National Contest for Free Office Makeover Goes to Manatee Nonprofit

by Victoria Lobel contributing writer
Brian Caswell is happy that he decided to take part in a national office makeover contest. He can now look around his new conference room at the Economic Development Investment Fund because his Manatee nonprofit won all new furniture.
“They showed ingenuity, they were very clever,” said Abel Zalcberg, owner of OFM, an importer and distributor of office furniture.
Caswell sent in photos of volunteers on their knees in front of their laptops which were sitting on top of boxes.
“When you are results focused and working non-stop to help our economy, sometimes you forget the table and chairs,” Caswell wrote in his submission.
“Please help us OFM,” was written on a big sign in the background.
“We knew they needed help,” Zalcberg said.
In no time six chairs, a conference table and a credenza arrived and were placed in the nonprofit’s empty conference room where volunteers meet with businesses to help them with needed funding.
“We are nonprofit small business lenders, we administered a lot of federal programs and are a strategic alliance partner with the Small Business Administration,” Caswell said. “We serve businesses that can’t get credit elsewhere.”
Zalcberg thinks it’s great that an organization that is helping others won the competition but he said “that was just a fluke that they happen to be the winner. We gave it to them because of their ingenuity.”
“Most were more that they had a messy situation rather than really needing help,” Zalcberg said.
The Economic Development Investment Fund started in 2008 and is staffed by nine volunteers.
“Every dollar we get goes to helping small business,” Caswell said.
“We started our business out of our home,” Zalcberg said. “So we wanted to give back.”