Boys and Girls Club gets sizable COVID relief grant

The Boys and Girls Club of Glacier Country recently received a $300,000 state COVID-19 relief grant, interim Director Mandy Anderson said last week.

The grant is applicable retroactively to March, Anderson said, so the organization can use the funds to cover expenses from then until now, but the funding must be spent by the end of December, she noted.

As such, the club also will use the funding to purchase a couple of new vehicles. It currently has a rather run-down 15-passenger van it uses for field trips and the like, she noted.

The club will use some of the money to launch a marketing campaign, as Anderson said a lot of people still don’t realize the club exists here.

It currently serves about 45 kindergarten through fifth-grade students in after school programs and also has after school programs in both the junior and senior highs now, with about eight to 10 students in each of the older kids programs.

Anderson said the funding comes a a critical time for the programs, as some of the grants it typically relies on are no longer funded and because of the coronavirus crisis, a major fundraiser planned for earlier this year was canceled.

The coronavirus has not left the club unscathed. Last week the club closed temporarily after a member tested positive for the illness. No one else has been infected, but the club shut down as a precaution for a week.

In the long-term view, the club is still working toward building a new facility called The Hub in Columbia Falls.

This funding can’t be used for that capital project, Anderson noted.

The club has four full-time employees and six part-time employees.