DATE: Thursday, September 18, 1997          TAG: 9709180313

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   83 lines

BUILDING A BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU

Asked to help the Better Business Bureau in Charlotte, N.C., find a new president, Jerry Grohowski contacted someone he knew in Indiana.

The acquaintance, another BBB executive, agreed to take over as head of the Better Business Bureau of Southern Piedmont Inc. When he backed out at the last minute, the Charlotte BBB courted Grohowski to take the job.

And after 11 years as president and chief executive of the Better Business Bureau of Greater Hampton Roads, he decided to accept their offer.

``It was time for something new,'' Grohowski said before joining the Charlotte's BBB on Sept. 8. It was also an opportunity to turn around an organization in need of leadership.

In its search for a new president, the BBB of Greater Hampton Roads has gathered more than 40 resumes, including some from outside Hampton Roads, said Dan Sykes, chairman of the local bureau's board and a member of the six-person search committee.

Committee members have reached a consensus on the top half-dozen candidates and recently began interviewing them.

``We'll make a decision no later than early October,'' said

Sykes, the new ventures director at Landmark Communications Inc., the Norfolk-based publishing concern that owns The Virginian-Pilot.

Serving as acting chief executive of the bureau is Laurie Grohowski, Jerry's wife and director of the Dispute Settlement Center.

During his tenure at the BBB in Norfolk, Jerry Grohowski provided greater public visibility and upgraded the bureau's telephone and information-retrieval systems.

In addition, the retired Army officer and Vietnam veteran organized the Dispute Settlement Center, which will handle 400 cases this year. The center, a BBB affiliate, uses mediation and arbitration to resolve consumer, business and family problems without resorting to the courts.

Like Better Business Bureaus elsewhere, the one serving Hampton Roads seeks to foster ethical business behavior through self-regulation and education. To do that, it makes available free information about its member companies' records of resolving any diputes they have had with customers.

The bureau, one of 136 BBBs in the country, also provides free advice to consumers on charitable giving and warnings of fraudulent business practices.

The bureau has 1,700 members in a region stretching from Williamsburg to northeastern North Carolina and west to Franklin.

For decades, the BBB enjoyed broad support from many companies, including several that didn't deal directly with consumers.

C.E. Thurston & Sons Inc., a Norfolk distributor of industrial equipment and supplies, has supported the bureau's work even though it doesn't gain a direct benefit, said Robert C. Moll, Thurston's secretary-treasurer.

``For the community to have a good business environment, it has got to have honest business - and not just at the retail level,'' said Moll, a veteran of the BBB board and immediate past chairman of the bureau's Business & Consumer Foundation of Greater Hampton Roads Inc. The foundation is parent of the Dispute Settlement Center.

One issue that the board and the next president may have to address is the retention of BBB members.

In some parts of the business community, support has eroded as companies began scruntinizing their contributions to civic and charitable causes. Newport News Shipbuilding, for one, resigned two years ago because it saw no direct benefit from its contributions to the BBB, Sykes said.

It's a trend that is likely to continue, he said.

That could put financial pressure on the bureau, which generates the bulk of its revenue from members' dues. For the fiscal year that ended June 30, dues accounted for more than 90 percent of the BBB's revenue of $723,000.

Meanwhile, the demand from consumers for information continues to grow. During Grohowski's tenure as BBB president, the volume of phone inquiries climbed from 250 a day to more than 600.

``The biggest complaint I got was that the phone lines were always busy,'' he said. ``You really can't put enough people on the telephone.''

To accommodate the torrent of calls, the bureau spent about $75,000 during the past decade on an automated voice-response system and additional computer and phone equipment, Grohowski said. Today the bureau is in the process of making information from its 12,000 business files available to consumers via the Internet.

The board is committed to improving the quality and scope of the bureau's reporting, Sykes, its chairman, said. But, the bureau will have to consider new ways of covering the cost of providing the service.

``At what point will consumers pay a nominal amount for information?'' he said.``One of the things we will have to come to grips with is the role consumers will play.'' KEYWORDS: BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU

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