Clash with board led to shakeup at Gay and Lesbian Community Center

Bob Elkins, shown Friday, March 28, 2014, is the former CEO of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada.

A year after hiring a new chief executive, the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada has already replaced him with a new top boss.

The downtown Las Vegas group has brought in nonprofit veteran Michael Dimengo as its CEO. He started Oct. 7.

Dimengo succeeds Bob Elkins, a former banker and Internet-search executive who joined the group last September. Elkins lost his job in April after clashing with the board of directors.

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Tom Kovach, board member of the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada on Tuesday, July 22, 2014.

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Michael Dimengo, CEO of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada.

The change at the helm comes as the Center, as the group is known, looks for further expansion. The group — which moved into a renovated, stand-alone headquarters last year from a strip-mall storefront — aims to grow its programming and land more fundraising dollars after a federal court last week struck down Nevada’s voter-approved, constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

But the quick change in CEOs also shows how looking outside its industry for new leadership was a short-lived effort that steered the Center to a nonprofit insider.

Board member Tom Kovach, the interim CEO before Dimengo took charge, would not discuss why Elkins left, saying it was a human resources issue.

“In the end, it was not the right fit between him and the Center,” Kovach said.

He said the board hired Elkins because of his extensive background in for-profit businesses and his experience, albeit limited, in the nonprofit world. Elkins began his career as a banker, working on loans in Hong Kong for international shipping firms and oil drillers, and years later was director of business development at AT&T Interactive. He also spent a few years as director of development for Project Inform, a San Francisco-based advocacy group for HIV and hepatitis C treatment and prevention.

The board was “expecting a good balance between the two” industries, Kovach said, adding that Elkins contributed to a banner fundraising year in 2013. But, as shown with the hiring of Dimengo, who has 37 years of nonprofit experience, the Center needed a CEO “who had much more significant exposure (to) and experience in the nonprofit community,” Kovach said.

He also said there are “distinct differences” in culture between nonprofits and for-profits, and one is the role of the board, especially at small- to medium-size nonprofit organizations like the Center.

Asked if Elkins did not work as closely with the board as members hoped for, Kovach would only cite one example, as it’s publicly known. Elkins sent an email some months ago to community members about festival organizer Southern Nevada Association of Pride Inc., or SNAPI, and “he stated positions that were his own and not the board’s,” Kovach said.

Reached on his cellphone, Elkins said he was “let go” from the Center. He said he raised a lot of money for the group, including $250,000 from billionaire Elaine Wynn’s foundation, but ran into problems after his email about SNAPI, in which he complained about a supposed lack of diversity at the group.

Elkins said he also tried to diversify the Center’s board of directors away from “gay white males” such as himself to membership that better reflects the community and the Center’s clientele — namely, more women and racial minorities and at least one trans-gender person. According to Elkins, donors said they wanted a better mix on the board or would withhold funding.

He is still looking for a new job.

Asked to comment on Elkins’ statements, Kovach said that this year’s crop of new board members was all recruited after Elkins left and is the “most diverse ever.”

“Our efforts to diversify and develop the board have been the result of good strategy and not any threat from a donor to withhold funding,” Kovach said.

Dimengo, a 63-year-old Ohio native, said he has spent his entire career in the nonprofit industry, including the past decade as a consultant. He has been involved with LGBT groups as a volunteer and advocate but, until now, had not worked full-time for one.

He moved here from Phoenix about a year ago after his partner, Douglas Allington, joined Las Vegas-based discount carrier Allegiant Air as manager of on-board sales.

The Center’s board “really has an aspiration to grow their reach and grow their programming,” Dimengo said. Those efforts should be helped by the Oct. 7 ruling, by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, that struck down Nevada’s ban on same-sex marriage.

The LGBT community, he said, “is coming more into the mainstream.”

“Not only do I expect a fundraising bump, but I’ll be working to do that,” Dimengo said.

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