A part of the family: AFS director retires after 17 years

PALMER — Dr. Donn Bennice has helped guide Alaska Family Services over the last 17 years, helping the agency become one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the Mat-Su Valley, helping women and children through tough times in their lives.

Bennice came to Alaska and originally settled in Bethel, where he oversaw a medical clinic and visited all 48 of the rural bush clinics. Bennice came to the Valley in 2002 when he took over as President and CEO of AFS. Bennice has helped to ensure safety and health of Valley families by not just keeping AFS afloat, but absorbing other nonprofit organizations who couldn’t support themselves. AFS offers more than two-dozen programs in domestic violence and sexual assault support, the family support and preservation program and in family violence intervention. Bennice will officially retire March 1 and hand over the reins to interim CEO Bill Hogan. Bennice will assist in guiding Hogan’s search for a new permanent CEO, and he will be missed by all of those at AFS.

“Certainly he has helped the entire community expand programs for families in need and I think he has certainly helped AFS find their mission, stay true to their mission and, enhance their missions,” said Mari Jo Parks. “Their motto is helping families through one person at a time, so Donn’s been I think brilliant at seeing the need to help the whole family by helping the individual.”

During his time as CEO at AFS, Bennice played a balancing act of ensuring services for the 8,000 clients that AFS helped in 2018, communicating with the Board of Directors and individual program managers. Board member Harry Banks says that Bennice can keep 25 plats spinning in the air. Banks is not a fan of writing grants, but marvels at Bennice’s ability to juggle multiple grant proposals at one time.

“I think the biggest thing that Donn has been able to head over the last five years is our endowment to make the organization sustainable in the future and to not know what’s going to happen at the state level or the federal level and that’s been huge,” said AFS Board Chair Kenni Psenak-Linden.

Bennice worked tirelessly as an advocate for Valley families. Bennice kept AFS on course through loss of Medicaid funding and dealt with a need for more funding for forensic nurses. AFS is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and provides a broad spectrum of services to Valley families. Not only does AFS oversee programs like Special Santa, which Parks is retiring from as the Chief Elf Organizer this May, but provides essential resources like the Mat-Su Sexual Assault Response Team and the Alcohol Safety Action Program.

“In terms of making sure our staff is professionally trained and oriented and provides an open door, no wrong door philosophy for helping people and helping us identify gaps for services in the community. When other nonprofits were having problems, trying to take over or to help out those nonprofits or continue to help provide the services,” said boardmember Susan Lemagie. “The programs we provide, a lot of people don't realize that all these programs are under AFS. He’s helped us really become very cost efficient.”

Bennice directed the evolution of AFS from the domestic violence shelter it once was to become a safety net for families in need. More information can be found at www.akafs.org or on the Alaska Family Services Facebook page.

“When they come in the door, they’ll come into our shelter many times they’ll have no clothes, no car, no job, no money, and we take them from that point and stabilize them in moving them along,” Bennice said. “I remember the first week or so I was on the job 17 years ago, I walked into the shelter and as I’m walking down the hallway to the shelter a little boy about two years old comes out from one of the rooms, sees me and just panics. You could tell that the reason he was doing it was not just because he was surprised, but coming from an abusive situation. I think at that point, that really crystalized for me what this agency was all about and what we’re trying to do is to help people that are in that situation and provide some kind of safety net, some kind of way to go to make their lives better,” Bennice said.

Family, coworkers and board members gathered at AFS in Palmer on Thursday to celebrate Bennice’s achievements in directing AFS. Bennice continued to shift credit to his staff.

“I’m really proud of the managers and what they’ve done over the last 10 to 15 years,” Bennice said. “The women that come into our shelter, they’re really struggling and it isn’t just one issue. It’s usually a multitude of issues and because of that it makes our job harder, but it also makes it more satisfying when we’re able to help them.”

Bennice isn’t sure what he will do next, but plans to spend time with his own family after tirelessly working to ensure the safety of other families for 17 years. At the staff Christmas party in December, Bennice announced his plans to retire.

“Donn took my baby which I think is probably the best metaphor for the organization itself. It’s a family organization. It’s about families and being able to provide families with the help that they need. Having our CEO hold my baby while I thanked Donn for his incredible service and to be able to provide so much to our community has just been amazing. That was a really fun moment,” Psenak-Linden said. “He’s given so much to families here in Alaska and in the Matanuska Valley especially, but to be able to spend some time with his own family is a huge blessing and I’m personally very grateful that he’ll have the opportunity to do that but we miss out and he’ll always be a part of our family.”

Contact Frontiersman reporter Tim Rockey at tim.rockey@frontiersman.com.