000 in revenue that we charged a fee for some of our customers to come in and use the therapeutic pool or to get swimming lessons for their babies and young kids. This last year, we had over a million dollars in revenue.

at the pool.

Anthony Codispoti (24:49)
And this is because you expanded

it and the upgrades you made and what probably the, I don’t know, the business development or the advertising you did to get more people in.

David Dubinsky (24:57)
all of those things. It was really interesting. I started swimming at the pool. Then the next thing you know, I’m talking about, I love the pool and I do love the pool. It’s amazing how well it makes your body feel.

Anthony Codispoti (25:17)
What’s so special about the pool, David?

David Dubinsky (25:20)
Well, it’s a warm water pool. ⁓ So we keep the pool about 92 degrees. It’s a salt-based pool. It’s the only one in San Francisco like that. when you… No, yeah, the salt actually makes its own chlorine in a chemical way, but it’s not chlorine you’re dumping in with a gallon jug in the pool that eats at your skin and turns your hair green and all that stuff. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (25:33)
meaning no chlorine.

David Dubinsky (25:51)
But the other part of it is that salt water is a little bit more buoyant, so it makes it easy for people who are not very comfortable in the pool to feel comfortable. A lot of our customers are seniors. Many of them have recently had an operation, maybe a knee replaced, maybe a hip, maybe they have bad arthritis. So when they come to the pool and they walk in and the water’s comforting, and we give them these

Styrofoam weights. Styrofoam weight, can hold it. It might weigh eight ounces outside the pool. Push it down under the water or you wrap it around your ankle. It feels like 10 pounds. And so you start walking, you start exercising in the pool and pretty soon your physical ailments can be completely healed or at least mitigated to some extent.

And for many people, and they say this all the time, they come to the pool and it’s their only pain pre-hour or two-hour period of the day. So they love it. The other thing, you put 60 seniors, that’s kind of our capacity of the pool at any one time, and they’re all taking an exercise class together. ⁓ They all get to know each other. Now they all may live in San Francisco, but a lot of them don’t know each other.

Well, soon they know each other, they’re playing bridge together, they’re doing other things, they have a community ⁓ outside of outside of Pomeroy that maybe many of them didn’t have before they started coming here. And that’s it’s a beautiful thing because a lot of seniors as they age also become very lonely. You know, they lose a spouse, they lose friends. ⁓

They move to, you know, maybe move out of their house into a condo or something or senior living center. And it’s just another avenue for them to be in a like community. And there’s a lot to be said about being in a community of your peers.

Anthony Codispoti (28:03)
So outside of the pool and the seniors that you just explained are using the facilities there, get into more detail about what it is Pomeroy does, who you serve and how you help them.

David Dubinsky (28:18)
Well, our main customer base, or we call them participants, is our adults, people that are over the age of 20, that come here. They all have developmental disabilities or significant brain injuries. We run a couple residential homes in the city for people to live in. I’m trying to expand that now with a third home, hopefully this next year. Ideally, I’d like to get to five.

usually try to get homes that can house five to six adults. And we put staff in those homes and don’t charge them any rent. So they live rent free in the city, but they’re working. then during the day, we have adults come here and some go out and do some productive work in the community. Others come here and they just socialize here. There are many of them are not verbal. About half of them aren’t verbal.

another probably half of that half. We have to care for their personal needs all day, help them bathe, help them, ⁓ you know, help them to eat, all of those things. But we bring them in here to give them a community. ⁓ Some we load in vans and we do other things in the community. I mean, there are a lot of things that can be done by people that don’t always involve work.

You know, when I was with Source America, was all about getting people into the work working world. But we load up bands every day now and we have a partnership with the San Francisco Marin County Food Bank. go deliver groceries to people all over the city. ⁓ We do odd jobs for people. So by having even people volunteer on a

two or three days a week, they get in a van and they go deliver groceries. They feel very valuable. And the people they deliver the groceries to, they don’t know that we’re not paying them. I mean, they think, my gosh, it’s so glad to see you. Thanks for the groceries. You we run a food pantry here every Thursday. So we have a lot of opportunity for people to get involved in the community in one way or another, and then also be involved with each other here.

So they’re not at home all day just doing nothing. They’re here. We run this program like a community college. We have college level classes here in art and drama. We do collective, we do learning activities here where people learn other languages or they work on ⁓ arts or projects. ⁓ They learn skills about money management.

We have book readings where people learn about books, contemporary literature. It’s just a place where people can come and feel valued, ⁓ feel more educated every day they’re here, share their stories with each other, share them with the people that work here, the staff that works here.

And so it’s a community. also run an after school program and there’s only two that are like this throughout the entire state of California. But we take, in the public schools, all kids go to school right now, ⁓ not just in California, but across the country. So.

Depending, even if you’re very severely disabled, you go and you’re in a special ed class, whatever, in your public school. And the public schools here in the city, in San Francisco, they have after school programs for kids with special needs. But some of the kids have needs that are a little bit outside of the capability of the school, individual school, or paraprofessionals at that school to serve them. So they send those kids here.

So we, at the end of the school day here, right around 2.30, which is about the time our adults start matriculating out of here, the kids are arriving. And now the energy level really goes up around 2.30, three o’clock. And so we get these kids and you have to imagine sometimes there’ll be four kids coming from one school and the teachers will say, gosh, we can’t even handle those four kids.

They’re coming to Pomeroy along with four kids from that school and three kids from that school and two kids from that school and you handle all of them. And the amazing thing that happens when they get here is they’re no longer in special ed. They’re no longer segregated from another class. They’re all here together. Now we segregate them somewhat by age group, but they’re here with their peers. Yeah, I feel very comfortable. We continue the learning.

Anthony Codispoti (33:26)
they feel more comfortable.

David Dubinsky (33:32)
If you walk into our classroom, if you walk into a classroom of third or fourth graders or seventh or eighth graders or high school, you walk into the classroom here on our campus, it’s going to look just like ⁓ an age-appropriate classroom. There’s going be posters on the wall. There’s going be things that the teachers hang up. That all looks familiar to them. And we’re teaching the same things, but we’re doing it collectively with them and their stress level.

goes down. Now there’s behaviors here, of course, and there’s behaviors. could put 80 kids anywhere. There’s going to be some behavior, right? But our teachers are very special. They don’t think of these kids as the special ed kids. They’re their students, and they have classes, and they ⁓

They do a wonderful job with them and many of the schools that we serve love this program because of that, because they see the change that occurs with these kids. And our goal as they become 18, 19 is not to move them into our adult program. It’s to move them into the community and have them ⁓ go live a normal life.

Anthony Codispoti (34:54)
So David, I’m hearing this

long list of things that you and your staff are teaching the students, the adults, the participants. What do they teach you?

David Dubinsky (35:11)
to humble, ⁓ to appreciate every day that I’m vertical, you know, still. To not let the small things bother me doesn’t mean I’m always successful at that.

But when you walk here, when you walk in here, we all have problems. You know, we’re human beings. We all have some struggle. You know, your car is broken. You’re at an argument at home, whatever. But you walk in here and those things disappear because you’re surrounded by people who don’t have much.

in life, but are extremely satisfied with what they have. And that’s the lesson we all could learn. You know, the idea that we need more, more things, more, you know, clothes, more cars, bigger house, whatever. And when you’re surrounded by people that don’t have any of those things in their life, but they’re happy, they’re laughing.

They’re enjoying each other. find joy in life. They find joy in the lunch they get. They find joy, you know, in the hour they’re in the pool, whatever it is. You see, ⁓ it just changes you. And it learns, it teaches you a very important lesson about life. know, life is fragile. ⁓ One thing we do see here, working with a lot of fragile adults, is death. I mean, we see seven, eight.

nine of our participants pass every year, just like any healthcare kind of oriented facility. But at the same time, we tend to sell it, we mourn people, but we celebrate them at the same time. And I think that that helps all of us as individuals. We also learn, one of the things that I’ve learned is that there’s value in everybody. I mean, there’s one woman that comes in here, she’s not,

mobile, she’s in a wheelchair, not verbal. She has the most amazing smile I’ve ever seen. She’s smiling all the time and

It just brings you joy and her ability to bring joy to others exceeds most people I’ve ever met. And yet, you know, some people would wonder what does she do? How does she add value? Well, stand around her for a few minutes and you’ll see what I see, you know, that just that joy of being alive, of being a person, being with other people.

It’s humbling.

Anthony Codispoti (38:12)
I like that. It’s kind of a reminder to go back and to appreciate the basic things. Being alive, being together, being around other people, a nice day, good weather, having a meal. Yeah, I think that’s a powerful reminder for myself and probably everybody who’s listening.

David Dubinsky (38:33)
Yeah, I agree.

Anthony Codispoti (38:35)
Where does the funding for all of this come from, David?

David Dubinsky (38:39)
Well, a number of funding sources settle in California. is an act that was passed many years ago called the Lanterman Act. It allows it causes the state to have to provide some level of financial support for adults with developmental disabilities. So the state gives us some money for the services we provide roughly. You know, it’s just if I had to put an hourly rate on, it’s like twelve dollars an hour.

for the people while they’re here. That helps offset some of our staff costs. I try not to pay anybody here less than $25 an hour because a very expensive place to live. For the school program, we get money. It used to come right from California’s Department of Education. Now it’s moved to the California Department of Social Services, but they pay us

per student per day, some money, doesn’t cover everything. The pool, we charge an entrance fee of $10 a day or a little less than that if you buy like a monthly pass or an annual pass to come in and swim for an hour. We do infant, we call them water safety classes, but they’re really infant swimming lessons. We start at six months. We have a long waiting list from parents to get there.

their babies in here and their young kids in the air to have swim lessons. And we charge a market rate. We survey with the YMCA and other competitors charged for swim lessons. And we make some money at the pool. ⁓ We actually make a little bit of a profit there. We do some work in the community and we kind of break even there. And then we do fund development, which most nonprofits do, where we

have an annual gala and we have bingo three or four times on a Friday night. And we have a very active social media presence where we advertise if we need some money to renovate a classroom or something, we let the community know. We have this amazing relationship with our community.

have to say that we’re extremely lucky. There are some challenges to running a program like this in San Francisco in a high, very expensive area of our country. But the other side of that is we’re surrounded by a lot of people that have a lot of means. They make a lot of money. I mean, we have a lot of people here that are pretty wealthy.

in this community and we lean on them and we try to get them. It goes back to my old days of trying to convince a sergeant at an army base to use us for their food service, you know. I’m talking to people in the community and I’m letting them know, as do all of our staff here, what we’re trying to do here for the community. I have great board members who do the same thing and.

We’re able to fundraise, you know, one and a half, two million, three million dollars a year. And that keeps us afloat. And when I started here, and I don’t want to get too far in the weeds with you on this, but you know, our endowment was low and shrinking.

Having worked with lot of larger nonprofits in my career, I knew that you had to put money away for a rainy day. I never really knew the pandemic was coming and it was going to be like a year and a half or rainy days. But in any event, I had a goal when I started here that I wanted to build the endowment to about 30 million. We were about six at the time and people laughed at that. We’re getting close to it now.

But the reason being is that at that level, if your endowment can fund your shortfall at like 4%, 4 % of 30 million is like 1.2 million. That was about what we were fundraising at the time. And your endowment can still grow like at 6 % or 7%. It still make money. It still will outpace inflation in good years, maybe even by several percent.

but you become sustainable if something really dramatic happens and your fund development drops to zero. You know, we’re in a recession or a depression. ⁓ You’re sustainable. And so it was a goal to do that. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re working our way there. And we all are ⁓ joyful about that. But I also believe that it

fundamentally changes the perception of people about not-for-profits. Because I don’t think people working at not-for-profits should not earn a good wage. don’t think organizations always have to struggle and use both sides of the piece of paper and sharpen their pencil down to the last inch. I think we’re trying to solve society’s most difficult problems.

in order to do that, you need money to do it. If you don’t have money, you can’t accomplish your mission. I belong to the Southern Group. I’ve gone to ⁓ in San Francisco. It’s basically tech people. I am not a tech person. I I respect technology here. We have a lot of very innovative companies here. We’re either born here or they’re growing now.

I remember being at one of the meetings several years ago and there were some folks from Uber there and there were some folks from Airbnb there and they both have a big corporate presence here. ⁓ And I talked, I was talking to them about, you know, Uber at the time had just become the world’s largest transportation company and they don’t own any cars. They don’t own any buses. And Airbnb had just eclipsed some other company.

for the most ⁓ overnight stays on the planet. And I said, here you just set a record for most overnight stays. You don’t own any hotels. You don’t own anything, right? But you come up with some kind of ⁓ an app that allows you to be those kinds of organizations. So why can’t you guys figure out a way to feed everybody or house everybody?

I mean these are-

Anthony Codispoti (45:52)
And so this was your

approach to build that endowment.

David Dubinsky (45:54)
That was my approach. My approach was, you know, these are hard problems. You’re solving other problems and you’re making money doing it. But let’s figure out a way to solve the hunger problem, the housing problem. Let’s use technology. Let’s figure out a way to do it. It was a challenge to them as well as a call for help because we were doing those things.

And I’m hoping it continues to grow and get interest. There are a lot of people I met that day who I’m still in touch with and they are interested. And one day I hope we see somebody much more intelligent than me and the people that I know and they can solve these problems because they are complicated problems. But I do believe that we can solve it in this country.

I do believe we can solve hunger. do believe we can solve housing. It’s just the will to do it.

Anthony Codispoti (47:00)
Let’s shift gears, David. I’d like to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life, whether personal or professional, how you got through that, and what you learned.

David Dubinsky (47:13)
Well, when I was still working for Source America, I was fairly young in my career there, living in Washington, D.C. area. We, my wife and I just had three kids in a four year period and she was pregnant with number four. And she had a brother, a younger brother who was in the Navy. And he was aboard a Naval air carrier deployed to the Persian Gulf. This was during the ⁓

Iraq War. And he also had three young children, all daughters like me. had three daughters and a fourth and on the way. We didn’t know the sex at the time, but and his wife left him, had a nervous breakdown and left the girls all alone at the Navy base in Virginia Beach. And eventually family brought them to us and dropped them off. And we contacted

My wife’s brother, it was really hard to contact somebody who was on an aircraft carrier, you know, on a mission. They had top secret kind of communications, but we were able to reach them. at the time, the Navy had no mechanism to allow him to leave his ship.

So ⁓ we took the girls in. And my job was to travel a lot, ⁓ to do what I was doing with Source America. So I had to go into work and explain. This was a time where there wasn’t a lot of paternity leave for men. ⁓ And explain to my company that

My family had to come first and I had to take a different role for a while until things could stabilize. My wife was gonna have another baby. That was gonna be number seven in the household and I had to help out. There was no way around it. And I was conflicted. My wife was conflicted. I didn’t know if it would end my career or create some stigma.

⁓ There, most of my bosses were retired, high ranking military officers at the time that didn’t have a lot of experience with males running time off to raise their family at home. ⁓ But I did that. it taught me, one of the things it taught me was what was really important to me at the time. Now it didn’t totally. ⁓

hurt my career. fact, shortly after that, after we got my nieces settled, it took about 18 months for that to happen. I was transferred to run the company on the West Coast. It opened up a California office. So obviously, it didn’t hurt. But at the time, I didn’t know. And it was one of those

times in your life where you had to make a decision about career or family, and I chose family. But I think the way I did it and my willingness to do whatever I was asked also helped my career. It was, ⁓ again, just being transparent about my situation, not asking for too much, but asking for a little help and then paying it back.

when I could. And so as my kids got older and I was able to travel a lot more again, I was able to open up new markets and do some things for Source America that really helped move that organization along. So that was just one thing that came to mind, you know, one decision that I had.

Anthony Codispoti (51:25)
You know, there’s a

there’s a lot to unpack there. I’m curious because you you had sort of, the stress of these your own family, you know, and another one on the way. And then the stress added of having, you know, three new young girls being added to the household and providing for all of these people, being able to take care of them. The uncertainty of, you know, choosing family over career. What impact would that have?

Which of these elements was the most stressful for you?

David Dubinsky (52:01)
leaving my wife every morning just to go to work with six kids that were, you know, the oldest was six, they were all girls. And then, you know, having her far along in a pregnancy, you know, it hard to walk out of the house. mean, that’s a full time, I have an amazing wife. mean, but that’s a full time job plus for anybody. And obviously she wasn’t working outside the home, but working inside the home was crazy.

And so when I came home, ⁓ it was, I immediately, you know, took over what I could. did the cooking. I lined up. used to line all the girls up and, you know, bathe them. It was like an assembly line and read them a story and get them in the bed. And, ⁓ and I, I would do the most I could do. But the stress was how do I even leave the house? You know, it was, it was, it was.

crazy and awkward. ⁓ But we got through it. We knew people ⁓ when we were younger, both my wife and I, we knew families that had a lot of kids. knew that it could be done. You just had to figure out, you just had to be organized to do it. And we figured out ways to do it, but it did cause stress. then right along with that was the perception of

The organization that I worked for, how they felt about somebody putting family first over the company, not all companies appreciate that. I didn’t know whether mine did or not, but eventually I learned that they did. And in fact, to be honest, a couple of them said it was their experience with me that helped them learn that they could do that.

So, you know, another kind of silver lining to that, that you could trust somebody to take care of their family and then come back and deliver at a high level, you know, in return.

Anthony Codispoti (54:15)
You were a living example of that. That’s powerful.

David Dubinsky (54:17)
Yeah, and we do that here. I mean, we’re very family friendly, very flexible ⁓ with people when they have family needs, we fend over backwards for them because I know it works.

Anthony Codispoti (54:33)
Yeah. David, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. Everyone listening today, pause for just a second, open up your podcast app and hit the follower subscribe button. That way you can continue to get more great interviews like we’ve had today with David Dubinsky. David, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. And so I’m going to tell them to look for you on LinkedIn. David Dubinsky. D-U-B-I-N-S-K-Y.

and also give them your email address, is ddubinski at prrcsf.org. And we’ll have links to both of those in the show notes for people. So the last question I have for you, David, is we’ve had a nice conversation today. I hope we stay in touch. A year from now, you’re celebrating something big, whether it’s personal or professional, or maybe both. What’s that one big thing you’re celebrating one year from today?

David Dubinsky (55:27)
Well, we’re working on expanding our children’s program to opening up a preschool. And I hope to have that locked down exactly almost a year from today, in July of 2026. And I’ll tell you why, because we’re really great.

First of all, childcare is really difficult for lot of families. We want it to be an inclusive daycare. We want to be able to serve families that can’t formally afford it, families that have a child maybe with a disability, and then private pay families that just happen to live around here and are looking for daycare. And we want all of those kids to ⁓ come to preschool and be together. We think that’s…

that diversity will set them all up for success when they finally go to kindergarten and go to public school. But also because, you know, we have all these parents bringing all these six month old, one year old, one and a half year old kids to our swim program. And if they see we have a preschool on site, you know, it’s like this continuation of young people coming here and doing what we, know, using the

what we have to offer. So it’ll be this continual kind of source of children. And also, I believe that when we bring children in here at three or four years old, they’re the next wave of leaders in our country when they get 25 years later, 30 years later. And if we start them out,

right, learning that everyone has value, learning how to coexist with people that are different. It will just really help the community here and the communities that they all matriculate to later in life. So part of it is trying to establish a legacy like that and seeing some of the knowledge that I’ve gained in my career kind of shared.

in a systematic way that when I’m gone, maybe still can continue. Maybe I can continue that. That would be my contribution to this organization and to society from what I’ve learned from everybody else that’s been kind enough to teach me as I’ve grown ⁓ to be an adult.

Anthony Codispoti (58:09)
I love that, setting up future generations for a better life and a better world. David Dubinsky from Pomeroy Recreation. want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

David Dubinsky (58:22)
I love it very much for the opportunity, Anthony, and I wish you continued luck and you have an amazing podcast. So I’m an avid listener now.

Anthony Codispoti (58:33)
Thank you, David. That’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today, folks.

David Dubinsky (58:38)
See you.