SCAN-Harbor’s ED on almost four decades of leadership and serving in the nonprofit sector

SCAN-Harbor is a non-profit organization that offers integrated support to children and families in Harlem, East Harlem, and the South Bronx serving over 7,600 children and teens and 1,000 adults and families across 23 program sites. The organization offers after-school programs, early childhood education, family services, healthy food and nutrition, LGBTQ+ support, a performing arts academy, workforce development, youth education, and violence prevention, and support for recent immigrants. Their Reach For The Stars program, aimed at college-bound students, has a reported 90% success rate in helping high school seniors get into college. 

Lewis Zuchman has served as executive director since 1987. City & State's New York Nonprofit Media caught up with Zuchman to discuss his many years with the nonprofit, the state of the nonprofit sector and what drives his devotion to the job. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Lew, I think most readers of New York Nonprofit News know of you, but please just to kick off the interview, if you don't mind, tell us who you are.

I am Lew Zuchman. I'm the executive director of SCAN-Harbor. We're the largest service provider in Harlem, East Harlem and the South Bronx. We provide a range of programs supporting children and families from college bound programs to working with street gangs. We run the only inner-city LGBQ program based in NYCHA developments.  We provide a wide range of services for young people and families. I was one of the original 1961 Freedom Riders and am a current professor at City College of New York, where I graduated many, many decades ago.

You've had an incredible career. Your organization has been around for decades. You've been advocating for the greater good, and you've had a lot of wins. What if anything along the way did you have to sacrifice to keep up your advocacy? 

We’re only servicing 5% to 10% of the people that need help and the other, what happens to the other 90%? So I've always felt a real commitment to doing more than just providing good services at my organization. I'm the founding president of the Human Service Consortium of East Harlem, which, as far as I know, is the largest standing community networking body in the city of New York. We've been in existence for, I think, 35 years. We have 30, 40 not-for-profits in East Harlem and Harlem working together to coordinate, integrate and support each other, so that we're better serving our community, not just our organizational community, but our greater community understanding. In the end, with all our funding, we're still only reaching a small proportion of the people and communities that need us–that’s the sacrifice.

Who are some of your biggest heroes in nonprofit work, who inspired you to get into this work?

My biggest hero is Jackie Robinson, and since I was a little kid, and even to this day, what always intrigued me about Jackie Robinson was not that he broke the color line of baseball. He was a great baseball player, which he was, but that he had a commitment to not fighting back for three years, no matter what they said or did to him, which I couldn't imagine being able to do. But even more important than that, the first book I ever read was his biography, and seeing how he gave back, how he struggled despite his success for others. As the first Black man in the major leagues, as the Brooklyn Dodgers got some more Black players, they were treated poorly, and he would say, "We've got to fight back. We can't accept this." 

When he was in the army, he was told to sit in the back of the bus, and he refused, and he got court-martialed. Being one of the original Freedom Riders, I didn't know that about him until later, and it brings tears to my eyes to see how he could have been successful in anything he did. But whenever he had success, he still fought for Black folk at real cost to himself, and died at 50 or 51 because of having to deal with all that in his own life, and I really mean that. Could you imagine? He was a fighter when he was a kid. He got into fights every day like I did. And so I've had, I have tremendous admiration for him. And he was—he's been my guiding light.

My other hero is my grandfather, who came from Bialystok in Poland as an orphan. His family was all killed in the pogroms in Europe, and he came here as an orphan and died as a multimillionaire.

Your heroes provide great fertilizer because you've been at this for a very long time. Most people that I know that have been working in nonprofits have burnt out after a dozen years.  Where do you get that joy that buoys your work? Where do you draw from to keep going?

First of all, if you struggle for social justice, this is not something you do because you're being paid. This is not something you do and expect everything to be good all the time. It's a struggle, and while it's a struggle, it's also rewarding. And I don't understand people that retire from the struggle. You see, you may even retire from your job if you're in human services, but I don't know how you just go from understanding that there are people that need you terribly. And if you're not there for them, they will end up being crushed– and how you just walk away from all that. 

You know, when I was a young man I did a lot of wrong things. I was involved with organized crime. I was headed for prison and worse, and because I was angry and I had a right to be angry, and as I've understood myself better, I understand how important it is for people like me to interact with people like I used to be and help people see a positive role in their lives.

I enjoy what I do. It's difficult and there's times I may be upset, but ultimately it's rewarding. When I was involved in the Civil Rights movement, I remember when we started with voter registration in Mississippi, it was almost impossible. We were failing consistently and we'd be visiting homes of Black folk in the Delta, and trying to convince them to register, and they would look at us like we were crazy, because if they registered they could be killed or they would lose their job. And we'd be all very depressed because we couldn’t get anyone to register. 

There was a Rev. Harding, who was a major black reverend in Mississippi. And he met with us one day, and he said, "Well, you guys look sad."  And we said,  "Yeah, we're failing. You know, we can't register almost anybody."  He said, “You know, you guys think you go out there and you win?" He said, "Social justice is a struggle. It's a struggle every day. It'll be a struggle every day of your life, and it's like lifting weights, you know. If you lift your weights regularly, you get stronger and stronger, but if you ever quit, if you ever allow yourself to get down, and then you stop, then you get weak. The expectation that we're going to win – we may win a battle, but you never win the war." 

That's something that stayed with me. I mean that. And it was sort of like he's saying, "You know, this struggle will never be easy because look what we're up against." For whatever reason that's always been in the back of my head.  So today, when we're facing the greatest challenges I think we face in my lifetime, I get depressed sometimes. But ultimately what helps me with depression is fighting back.”

Talking about the biggest obstacles that are facing nonprofits in New York City and New York state today. Let me just ask you that question straight up. What are the biggest issues? Let's talk about it.

There are a number of critical issues that nonprofits face that have been in existence for decades which we have not dealt with. Historically the city has always been behind in payments – government has always been behind in paying you. So if you don't have two or three months in reserve you're going to end up facing at some point not making payroll. Three quarters of all the child welfare agencies in town – 79 agencies – don't have a line of credit, can't get a line of credit with the bank. Well, if you don't have a line of credit, and the city starts falling behind in paying you in time. What do you do? You don't make payroll.  That destroys the morale of your staff. This is not new. FEGS closed in 2016. Hull House was many years before that. In my career I have seen hundreds of not-for-profits closed because of this, and everyone wants to find something wrong with the not-for-profit. That's ridiculous. We are being eviscerated by the confluence of all of these issues. 

Most recently, of course, the city's failure to fund us has been a major issue.  Last year they installed a new computer system which they didn't test before they put it in. Could you imagine?  They put a new computer system in without testing it? The city had historically been behind in paying us. But now add another six months, eight, nine months. I know agencies that haven't been reimbursed for a year-and-a-half for expenses. So we're being killed. This last year has been hell. We've been owed $6 million dollars much of this year. I've never had to experience that before. My board is concerned, and I can understand their concern.

Thank you for speaking so frankly.  To wrap up – ten years from now, looking back at your career, what do you hope you'll be able to say about your accomplishments?

I don't think I would be around 10-15 years from now. I'm 83 now, but 10 years from now I hope I'm still working and that I'm still around. I hope I'm still doing something that's valuable, and  I don't see why that can't be. I mean, of course, if I physically can't, I can't. But you know the idea that you have to retire at a certain age is ridiculous to me. I get a satisfaction in my soul from what I do. That helps heal me again. When I was a young person I was doing all the wrong things. I was in jail when I was 13. So  I know what it is to go down the wrong path and feel that the whole world's out to get you. So much so as I've helped people, I've helped myself so I would hope that if I'm around ten years from now I'm still doing something valuable to support young people like myself, who have had the raw end of the stick. If you will. 

Do you know who ‘G. Dep’  was? He was a young man who became a hit with Bad Boy records about 25 years ago, and shortly after he turned himself in for killing someone when he was 18, and G. Dep turned himself in. His name is Trivell Coleman, and he went to jail. He was sentenced to 15 to life. His kids came up with us at our East East River Center. I never really knew him when he was growing up. I got to know him through his kids and his wife Crystal. We helped get him out of jail. Gov. Hochul gave him clemency over a year ago now. We hired him, and…I didn't know him. Well, I was worried. You know you hire someone who's been incarcerated for14 years... What are you getting yourself into? But I know I did worse things than him. I never killed anyone, but I did bad things, worse things that he did incidentally. And can I tell you? He's one of the nicest people I've met in my life. He's worked with us for a year now, and I not only consider my friend, I consider him one of the finest people I've ever known.

So that's what motivates me to keep doing what I do and ten years from now I hope to still be here working side by side with  G. Dep.