Lengacher thriving in role as Big Brothers Big Sisters director

A lot has changed since Todd Lengacher took over as the executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Montana in June 2019.

The Kalispell-based chapter of the mentoring organization has not only expanded, but also has taken on the challenge of finding ways to keep the program alive during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With a 20-year background in private school education and working with families and children, the job seems like a perfect fit for Lengacher.

“Impacting communities through youth programs and education has been the thread throughout my life, so when my wife and I got to the Flathead Valley, I was really looking for opportunities to work closely in the community in some way,” he said. “When the opportunity to work with Big Brothers Big Sisters came up, it was the perfect opportunity to meet that goal.”

Born in Oregon, Lengacher spent his high school years attending an inner-city public school in Seattle, where he said he learned a lot about diversity. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Western Washington University, Lengacher began a career in education that would see him serve in school administration as well as in programs that helped create connections within and between communities in the United States as well as in foreign countries such as France, Mexico, Tibet, Nepal, Morocco and Nicaragua.

AFTER VISITING his family’s property on Flathead Lake several times, Lengacher and his wife decided to sell their Seattle home and move to Montana in 2018.

“We spent a lot of time thinking about it, but eventually decided to take the plunge,” he said. “We have been so lucky in our lives in terms of committing to places and buying houses at the right time. We always seem to get in right before a big population boom.”

While his wife went back to school to work on her fourth degree, Lengacher also headed back to college, taking on some teaching duties at Flathead Valley Community College while he searched for a more permanent position.

When the Executive Director position at Big Brothers Big Sisters became available, Lengacher jumped at the opportunity.

“I thought there would be some nice growth opportunities. I had always been involved in fundraising, but I had never been the person in charge of it. I felt like this job was an opportunity to give back in the ways I wanted to while leveraging the strengths and capabilities I had built over the years,” he said. “I have always enjoyed taking a program that is already established beyond its pioneering stage and helping it grow and expand.”

ONE OF Lengacher’s first tasks when he came on board in 2019 was to help the board of directors decide whether or not they wanted to expand into Missoula to fill the void left there when the Big Brothers Big Sisters chapter there abruptly closed its doors after nearly 50 years.

“It was a good opportunity for us to expand our area of service, but also an opportunity to really help out those kids that had been left in a lurch with little forewarning. It was more like remodeling a house than building a new one,” he said.

“Missoula and Kalispell are different places, so it has been a really interesting opportunity to learn what are the different demographics and priorities and values in these two places that are only two hours apart.”

While the expansion opened up a new world of possibilities for the nonprofit organization, COVID-19 would present a host of new challenges less than a year later.

While the pandemic did little to impact the work between mentors and mentees at first, it was not long until the decision was made to be more cautious.

“Because of the fear around COVID and all of the unknowns, we did eventually have to ask everyone to stop meeting in person,” Lengacher said.

The program went into a full stop as Lengacher and his colleagues worked on finding ways to maintain the mentor and mentee relationships at a distance. It wasn’t long before new protocols were in place.

“We have tried to make it so we don’t have mentors texting or calling the kids. We try to work through the parents because some of the kids are too young to communicate that way and it’s also a way to manage our own risk. We had to go back and rewrite a lot of protocols and rework some of the permissions from the parents,” he said. “It took several months, but we have found ways to communicate meaningfully while continuing to grow relationships.”

Along the way, Lengacher said Big Brother Big Sisters actually learned things during the pandemic that will help them in the future.

“It certainly has not been easy. We have lost some relationships because it was simply too hard to maintain electronically. Once all this is over, I think we will be a better organization from everything that we have learned,” he said. “I would not have asked for this, but good things have come of it.”

To learn more about Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Montana, visit their website at www.bbbsnwmontana.org.

Reporter Jeremy Weber may be reached at 758-4446 or jweber@dailyinterlake.com