Y’s CEO to Focus on Diabetes Prevention, Diversity, and Media Campaign

Kevin Washington spent a good chunk of 2013 developing a series of collective goals for YMCAs across the country. Little did he know that he was actually writing his next job description.

Mr. Washington, president of the YMCA of Greater Boston, has been named to replace Neil Nicoll as chief executive of the YMCA of the USA, the central office that coordinates the work of the more than 2,700 Y’s across the country. When he enters the executive suite in Chicago in February, he’ll be the first African-American to lead the 163-year-old organization, which attracted $939-million in private support last year.

Mr. Washington headed an effort last year to develop a strategic plan for the charity that lays out specific goals in three categories: youth development, health, and building communities.

The plan, which is the capstone of a decade-long effort to rebrand the YMCA as “the Y” and develop programs that go beyond the organization’s traditional “gym and swim” offerings, gives Mr. Washington precise numerical goals. For instance, at least 300 Y’s will offer a diabetes-prevention program by 2017, according to the plan. Participants in the program are expected to lose at an average of 5 percent of their weight.

The organization is expected to secure gifts to help support a $20-million media campaign. Local Ys must develop a “dashboard” system to track and report data associated with their membership and programs, with an eye toward increasing the diversity of people who join their local clubs.

Though Mr. Washington acknowledges that some of the goals are “aspirational,” he isn’t daunted by them.

“You don’t set the bar too low,” he says. “That doesn’t inspire anyone. That doesn’t inspire our staff, it doesn’t inspire our volunteers, and it doesn’t inspire our donors. The fear is not in failure. The fear is in not trying at the highest level.”

The development of measurements and the Y’s presence throughout the country, Mr. Washington says, will make the charity a more attractive partner for large foundations that want to see how programs work at different locales and determine how they can be scaled up to serve more people.

‘I Was Hooked’

Like Mr. Nicoll, Mr. Washington is a product of local Ys. He worked in Philadelphia and Chicago and led citywide organizations in Hartford and Boston.

Knowledge gleaned at the local level at one or more of the nonprofit’s more than 900 regional associations is a must for a national Y leader, says Christine Marks, chairman of the nonprofit’s national board.

“We felt very strongly about finding a candidate who knew the Y,” she says.

Mr. Washington has belonged to the YMCA for more than 50 years. As a high-school student in Philadelphia, he took archery and swimming lessons through a Y program and developed a lasting relationship with his first mentor, William Morton, a YMCA counselor.

“I was hooked,” Mr. Washington says.

So hooked, in fact, that he remained connected with the Y as an undergraduate at Temple University, where he served as a youth director at YMCA Philadelphia.

Since then, he’s remained with the organization, moving from region to region and making his mark. In 2010, Mr. Washington took over at the Boston YMCA, where he lowered membership fees by an average of 7 percent. The lower cost attracted more members and increased total membership revenue from $16-million to an expected $25-million this year.

Lowering fees was part of an effort to attract a broader membership base, particularly among blacks and Hispanics.

For the Y to remain relevant, it must not only serve a new generation of campers, swimmers, and school kids from those groups, it must also develop a pool of new leaders who are racially diverse in order to prevail in what Mr. Washington calls a “talent war.”

When looking for jobs, he says, his 25-year-old daughter and her peers place a greater emphasis on working for organizations with minorities in leadership positions.

“If they don’t see an environment that’s diverse, they will go right past you,” he says.

James Morton, who succeeded Mr. Washington in Hartford four years ago and heads a national networking group for black YMCA leaders, says the national organization has “work to do,” but that naming Mr. Washington as its new leader is a reflection of its commitment to diversity.

“Kevin is inheriting a very specific plan of action and he has 900 Y associations across the country who are going to work to make those things happen,” he says. “The foundation has been laid and his job is to implement the plan.”