Source: Smart Business
2023 Pillar Award for Community Service – Greater Cincinnati
Nonprofit Board Executive of the Year Award
Jeffrey March
Board Member, Best Point Education & Behavioral Health
From the beginning, Jeff March has been a living embodiment of The Best Point Story. As a baby, he was adopted from the agency when it still provided adoption services to the Cincinnati community. As he continued to grow, he never lost his gratitude for the organization that helped him start out in life.
March has continued to push forward and has had a successful career as one of the founders of BRG Realty Group, where he serves as CEO. Today, he continues to help Best Point and the 16,000 children and families it serves each year. He, along with his wife, Jeanette, selflessly and tirelessly devote their talents to Best Point’s continuing mission of serving the community’s most vulnerable populations in life-changing ways.
When COVID-19 became part of the daily vernacular for the community, March was instrumental in ensuring the nonprofit agency remained fiscally strong. His business acumen, coupled with an unbridled passion for underserved children and families, helped Best Point continually operate in unprecedented and uncertain times.
Through March’s leadership, Best Point pivoted in record time to offer critically needed telehealth services to children whose medical diagnoses are, in many cases, so severe that without treatment, they can often relapse to life-threatening status. Seeing this need, he offered advice on how Best Point could adapt in a fluid operating environment, which resulted in the agency increasing from 4,000 telehealth services in early March to over 40,000 by the fall. ●
Andy Holzhauser
Board President, Green Umbrella
Andy Holzhauser was board president of Green Umbrella, where his term ended in December. Previously, he worked as its treasurer, putting his first career in accounting and second career in nonprofit management to excellent use. He has continued to serve on the Finance Committee while board president and has helped the organization evolve systems as it has grown.
Holzhauser has shown unbridled leadership during a phase of extensive growth at Green Umbrella. During his tenure, it has expanded from six full-time employees to 18. Together, they built out their internal marketing and development departments, increased the number of in-house programs from three to six and more than doubled its organizational operating budget.
Holzhauser has helped it better serve its 2 million community members across Greater Cincinnati in local food security, carbon emission reduction, equitable access to greenspace and active transportation infrastructure. Most recently, Holzhauser led the Green Umbrella Board through the decision to spin off its highly successful Tri-State Trails program into its own nonprofit organization.
As Green Umbrella aims to be a leader in collaboration and facilitation across government, nonprofit, and for-profit worlds, these connections have been critical to programming, as we aim to advance sustainability best practices across the region. Holzhauser’s dedication to sustainability is far-reaching. Outside of Green Umbrella, he works as a partner at Donovan Energy, a clean energy project development and finance firm. ●
William Butler
Board member, Lindner Center of HOPE
William Butler has been chairman of Corporex Cos., for 57 years and serves as a board member of Lindner Center of HOPE.
Since 2008, Lindner Center of HOPE has served as a lifeline to tens of thousands who’ve faced the struggle of mental illness or addiction. Offering a wide range of mental health services and treatments in an atmosphere that promotes long-term healing, we are staffed by some of the nation’s best psychiatric experts. Lindner Center of HOPE is a place entirely dedicated to hope — and finding a unique path forward.
Mental illness and addiction can set those who struggle on a common journey, in search of one thing. Hope. Hope for answers and action. Empathy and excellence. Lasting change and confidence. These journeys often lead to Lindner Center of HOPE, which consistently delivers exceptional care on a personal level. It has gained consistent recognition on a national level. It is a psychiatric center of excellence for its breadth of expertise and depth of understanding, and its physicians are leaders in psychiatric research and provide the highest degree of empathetic, individualized patient care.
In his work, Butler is experienced in building commercial buildings and residential buildings. He is dedicated to community service and when planning began for new construction at Lindner Center of HOPE, he offered to take charge.
Throughout his career at Corporex, he learned how challenging mental health disorders can be — and how it can affect families, friends and co-workers. Coupled with the limitations of the illness itself, the hurdle of stigma adds another challenge. ●