After 100 years of serving women in crisis situations, Plumb Place is closing its doors at the end of the year.
Interim Director Mary Richardson has emailed a statement to KVOE News saying the loss of grant funding, inability to secure additional funding and cancelation of fundraisers due to coronavirus all conspired to make the facility insolvent after several years of struggling financially.
Early fundraisers this year were “marginally successful” before COVID-19 canceled all remaining fundraisers. Given the loss of previously stable grants and restrictions on fundraising, Plumb Place hired a privately-funded grant writer and Richardson secured a $20,000 grant to cover funding needs through this year. Other grant requests totaling over $450,000 were not successful.
The Plumb Place Board of Directors went into 2020 with what it calls a comprehensive fundraising plan as well as a promotion plan for its “five-point holistic programming” for women in crisis situations.
Plumb Place had struggled to get past the discovery of missing money from several years ago. Emporia Police has been investigating a stated loss of over $50,000 from 2014 to 2017. No arrests have been filed as a result of that investigation. In October 2019, Plumb Place said the facility was at risk of closure if it could not raise enough money to get through the end of the year. It started 2020 seeking to pay off about $25,000 in what Richardson called “high-range contracts” from past years.
Last year, the United Way of the Flint Hills ended a better than 70-year partnership with Plumb Place when it did not include the shelter as a community partner in a move to ensure donations were used as indicated, according to former United Way director Jami Reever. The United Way had suspended funding shortly after the missing money came to light and ordered the Plumb Place Board of Directors to take several steps to be reinstated as an official community partner, including a fraud examination by a certified examiner and additional steps for accountability, transparency and training to meet United Way standards. The United Way then reinstated Plumb Place as a community partner and restored funding, provided that Plumb Place adhered to the United Way’s directives. At the time, former Plumb Place Board of Directors president Jesse Murphy said the board had increased the size of the board, transferred check-signing authority from the director to certain board members and developed an action plan, although it has taken longer than expected to start implementing it.
After learning of the missing funds in April 2017, the Plumb Place board asked for the resignation of one full-time employee. Plumb Place has not specified which employee was asked to resign, but former director Jill Wheeler subsequently resigned after leading the agency since 2001.
Richardson tells KVOE News five women were in the house when the announcement was made. All are in the process of moving to permanent housing of some sort.
The future of the facility at 224 East Sixth is unclear. Richardson says it will have to serve women if it is indeed sold. The building currently has 17 transitional housing beds in 17 separate rooms along with four emergency housing beds in two rooms.
Since 1921, Plumb Place has served women ages 18 and over in crisis situations with an emergency shelter, transitional housing, case management, counseling and job services. It also has offered connections to other area services.
KVOE News has reached out to Richardson and spokesman Bob Symmonds for additional comment. The board says it is “heartbroken” that Plumb Place is closing its doors. It also thanked the community for its longstanding support.
