When James H. Buford, longtime President and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, announced his plans to retire a year from now, he received a call from his brother in law.
“My brother in law called to say, ‘Are you sick?” Buford chuckled. “I said, ‘No, no, no, no.’ In the African-American community, you either get fired, get sick or die. I’m not any of those.”
Buford, who turns 68 this week, is in good health. The agency he has led for 27 years and turned into the nation’s flagship Urban League affiliate is in even better shape.
“Most of our programming is stable. We’re sitting right around a $22 million budget, and we’re going to hold in that range for the next year or so,” Buford said.
“There are no problems, no issues with finances. We just got a Five Star rating for the second time from the National Urban League, which sent a team in last year to evaluate us.”
The national office and affiliates around the country are watching the retirement of the CEO of its flagship affiliate very closely. Buford spoke to The American on Monday morning and expected a call later that day from national President Marc Morial.
“I called Mr. Morial the day before I made my announcement to the board, and he called back and said, ‘Now you can come to national and work for us,” Buford said.
“I said, ‘Marc, are you kidding?’ He said, ‘I’m serious, Jim. Not full-time, but we need you to do some things in a consulting capacity.’ I know a couple of affiliates are troubled – a couple in the South and two out East are barely hanging on. He thinks we can help. I’ll probably do that.”
Morial’s offer for work is not the only one that has arrived in the short time since Buford announced his retirement plans. Teaching opportunities and corporate consulting offers also are on the table. That starts to pose a problem for the prospective retiree.
“I don’t want to retire to go back to work,” Buford said. “If I want to continue to work hard for long hours, I’ll do that here where I’ve built something I’m proud of.”
Buford does plan to retain his seat on “a few choice” non-profit boards in the region, as well as his home in the city of St. Louis. His wife, Susan Buford, will continue to work here. However, golf greens in a warmer climate do beckon to the retiring executive.
“There is a time share on the Gulf of Mississippi we are seriously looking at,” Buford said. “My family is from the Delta originally, and we go down there once a year to Gulfport, Biloxi, Bay St. Louis. I’d like to go hit a golf ball during the cold months. But we won’t move away.”
‘I lean local’
The pending availability of Buford’s plum position has been an open secret in St. Louis since he crested 65, the age when he wanted to retire. But the St. Louis affiliate was the recipient of two massive waves of federal funding – from the stimulus act and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) – which left Buford’s board begging for him to stay in the saddle.
He also didn’t want to leave the agency when it was in the middle of administering new and newly bolstered programs. He had grown the affiliate from a $2.5 million annual budget to an agency with an annual budget of more than $20 million. He saw the need for stable leadership through this transition.
“It’s not about the money, it’s about the scope,” Buford said. “We serve 40,000 people. You can’t do that without funding for programs and facilities. We put an infrastructure together that serves a substantial number of people.”
As the latest waves of federal funding subside and with a stable outlook for funding and programming, Buford is ready to hand over the reins.
“I want to give it to someone when there are no problems and the agency is in good shape,” he said. “I want to leave while I’m on top. You can’t stay here forever. I don’t want to be carried out. I want to walk out like I came in.”
Who will be the new CEO he will pass on the way out the door? Will he or she be local or national? His board – chaired by Debra Denham, Vice President of Community Affairs at BJC HealthCare – will have options. Buford said eight CEOs from other affiliates already had expressed interest. Local candidates from the non-profit, corporate and public sector are expected to apply.
Will they look to hire nationally or locally?
“The board hasn’t decided,” Buford said. “I’m not being evasive. That’s the big decision they’re going to have to make over the summer. I’m going to help them, which is not to say I’m calling the shots.”
But if he were?
“I lean toward the local,” Buford said. “I was a local person when I was hired. I think it is more important to know people in town who fund the Urban League than to know how to run an Urban League affiliate.”
Buford expects the board to hire for efficacy and competence in operations, which will be needed to run an agency with such a wide scope.
“Those Five Stars we got from national says that we have a quality operation, and the proof is in the funding we got,” Buford said.
“The stimulus and LIHEAP funding was brought to us, we did not get it on bid. It was brought to us because of efficacy and no games being played. We’ve built a culture where we do things for efficacy of the program. If can’t run it, we don’t go for it. We don’t run for money first.”
His regret is that the community still has such a wide scope of need for Urban League programs in St. Louis.
“What dismays me is we are needed now more than ever,” Buford said. “I kind of thought the Urban League movement would phase out. It’s 100 years after we were founded, and we are needed now more than ever before. That dismays me. The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer.”
