Changes coming to Boys and Girls Club

With a change in leadership, the Boys and Girls Club is going back to the basics — ensuring after-school and summer programming for youth will remain in Evergreen and Columbia Falls long into the future.

After weathering years of financial storms, board members and new executive director Cindy Hooker see a silver lining. But it will take changing the status quo.

The storm hasn’t passed just yet. Hooker, board chairwoman Naomi Morrison and board member Jeremy Presta have tough choices to make, and met to talk about the organization’s future at the club’s skating rink facility on Wednesday.

By the end of the 2015 tax year the Boys and Girls Club of Glacier Country was in the red by $37,814 — but Presta said the organization is on pace to reduce that amount.

“There’s end-of-year funding that still hasn’t been funded yet and fundraisers we’re working on, but we’ll still lose money in 2016,” Presta said, noting that it will be less of a loss than 2015.

Hooker is just the right person to helm the transitional period, according to Morrison and Presta. Hooker, who was on the Boys and Girls Club of Glacier Country board, became the executive director this summer following the resignation of Alan Sempf. Sempf was integral in starting a club in Flathead County in 1999. Hooker brings with her experience of successfully starting a Boys and Girls Club in Tennessee, in addition to securing funds and donated land for building a new club facility there.

“When we finally opened our doors and I got to know the kids and the families all the statistics and all the numbers meant absolutely nothing,” Hooker said. “When families start trusting you ... enough to come to you with these personal and private things that are hard to share that’s my proudest moment — being a resource that kids and families can trust and know that me and my staff truly care about them.”

THE CLUB’S revenue streams come from grants, donations, fundraising, membership dues and skating rink income. When one area is lacking, the board has scrambled to make up the costs and they’re looking for more financial stability in order to focus on programming.

Daily attendance is roughly at 65 children at the Evergreen club and about the same amount for Columbia Falls according to Hooker, and the goal is to grow membership now limited by money and staffing. The Evergreen facility is staffed by six part-time employees, according to Presta. Two employees were let go, but board members said they could not discuss personnel matters.

The board and Hooker have been formulating a plan to curb debt by putting the current club headquarters at the skating rink facility up for sale.

“Even though our club is run out of the roller rink they essentially are two separate units and so we want to keep doing what we’ve been doing — serving the boys and girls of our community and let someone else run the business,” Presta said.

A May 2005 Daily Inter Lake article noted the move of Evergreen Boys and Girls Club out of Evergreen schools and into the skating rink. Although the rink was located away from the schools, at the time the executive director noted it was located where it could reach an area with a high concentration of low-income families and juvenile crime.

“The nice thing for us is the roller rink has been supplementing the club by $30,000, give or take, every year,” Presta said.

But the skating rink facility has seen its share of wear and tear over the years.

“As you can see there’s a lot of deferred maintenance on the building,” Presta said.

The goal is to move the Evergreen club back into Evergreen schools. The Evergreen School District has been approached by the Boys and Girls Club, but nothing has been discussed in much detail yet.

IN THE meantime, the club will continue to operate out of the skating rink facility. If the school district is able to accommodate the club, the skating rink will continue to operate on weekends until it is sold.

“[We want] to truly get back to the mission of the Boys and Girls Club — run after-school programs — and we can do that better and more efficiently when we’re in the schools. We don’t have to run transportation costs,” Presta said.

This year the club is using its own 15-passenger van to cut costs rather than contract a busing company.

“It doesn’t cost us anything other than gas and insurance,” Presta said. “[It’s] definitely a cost-savings measure. Right now, I mean every penny truly counts.”

Revenues right now do not cover operations and maintenance of the Evergreen and Columbia Falls facilities, in-kind membership dues, or loss of grants funding.

“If you don’t have the ability to pay we don’t turn you away,” Morrison said, noting that grants usually supplement in-kind memberships. “Right now we charge $50 per family — you could have five kids and it’s still $50 a month. It costs us between $150 and $180 a month per child [to operate the club].”

One $60,000 grant was lost according to Presta because the application unfortunately wasn’t turned in by the deadline, but noted there will be another opportunity in the spring.

“In the meantime, one, we try and raise dollars and make up for that loss — unfortunately we haven’t, but we do try to, and two, apply for any other grant funding out there,” Presta said.

It’s a community effort to keep the clubs going in both locations and it may be the only after-school option families have.

“Columbia Falls and Evergreen, that is their after-school program,” Morrison said. “That’s all that’s available. So if the Boys and Girls Club closed there isn’t a place for these kids to go.”

Future plans of the Boys and Girls Club of Glacier Country will be on the agenda at the next board meeting set at 8:30 a.m. on Dec. 7 at the clubhouse, located at 155 Shady Lane in Kalispell.

For more information, call 406-897-3343 or visit www.boysandgirlsclubgc.com.

Reporter Hilary Matheson can be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.