Boys & Girls Club Blog

Every three years our board creates a new strategic plan, we base it on deciding the most important areas our organization should focus. We look at trends in the community, changing needs, and what we want to accomplish to meet our mission. Our current plan covers 2017-2019. The scope of work falls under four key objectives, they are:

Resource Development – We look at how to widen and strengthen our donor base, diversify our income stream, build our endowment for the future, and get our message out to a wider audience.

Academic Success – Our challenge is to help support our local school district with closing the education success gap, focusing on catching younger kids early so they can improve their chance of succeeding in school. We employ a Director of Academic Success, tutors, and use community volunteers to help lots of kids every day after school. We also focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and career exploration and planning for the future. We also work on life skills, including interviews, money management, and healthy choices. We also have 70 adult volunteer mentors matched one-on-one with at-risk youth to help keep them focused on making good choices.

Organizational Growth – This board led committee looks to the future. They assess where our Club will need to focus and what services we should provide to meet the needs of the community. They look at facilities, neighborhoods, and incoming trends. They also look internally for board and staff succession, especially in key leadership roles. They work with other community leaders to get the facts so we can make the best decisions for our organization.

Growth of External Partners – This objective focuses on engaging our community. Our strength is in our community partnerships, of which we have many. The police department, school district, university, public library, social services, YMCA, business sector, government agencies, and the list goes on. This allows us to do more to help our kids and families than we could possibly do ourselves. This objective also looks at holistic health and how we access the changing needs of kids and the services we would provide. This might include mental and physical health; examples could include our partnership with Catalpa Health and the Tri-County Dental Bus. The objective also looks at supporting our parents of the families at the Club and providing wrap around services where needed. This might include our monthly family nights, our adopt-a-family program at Christmas, our Basic Needs program that provides clothing and hygiene items where needed, bus passes, and transportation from schools to help meet their needs.

Our board and staff measure our progress quarterly to help keep us on track. Though our kids don’t see the strategic plan, Club members and our families benefit from this work that is done behind the scenes.

I think of our strategic plan as a road map and a guide and I appreciate that our board focuses on a new plan every three years to keep us alive and vibrant as an organization in our mission and vision.

By:  Marc Dosogne, CEO