Independent Group Home takes over Victims Information Bureau

The Independent Group Home Living Program Inc., a Manorville-based organization that runs 50 group homes in Suffolk County, has agreed to take over the Victims Information Bureau of Suffolk.

Islandia-based VIBS provides services to an estimated 7,000 victims of domestic violence and rape each year.

“We will give them back-office help and administrative help, and they will continue to do what they do well, which is run the organization,” said IGHL chief executive Walter Stockton. “Money doesn’t exchange hands. There is no change to their structure, it’s just that we have a common board of directors.”

IGHL has about $110 million in annual revenue and more than 2,300 employees, while VIBS has about $3 million in annual revenue and 50 employees, Stockton said.

Nonprofit mergers should become more common in order to save money, said Jeffrey Greener, a partner in the trusts, estates and taxation practice group at Uniondale-based Rivkin Radler.

“To the extent you can consolidate back office operations, more money then goes toward supporting programs,” Greener said. “Charities also look more attractive to a donor when they spend more on the work they’re supposed to do.”

The VIBS takeover is the third for IGHL in the past few months. It also absorbed the Center for Developmental Disabilities and the Families of TWA Flight 800 Association.

The CDD runs 17 group homes in Nassau County, Stockton said.

“That was a natural marriage,” Stockton said. “With TWA, that was merely an administrative function.

“With VIBS, some of the people who come to us come from a home with violence,” Stockton added. “Now we can help the family.”