Manhattan Stalwarts Isaacs Center & Goddard Riverside Join Forces

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Two neighborhood nonprofits that have served Manhattan for decades are joining forces, a partnership that they say was "years in the making."

Goddard Riverside, based on the Upper West Side since 1959, and the Stanley M. Isaacs Center, an Upper East Side institution since 1964, have formed a new "strategic partnership" to enhance services at both centers, they announced this week.

Both organizations originated as settlement houses, the urban institutions that sprang up in low-income neighborhoods in the early 20th century to provide healthcare, daycare and education to poor residents.

In the ensuing decades, each institution has evolved to combat poverty in 21st-century New York. Goddard serves more than 20,000 people annually by proving affordable housing, programs for older adults and early-childhood education, while the Isaacs Center does much of the same work, including focuses on food insecurity and job training for young adults.

Under the arrangement, the Isaacs Center is now a nonprofit member organization under Goddard Riverside, with their respective boards merging.

The partnership began when the Isaacs Center enlisted strategists from Morgan Stanley to assess its missions and aspirations, concluding that a partnership could help the organization "create change on a local and city-wide level," the center said. The agreement will deepen both houses' service across Upper Manhattan, building programs addressing food insecurity, homelessness and poverty that will serve a combined 26,000 people, they say.

The relationship agreed upon internally in May, before the announcement this month.

"The Isaacs Center has been a rock for the Upper East Side for many decades,” Roderick L. Jones, Goddard Riverside's executive director, said in a statement. "We are excited to partner with them to continue their tremendous history of working with and strengthening the community."

Gregory J. Morris, the Isaacs Center's executive director, called the move "an educated leap of faith."

"This is very new for us at a time when our organizations have been called upon to serve the communities in crisis while responding to the pandemics associated with health and safety and social-justice," Morris said. "We could not have chosen a more dynamic and capable partner to align and collaborate with."

Isaacs Center employees will now enjoy better benefits and growth through the partnership, the nonprofit said. Donors, meanwhile, can continue to contribute to only one of the two houses.

The Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center is open Monday-Friday on East 93rd Street between First and York avenues. Goddard Riverside is headquartered on Columbus Avenue between West 88th and 89th streets.

Read more about the partnership announcement here.