As the new executive director of the Jefferson Center for Learning and the Arts, Katharine Moore occasionally wonders: ''WWDVD?''

Donn Vickers, not just the former executive director, was the founding executive director -- on the job since 1975 before he stepped down July 31.

Whenever she wants to know something, Moore need only crane her neck toward the hallway and yell: ''Hey, Donn!''

''Katharine and I have offices next to one another,'' Vickers said. ''I'm still the executive director of the (related organization) Academy for Leadership and Governance, so I see her most every day.''

The Jefferson Center, on Jefferson Avenue at the eastern edge of Downtown, is an 11-building campus with 21 nonprofit organizations; several individual tenants; and a place for seminars, research and publications.

Since its inception in 1975, the center has restored eight turn-of-the-century homes at a cost of about $1 million -- converting them into space for nonprofit organizations in education, human services and the arts.

In addition, and for another $1 million, it built the Thurber Center and the Cecilia Coleman Center on vacant lots in the neighborhood.

Loans, fund raising and donations paid for the renovations and construction.

On the campus, organizations such as the Senior Repertory of Ohio Theatre Company and Action for Children, an information center and resource for child care and early learning, co-exist.

"The arts are humanized by the human services, and the human services are elevated by the arts,'' Vickers said in 1987. "It's diversity by design.''

The pioneering Jefferson Center model was partly the dream of Arthur Vorys (a retired partner of the Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease law firm) and partly a vision of Vickers.

"At the time we were starting,'' Vickers said, "I didn't know of another entity like us.''

Twenty-nine years later, similar entities include Artsbridge in Chicago, Artspace in Minneapolis, the Fort Mason Center in San Franscisco and Nonprofit Enterprise at Work in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Said Moore: "Donn Vickers was a visionary. He imagined the Jefferson Center and made it come true. I'm taking over the stewardship of what he created.''

Vorys approached Vickers in the mid-1970s after he had identified Jefferson Avenue as a possible home for his Metropolitan School of Columbus, a private, "open-classroom'' alternative school. In essence, Vorys asked Vickers to build a neighborhood around his school.

That never happened.

"We had big, naive dreams,'' said Vorys, a founding member of the Jefferson Center board. "But everything worked out for the best.''

The school no longer exists, but the Jefferson Center thrives.

"We have a whole block full (to capacity) of nonprofits all doing very well,'' Vorys said.  "We've been able to supply shelter for a number of nonprofits that have succeeded and moved on.

"We didn't look at the center as a nonprofits incubator at the outset, but that's the way it worked out. We've had Ballet Met outgrow us, and the Center for New Directions, too.''

The range of organizations, Vickers said, testifies to the center's vibrancy.

"Some (nonprofits) are in only one or two offices, with budgets of between $25,000 and $50,000, all the way up to Action for Children, which has 35 employees,'' he said.

At the start, the Jefferson Center was funded by a five-year, $425,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. It also was funded to a lesser degree by the Columbus Foundation. By the late 1980s, the center had become self-sufficient, even giving small grants to other nonprofit organizations.

Today, the center's annual budget is $375,000. The Academy for Leadership and Governance, headed by Vickers, was established in 2000 to help develop the skills of executive directors and board presidents and board members of nonprofit organizations. The academy's budget is $165,000.

Sandra Smith, a community-research and grants-management officer at the Columbus Foundation, is well-acquainted with Jefferson Center activities.

"At the time the concept for the center was developed, there was no centralized place where nonprofits could find affordable space, form relationships with other nonprofits, learn about their fields,'' she said.

"Not to mention they saved the (Victorian) buildings in that neighborhood.''

Moore, who will retain her paid position as executive director of the German Village Society and finish her volunteer term as president of the Friends of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, said the post at the Jefferson Center plays to her strengths.

"My favorite part of my professional life and my volunteer life is connecting the dots. And here I'll have 21 (disparate) agencies right on the same boulevard,'' she said.

Vickers plans to keep tabs on the Jefferson Center's progress.

"There are still four vacant lots on Jefferson Avenue that will afford the center opportunities to do interesting things,'' he said.

Moore said she will seek more tenants and more ways for the center to attract nonprofit organizations. She is already meeting with executive directors of current tenants.

"I'm going through now and finding out if they have common challenges across agencies,'' she said. "And they do.''

beichenberger@dispatch.com