The foundation community recognized Auberle’s commitment to overall excellence when Auberle was selected as the 2006 winner of the Alfred W. Wishart, Jr. Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Management. The Wishart Award is given each year to a nonprofit organization that has exhibited continued commitment to excellence in management and governance by the Forbes Funds, affiliated with the Pittsburgh Foundation, and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette Charities. According to the Forbes Funds, there are almost 2,700 financially active nonprofit organizations in the metropolitan Pittsburgh area.

The award recognizes Auberle’s strong commitment to its mission – to help troubled children and families to heal themselves - and its ability to pursue that mission. As CEO John Lydon stated after receiving the award, “We operate our organization efficiently in order to utilize our resources to provide the best possible outcomes for the children and families who come to us. The better we manage our organization, the more people we can help, and the more success we can achieve with them.”

The Award has a rigorous selection process. A written nomination for an organization must be made. Those organizations appearing to fit the Award criteria are asked to provide documents and to complete an extensive application narrative that reviews the eight criteria for the Award. The organization must demonstrate that it:

• Is recognized as a leader in its field of service;
• Uses objective information to design and deliver its services;
• Assesses and responds to the changing needs of its consumers;
• Continually improves its service delivery process;
• Monitors and measures the outcome of its services;
• Shows that it recruits, retains, and effectively utilizes high quality talent with its staff, volunteers, and Board;
• Collaborates with other public, private and nonprofit groups to further its mission;
• Ensures ethical conduct and public accountability.

Three finalists are selected who must submit additional written information and undergo a rigorous site visit with the selection committee and staff of the Forbes Funds. This year’s selection committee was chaired by Dr. Kevin Kearns, Professor of Public and Nonprofit Management,Graduate School of Public and International Affairs of the University of Pittsburgh; Robert Pease, former CEO of the Allegheny Conference; Aradhna Dhanda, President and CEO of Leadership Pittsburgh; and Margaret Joy, Pittsburgh attorney, and member of the United Way of Allegheny County Executive Committee, accompanied by Gregg Behr, President of the Forbes Funds and Diana Bucco, Senior Program Officer of the Forbes Funds and previously Founding Executive Director of both the Coro Center for Civic Leadership and the Mentoring Partnership of southwestern PA. Gregg Behr described this year’s process as one of the most competitive years in the Award’s history.

Auberle demonstrated it is a leader in these areas with the help of staff, volunteers, donors, and partners. Some key points established during the process included:

• Without an increase in funding for six years, Auberle refused to cut back residential care services for children, instead redesigning those services to actually increase standards while operating more efficiently. Those services are now utilized at nearly 100% of the capacity.
• Those increased standards reflect that one of three residential children are on the honor roll in the community schools they attend, many chronically truant before coming to Auberle.
• Goals are set to increase quality in every program and department every year and are extensively monitored to ensure that quality increases; if goals are not being met, the quality improvement system provides help and support to make necessary changes to achieve quality standards.
• One of the changes in service delivery found Auberle starting the Movin’ On Program to target homelessness among 17 to 21 year old males aging out of the social service system for children.
• Regular surveys are conducted with children, families, volunteers and staff to ensure that satisfaction goals are met and needs are recognized.
• Auberle has increased its volunteers over the past two years to more than 300 people and dozens of business, unions, churches and nonprofits to deliver the greatest possible impact on those who need help.
• Auberle studies the environment and makes changes so that it is the employer of choice in social service in western Pennsylvania, including extensive and unique leadership training programs.
• Auberle makes sure that its front line staff, its Board Directors and its Friends of Auberle in the community all have input into its planning and decision making to utilize all expertise available.
• Auberle has strong Ethics and Whistleblower policies to make sure that everyone is comfortable bringing any issue to the attention to the agency.

The unique concept of the Wishart Award is demonstrated by one of the questions to the finalists that asks them to identify lessons they have learned from mistakes that the organization has made in the past. CEO John Lydon said, “Even as we were completing the questions and listing accomplishments, we were asking ourselves if this is the best that we could do in each area. Just going through the Wishart process helped us to identify additional areas in which we can continue to improve the organization as we move forward. While we have very high outcomes in helping Auberle’s children and families, we are not perfect and want to continually strive to get as close as we can to that ideal. Being recognized by the Forbes Funds with the Wishart Award gives us even more motivation to move forward toward that goal.”