Boys & Girls Club Blog

Boys & Girls Club of Oshkosh would like to recognize Oshkosh Corporation for their longstanding and significant support of the Oshkosh community. The city and surrounding areas have benefited greatly from having a prestigious Fortune 500 company as a part of our identity for so many years. I wanted to share with you some of those benefits.

An obvious foremost benefit at first glance would be financial. Beyond the tax revenue the city receives from the company being headquartered here, there is also the generous monetary gifts Oshkosh Corp consistently makes to many of the city’s vital non-profit organizations.

At the Boys & Girls Club of Oshkosh alone, Oshkosh Corp has made a substantial annual gift for decades. This is funding which organizations like ours depend on in order to continue providing the essential programs and services that we do to the members of our community who need us most at little to no cost.

The Club improves the lives of children and families by providing young people with a safe place to learn and grow. The Club offers fun and impactful programs like Healthy Habits, Money Matters and Power Hour homework help, basic needs support, free meals, mentoring by caring adult professionals and outstanding facilities, all for an annual fee of only $25 per child. The Club also provides after-school care sites in four local elementary schools. By providing these services, we help young people realize their full potential.

This year, as a part of their 100-year anniversary celebration, Oshkosh Corp chose the Club as one of two recipients of a special $90,000 donation, a gift that was over and above their already considerable annual gift. A good portion of this special funding is going to support our on-site mental health program, which we have identified is a fast growing, crucial area of need in our community.

Looking back even further back over the years, Oshkosh Corp’s financial support has been consistent, running deep to our very early days as an organization. Oshkosh Corp helped fund our first capital campaign to build our Radford Center for 6-12 year old Club members in 1993, and again put funding toward building our new teen center tech lab in 2006.

Oshkosh Corporation’s support goes far beyond financial gifts, though. With Wilson Jones’ strong leadership, the company has put a sincere emphasis on community engagement in recent years and the benefit Oshkosh has seen in their direct involvement in the community has been outstanding.

At the Boys & Girls Club of Oshkosh alone, Oshkosh Corp’s Senior Director of Manufacturing Jake Jones serves on the Board of Directors. Several Oshkosh Corp employees have also served as mentors in our Great Futures Mentoring program. Another employee tutors Club members who need homework help after school in our learning center. In the past, employees have also helped run programming related to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Oshkosh Corp employees can even be found several times a year helping with nitty gritty tasks that are necessary to the Club’s operation like painting and maintaining our grounds.

Over the years, countless Oshkosh Corp employees have sent their children to the Club and countless Club members have also graduated from high school and headed into the local workforce. They have had a great opportunity to continue living in the city and work close by at Oshkosh Corp, a company that takes great care of their employees, and much like the Club, proudly boasts of being in the honorable business of saving lives.

Boys & Girls Club of Oshkosh has truly been blessed by Oshkosh Corp. Many other pivotal non-profit organizations in Oshkosh could tell similar stories to ours. We are so thankful for this strong relationship, and the ways in which Oshkosh Corp has helped make our Club and our community a better place. We sincerely hope that they make the decision to continue to call Oshkosh home.

Boys & Girls Club of Oshkosh would also like to thank the city of Oshkosh for recognizing the value of Oshkosh Corporation on our community and for working diligently to keep their headquarters in our city.

For more information on the Boys & Girls Club of Oshkosh, please contact the Club at (920) 233-1414 or visit the Club online at www.bgcosh.org.

As always, the Boys & Girls Club of Oshkosh is a United Way Agency.