Two National Youth Charities Strike Partnerships to Share Resources

Ten years ago, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the mentor organization, and Boys & Girls Clubs of America embarked on an experiment: testing a program to encourage their local affiliates to work together to provide adult mentors for needy kids.

Today at least 40 Big Brothers Big Sisters groups have partnerships with one or more clubs — a total of about 300 Boys & Girls Clubs affiliates. Leaders at some of the local organizations say teaming up allows them to provide more kids with adult mentors and to pool resources in a tough financial climate. The experience of the two charities’ affiliates in combining their efforts holds some lessons for other charities that seek to collaborate.

The current several dozen partnerships sprang from a program called Up2Us, a two-year, five-site effort first supported a decade ago by a half-million-dollar grant from the Pillsbury Company Foundation (now part of the General Mills Foundation). The plan was to capitalize on the strengths and track records of both Big Brothers Big Sisters and Boys & Girls Clubs, says Joseph Radelet, vice president of mentoring programs at Big Brothers’ headquarters in Philadelphia.

Local Big Brothers Big Sisters programs would recruit the mentors, conduct screening and background checks, and share their expertise in running mentor programs, Mr. Radelet says. The Boys & Girls Clubs, he says, would offer a captive audience (young people who were already members of the clubs), their facilities, and their activities.

From the Ground Up

Local Big Brothers Big Sisters groups and Boys & Girls Clubs often join forces with schools, other community organizations, and businesses. Promoting local partnerships between mentor charities and clubs seemed to make particular sense, Mr. Radelet says: “Both organizations are interested in the welfare of youth, and we go at it in two different ways.”

Says Perry Cooper, vice president for federal grants at Boys & Girls Clubs of America, in Atlanta: “In Boys & Girls Clubs, they need those human resources — people who have the interest and time to reach out to young people.”

At the outset, the intention was to spread the alliance across the country. But neither charity intended to dictate that its affiliates must collaborate, say Mr. Radelet and Mr. Cooper. Affiliates of both organizations are independent charities with free rein to choose which programs to run and to collaborate with whomever they choose.

The fact that collaborations have grown without a mandate from headquarters is a good thing, says Edward Kaufman, executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the North Bay, near San Francisco. “It makes more sense for it to happen organically,” he says “It has to come from both organizations valuing each other.”

Mr. Kaufman’s organization collaborates with five Boys & Girls Clubs. He says the partnership differs from the Up2Us approach by pairing children with high-school-student mentors instead of adults.

April Janney, senior vice president of operations at Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago, points out that many programs of her group’s national headquarters, including collaborations with Big Brothers Big Sisters, started as local projects.

“A lot of things that [the] national [organization] became involved in actually came from the ground up,” she says. “It’s hard to design programs when you’re not in the field.”

Serving More Youths

Ms. Janney and Art Mollenhauer, chief executive of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago, consulted the Up2Us report when they began their collaboration in 2008. And as a staff member at Boys & Girls Clubs’ Midwest regional office, in Schaumburg, Ill., from 2003 to 2007, Ms. Janney says she had seen other efforts by Big Brothers Big Sisters and Boys & Girls Club affiliates to collaborate.

But adjustments to the approach were necessary, Mr. Mollenhauer says. “It was a well-laid-out plan, but the thing that was apparent was that it was developed by national offices, not local affiliates.” He adds, “We had to streamline the model to make it a practical, workable model that would work for the children and volunteers.”

While the Up2Us report suggests developing a memorandum of understanding between collaborating organizations, the Chicago partners went a step further by signing a detailed contract that took about six months to draw up, Mr. Mollenhauer said. The contract covered insurance arrangements and a joint indemnification agreement.

The Chicago partnership seems to be thriving. In other cities, Mr. Kaufman and other Big Brothers Big Sisters executives say working with neighboring clubs has helped them provide mentors to more young people. “If we weren’t able to partner with them, we wouldn’t be able to serve the number of youth we do,” Mr. Kaufman says.

Mr. Mollenhauer says the Chicago model should translate well to other affiliates around the country: “I think it’s a scalable model that you can really serve kids efficiently and expand it at a good pace and still not degrade quality.”

In the year ending June 30, his organization provided mentors to 1,300 children, 140 of them in the program with the youth clubs.

He is starting to work with four suburban Boys & Girls Clubs and plans to increase the number of youths served through clubs to 500 in three years.

Greatest Impact

Some partnerships between affiliates of the two charities have grown up entirely independent of Up2Us.

Four years ago, when Lisa Slavens, executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Ozarks, in Springfield, Mo., came up with the idea of Meal Time Buddies, a program in which college-student mentors eat dinner with young people at nearby Boys & Girls Clubs, she was not aware of Up2Us or of other collaborations between the two charities.

“We just discovered it was a need in the community,” she said. Scheduling the program around dinnertime has made it easier for busy students and professionals to volunteer.

The mealtime program has grown from serving 31 children in fall 2005 to 300 children in the 2008-9 academic year. In September, she started a similar mealtime-mentor program with the Salvation Army’s after-school program.

In a competitive fund-raising climate, the alliance between two well-recognized charities may help attract more attention to grant proposals. “One of the big wins on this should be we can come to you as a funder and say, Hey, we’re better than one organization,” says Mr. Mollenhauer.

Grant makers say they do view collaborations favorably when the partners each have a strong record of success.

“We feel that our dollars go further when we partner with organizations that have a strong history and deep roots in our community, and here’s an example where there’s two organizations,” says Jill Lawlor, manager of community affairs for the Chicago Cubs baseball team, whose Cubs Care fund has provided financial support to the Chicago collaboration.

Still, Ms. Lawlor cautions that a brand-name partnership is less important than a well-designed program. “We just look for opportunities where our dollars can have the greatest impact,” she says.

Mr. Kaufman says one way that the national offices of Big Brothers Big Sisters and Boys & Girls Clubs could demonstrate their support for collaboration would be to make small grants to local affiliates that want to start mentor programs.

But such grants will probably not be forthcoming anytime soon. And while Mr. Radelet says his group will continue to collaborate with the clubs, Big Brothers Big Sisters is more focused on encouraging its affiliates to work directly with schools, because recent data have made a strong case for its effectiveness.

But he doesn’t discount placing more attention on efforts to work with after-school clubs.

“Our communities are asking this of us — not just our two organizations but youth-serving organizations in general: How can we work together to have the best benefit for kids?”