A survey released last week by the Dorchester Community Services Collaborative made public a fact that has long been obvious: The neighborhood thrives and survives because of its wealth of non-profit organizations. They succeed where business and government fail, or refuse to venture. With the recent volley of budget plans and the annual debate in the offing, promising to be a contentious backdrop to the summer, it is incumbent upon our elected leaders to recognize the importance of our non-profit organizations.

As the survey reveals, non-profits - youth centers, health centers, community development corporations - go beyond the obvious services they are designed to provide expressly. They furnish jobs, bulwark neighborhoods against crime and decline, supply housing stock, and attract commerce. Their value to the community should not be overlooked by elected officials who this year should guard against state-level cuts to non-profit funds.

Non-profits help rev the economic engine and do so with a neighborhood conscience that is all too often lacking from other supposed community pillars. In Fields Corner, big-name corporations NStar, Keyspan and Liberty Mutual are forsaking their obligations to the communities that have supported them, and shutting down branch offices.

In the corner office of the State House, Bain & Company's Mitt Romney has earned a gold medal in the blind eye competition. Romney's negligent and callous treatment of the state's health and human services dwarfs the ugliness of even the most strident partisanism. Why must "streamlining" consist of marginalizing the state's mentally retarded? Why is our state government drawing away funds and making it harder for those afflicted with debilitating injuries to live independently?

Romney's local aid is not sufficient to keep our schools open, threatening the educational opportunities afforded our youngsters at schools like the Thompson Middle School. We wonder if opening the doors of education qualified as "wasteful spending" when this administration sat around the budget table. The electorate chose Mitt for his bold proposals and we applaud creative ideas, but the business of government is not business, as our mayor is found of saying. It is people.

Even the professional caretakers are not taking sufficient care. Beth-Israel Deaconess's decision to close Little House betrays an eye more attentive to capital than to quality of life.

Into this void step our non-profits and our community groups. The Dorchester House Multi Service Center employs a staff of 260 and serves 18,000 people every year. The 120-strong Marr Club staff does its best to make childhood happy and healthy for 3,500 kids every year.

These are the keystones, the groups and people we can turn to when the money's short and the other players back away from the table. The experts tell us that we're in the middle of the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression. It was then that government redefined itself, its mission, and its role in our lives by becoming an institution designed to better lives.

It seems a mission that the Massachusetts government under its present corporate leader chooses not to accept. In its stead, we have the non-profit community service agencies that rely on the Legislature to stay the fund-cutting hands of those who would look past community needs. These organizations give jobs to our neighbors, attention to our kids, and add verve to our neighborhoods. Their existence should not be threatened, but celebrated.

Ed Forry