Big Brothers/Big Sisters Makes Big Changes as It Expands Its Services

John Cori, a volunteer at Big Brothers/Big Sisters of New York, didn’t know how to respond when his “little brother” started asking him questions about sex.

“I wasn’t sure if I was handling it right,” says Mr. Cori. So he called the charity for advice. “My case worker gave me some great tips, but just knowing that I could give her a call was a big help,” says Mr. Cori, who has now been friends with his “little brother” for more than a decade.

That continual support for volunteers has helped earn Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America its reputation as the nation’s most-respected and most-successful mentor program.

And one of the most expensive. It costs the organization an average of $1,000 for each relationship between an adult and a child. Currently, the group supports 105,000 such relationships, but it plans to nearly double that to 200,000 by the end of 2000.

To succeed, the 510 Big Brothers/Big Sisters programs across the country are making big changes, from streamlining the notoriously rigorous and time-consuming selection process to forming partnerships with businesses, schools, and other non-profit organizations.

The big challenge, says Thomas M. McKenna, national executive director of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America, is to expand the program and make it more cost-efficient, without sacrificing the high standards that have made it successful.

“We’ve got something that works, and we need to expand it,” Mr. McKenna says. “But my greatest concern is that we don’t want to water down what we’re doing.”

The group’s success at helping kids was confirmed by a study that found that children with a “big brother” or “big sister” had better relationships with their peers and parents and were less likely to skip school or be violent than kids without mentors.

But the study, by Public/Private Ventures, a social-policy research group, also found inefficiencies, including the cost of the staff needed to support the mentor relationships and a screening process that can take the better part of a year to complete, possibly prompting some qualified applicants to drop out.

Mr. McKenna says Big Brothers/Big Sisters relies on its selection process — which includes a criminal-background check, a lengthy questionnaire, and interviews — to weed out criminals and people who might do harm to children, as well as adults who would probably not pan out for other reasons.

For example, the application tries to flag volunteers with unrealistic expectations of changing a child’s life, because they are less likely to stick with the program. According to the Public/Private Ventures study, 70 per cent of the adults whose primary motivation was to “reform” their charges ended the relationship within nine months. By contrast, in matches where volunteers sought mainly to develop a friendship with the child, 90 per cent met regularly, and only 9 per cent of the relationships ended after nine months.

Still, Mr. McKenna says, the organization is looking for ways to move people through the process more quickly, and it is working on reducing the length of its application, which now runs to 22 pages.

It also is exploring the possibility of employing schoolteachers part time to help monitor and follow up with mentors in groups, rather than individually, so that the full-time staff members can spend more time recruiting and screening applicants.

The charity is also exploring new ways of recruiting and matching volunteers with kids — in part to reach more minority candidates and others who might be underrepresented.

Actively recruiting volunteers may also prove to be more effective than the charity’s traditional system of waiting for prospective candidates to pick up the telephone in a moment of altruism, Mr. McKenna says. The Public/Private Ventures study found that fewer than half the adults who called to inquire about volunteering actually applied. And eight months later, only 37 per cent of those who applied successfully completed the screening and matching process.

In one new venture, Big Brothers/Big Sisters is working with the Detroit chapter of 100 Black Men of America to bring more black men into the program as mentors. In another, it is working with the Corporation for National Service, the federal agency that runs AmeriCorps and other community-service programs, to match middle-school students with mentors who are high-school students.

And, Mr. McKenna says, Big Brothers hopes to develop satellite programs across the country with the help of organizations such as the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which has more than 1,000 clubs.

Such a pairing would save Big Brothers the cost of opening new offices, and it would insure that the host organization’s mentor program adhered to the high standards that Big Brothers is known for. Mr. McKenna says his group is seeking to raise $500,000 over two years to test such a collaborative effort.

Several Big Brothers/Big Sisters programs across the country are helping connect children from public schools with adults from businesses, civic groups, or government agencies, such as police or fire departments.

In Minneapolis, the group has screened and trained 20 employees from the Pillsbury Company to be mentors for children in one inner-city public school. Pillsbury and Big Brothers/Big Sisters plan to expand the partnership to nine other cities, and eventually pair 250 employees with children in public schools.

In Memphis, Big Brothers/Big Sisters is tapping a new source for mentors: young adults.

They are people who have had minor brushes with the law and who have been referred by courts, says Adrienne Bailey, the executive director.

“We work with them and place them as mentors,” she says. “In this way, we help both the children and the young adults.”

In another experiment, Big Brothers/Big Sisters of New York is providing two small charities in the Bronx with a social worker who will help them start and run mentor programs.

The goal, says Allan Luks, executive director of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of New York, is for the charities to be able to run the programs on their own within three years. One key element of self-sufficiency is for the charities to secure financing from neighborhood businesses.

“If mentoring is going to work in this country, it’s going to have to get the participation of the grassroots employers,” Mr. Luks says.

Deborah Duewson, director of social services for Adolescent and Family Comprehensive Services, one of the two charities, says the partnership has given her group the chance to run a program it otherwise could not afford to. It is hoping to recruit six men and six women to be mentors at the start.

“The kids definitely need it, especially the boys and young men,” Ms. Duewson says.

Among the other services Big Brothers/Big Sisters of New York offers to help expand mentor programs is a training center, which has helped more than 500 organizations set up mentor programs since it opened five years ago.

Even with all the changes, there are still many children on Big Brothers/Big Sisters waiting lists — 30,000 altogether.

The Memphis program, which supports 150 mentor relationships and has an additional 100 children waiting to be paired with an adult, is experimenting with a group-mentor program for the kids on the waiting list. With adult chaperones, the children go on outings every week. Next month, they will visit the Northwest Airlines hub at the airport in Memphis, go aboard a plane and talk with pilots and flight attendants.

While the program does not adhere to the Big Brothers/Big Sisters’ format of matching one adult with one child, Ms. Bailey says she has seen a difference in the children who participate.

“When children have something to look forward to, and when they have something to share with their peers, that makes them special, it helps to build their self-esteem,” Ms. Bailey says.

She adds: “And it helps to make their waiting a bit less painful.”