Scott Swanson
Five years after a merger that combined the Sweet Home and Lebanon Boys and Girls Clubs, administrators of the Boys and Girls Club of the South Santiam say they are facing a serious financial crisis.
Sweet Home Senior Branch Director Dave Bauer last week sent letters to parents and to local business and civic leaders, telling them that, without a “sustainable (financial) solution within the next six weeks, we will not be able to support services at the Sweet Home club.
The Sweet Home Boys and Girls Club has been operating at an overall loss since 2005,” Bauer wrote.
After the merged club finished in the red for the fifth straight year, to the tune of some $70,000 in 2014, Bauer and club Executive Director Kris Latimer say they need to find not only financial solutions but a way to better connect with the Sweet Home community.
Shortages in financing, leadership
One issue, they say is a severe imbalance between financial support from the Sweet Home community and the cost of services the club provides.
Another problem is a lack of representation from Sweet Home in the leadership of the club.
They noted that, of the organization’s Board of Directors’ 15 members, one is from Sweet Home – Jason Armstrong.
That’s not for a lack of trying, said Bauer, who took over leadership of the Sweet Home branch last June.
Bauer said he has established a 10-member Branch Committee, composed of school district officials, parents, former club staffers and others involved with local youth, which has helped advise him as he’s charted a course for the Sweet Home branch.
But he and Latimer said they need more.
On the financial side, revenue numbers from the club mirror that imbalance. Latimer said the club brought in accountant Dave Benneth to sift through the numbers and “spread expenses and revenue as fairly as possible,” and it became clear that there was a significant shortfall in revenue from Sweet Home.
According to numbers provided by the club last week at the request of The New Era, Sweet Home raised $96,468 in 2014, including $34,376 attributed to individual giving. Lebanon raised $385,969, with $140,438 attributed to individual giving.
As of last week, Sweet Home had 1,177 members while Lebanon totaled 1,953. In Sweet Home 577 children participated in athletics last year; Lebanon had 903.
Net expenses attributed to Sweet Home activities – including administration, staffing, athletics and after-school programs, totaled $297,425, compared to $373,979 for Lebanon. Those expenses, though, are offset by income from childcare, athletics and Teen Center programs (see facts box below), which actually reduce Sweet Home’s net expenses to $286,630 and Lebanon’s to $266,432, according to figures provided last week by Latimer.
Costs higher in Sweet Home
The cost of providing after-school program activities to Sweet Home members is $210 per child, versus $133 per child in Lebanon. In athletics, the average revenue from each Sweet Home member who participated in a sport last year was $74 while in Lebanon income was $81 per child.
The cost of providing athletics in Sweet Home was $174 per child, versus $91 in Lebanon, a disparity attributed in part to the fact that Sweet Home had a higher staffing level in athletics than Lebanon until the beginning of the school year in September, when the Sweet Home branch replaced a half-time position with a part-time hourly position.
Latimer said she expects “costs will be closer by the end of 2015 as we now have a full-time athletic director in Lebanon.”
She also attributed the disparity to a larger athletics program in Sweet Home – Lebanon does not offer tackle football – and lower sponsorships, though she said she has yet to audit the latter to see how much of an impact it has had on the bottom line.
There is a lot that goes into an athletic budget that folks don’t acknowledge,” Latimer said, listing athletic staffing, officials, office and building costs, tournaments, etc. “Officials can cost over $100 per game.”
SH giving one-sixth of Lebanon’s
Latimer said the biggest shortfall is in giving.
When you look at Lebanon revenue and giving compared to Sweet Home revenue and giving, Lebanon is $119,000 in the black and Sweet Home is $190,000 in the red,” Latimer said. “Sweet Home’s giving is one-sixth of Lebanon’s. Basically, Lebanon is paying for Sweet Home.”
Latimer said that over the years since the 2009 merger and her arrival in early 2012, the club has operated under the philosophy that “we don’t care where money comes from – it all goes to the same point.”
But that isn’t working, she said.
The idea was that we never really wanted to have an ‘us versus them’ situation in the organization or on the board. It was very purposeful. We really believed we would be able to raise the necessary revenue and fund the program,” she said.
We’re just thinking that, somehow, we need to correct this budget deficit. It’s difficult. After four years we now have to look at it differently. The organization’s in peril, really.”
Bauer said a look back shows that the problem has existed since before the merger.
Community giving has been flat,” he said. “If you go back far enough, that was the case when it came to the merger – money was part of the reason.”
That’s why the board (in Sweet Home) wanted a merger,” Latimer added. “Sweet Home was operating in the red at the time.”
Steady decline
According to figures provided by Latimer, Sweet Home’s club finished the year 2004 with $292,030 in total assets and $4,162.69 in the black. She said she was unable to provide numbers for 2005 and 2006, but in 2007 Sweet Home finished $24,357 in the hole, with assets that had shrunk to $205,629 – reflecting losses over the previous two years, Latimer said. In 2008, Sweet Home finished the year $90,251 in the red, with $116,517 in assets.
The merger followed, in 2009. Lebanon, meanwhile, finished 2007 $324,044 in the black, with assets of $1,170,853 and 2008 $64,910 in the black, with assets of $1,235,763, according to figures provided by Latimer provided. In 2009 Lebanon finished $113,782 in the black, with $1,121,981 in assets which, she said, reflected Sweet Home’s financial difficulties following the merger between the clubs.
In 2011, the Boys and Girls Club of the South Santiam refinanced its Lebanon facility and used the equity “to address the loss and keep other assets whole,” she said.
Latimer noted that building costs for the Lebanon facility on Fifth Street are only applied to Lebanon operations when the year-end totals are calculated.
The Lebanon building would likely be paid off at this point if a refinance would not have been necessary to utilize equity from the building to address losses of the merged organization in 2009 and 2010,” she said.
She said early this week that she could not immediately produce numbers for how much the club spends on its mortgage and where it would be, financially, if it had not refinanced in 2011.
She emphasized that the building expenses have been charged only to Lebanon’s bottom line.
They aren’t even charged indirectly, as they should be associated with administrative staff whose offices are in Lebanon,” she said.
Program changes
A lot has changed, in the last year alone, in how the club approaches the programs it offers its clients, Bauer and Latimer said.
Part of that is staffing, with the addition of Bauer last June as full-time senior branch director “to support Sweet Home operations,” Latimer said.
In a letter to the community released last week, Bauer said that he has implemented “a more structured after-school program – the same model that has been in place at the Lebanon branch for more than a year” in response to safety concerns.
Tyler Grove, a Lebanon staffer, who has a teaching credential and a degree in psychology, has been appointed director of operations for both branches with the aim of “implementing nearly identical programs in both locations,” Bauer said.
Staffing in Sweet Home is 20 to 1 for non-athletics activities, with programs led by 10 part-time Youth Development Professionals – headed by Grove – who work in the afternoons. The club also has a part-time athletic director, Mike Carpenter, and two part-time kitchen staffers in addition to Bauer and full-time Office Manager Sarah Gray, who handles the front desk in Sweet Home and manages the food programs for both branches.
The three full-timers in Lebanon, Latimer, a business manager and an IT/systems manager, “are spread across the organization,” Latimer said.
No staff members have received salary increases since 2012, she said.
An average after-school day includes supervised homework help and computer access opportunities, crafts, games and other creative and educational activities, and physical activity including open-gym time for the members, who range from kindergarten to junior high.
We did away with free time,” Latimer said. “It’s a very different world than it was here a year ago. Kids are not allowed to just hang around the edges. They are encouraged to take part in everything.”
Bauer said the activities provide opportunities, led by “trained youth development professionals,” to learn teamwork and social skills that, he said, “kids don’t necessarily learn in schools these days.
We like to consider our program more proactive than reactive like it used to be.”
Bauer said an anti-bullying campaign has been implemented and “a significant amount of staff training has been carried out over the past four months to teach YDPs how to properly address bad behavior before it can escalate, and to encourage good behavior through coaching and rewards.”
Latimer said that approach provides staffers with more opportunity to teach youngsters in positive ways.
Reactive staff take care of problems after they happen. Proactive takes care as problems happen and that becomes a learning opportunity,” she said.
Teen Center
As of Monday, Jan. 26, the Sweet Home branch has relocated its Teen Center program for junior high-aged youngsters to the Sweet Home Assembly of God church, because the facility offers more options than the Evangelical Church, where it was held previously.
Bauer said the center allows the club to “bring closure to several issues,” the major one being the mixing of teenage members with elementary school members.
The Teen Center is equipped with computers funded by the club’s Fall Auction in Sweet Home, which allow members to do homework and access wifi. Bauer said the club plans to implement a leadership program in the Teen Center in coming months.
Latimer said administrators are planning to invite other youth-serving organizations in for a “conversation about youth services in general,” but “we’re not going to do a big community meeting.”
She said one challenge is to show the community how the Boys and Girls Club’s programs can pay off.
Part of whole thing in youth development is economic development,” she said. “Studies show that there’s a nine-to-one return on investment made in youth programs.”
Such programs, she said, contribute to reductions in crime, teen pregnancy and loitering, and increased “parent productivity – all sorts of benefits. Parents can stay focused at work. They don’t have to worry about what their kids are doing.”
Need for community awareness
Bauer said he’s realized that part of the Sweet Home branch’s problems stem from lack of community awareness.
When I talk to people, they know the Boys and Girls Club has value even though they truly don’t understand what we do here,” he said.
Budget cuts would be a last-ditch move and would require sacrificing necessities, he said.
For the program to provide what it does to the community, we can’t cut any more than we have,” he said.
The answer, he believes, is more help from the community.
We have larger donors out there but it’s going to take more,” he said. “It’s really about raising awareness in the community. If we receive $10 or $20 a month from a large portion of people in the community, that can make a big difference. It’s a small community, so a lot of it is going to be word-of-mouth.”
We encourage people to come in and see the program,” Latimer said. “Dave would love to talk about where we’re at.”
Bauer can be reached at (541) 367-6421 or at [email protected]. Latimer can be reached at (541) 258-7105 ext.27 or [email protected].