Boys & Girls Club of Allentown

The Boys & Girls Club of Allentown will create great futures for the kids we serve by deepening our impact on their lives. We will provide a safe, positive environment which nurtures supportive relationships with adults and peers and allows our kids to engage in “fun-with-a purpose" programs and activities that make them happy and eager to come to our Club. This is our Commitment and Strategic Intent to offer an excellent overall Club experience.

• We integrate high-yield academic activities designed to provide our kids with fun experiences every day that are hands-on, outcome-driven, interactive, and which intentionally develop knowledge and skills. Among our most notable educational endeavors are our Make Your M.A.R.K.™ (grades 1-12), Istation (grades 1-5) and Power Hour (grades 1-12) programs. All are designed to reinforce skills learned in school.
• In our quest to provide a safe, secure and positive environment for our kids, we must be vigilant in upholding strict safety and security standards for our properties. The Club owns three city facilities all of which are older buildings and require constant upkeep. There are an adequate number of experienced contractors in the area who provide these services.
• Allowing our kids to engage in “fun-with-a purpose" educational, personal/social development and recreational programs and activities that make them happy and eager to come to our Club requires significant funding. Maintaining current donors and cultivating new donors is critical to our future success. It is essential that we continue to “friend-raise" as well as redouble our efforts to fund-raise.
• A non-profit organization is only as strong as its leadership. While we currently have a strong and engaged governing Board of Directors, we must continue to search for and replenish our Board with community leaders who share a common passion for our Club's mission. We expect every Board member to devote time, talent and treasure to help build an engaging and exciting Club experience for our kids. Along with our time, talent and treasure expectation, we will focus on identifying a group of leaders with diverse backgrounds to serve on our Board as we take the Boys & Girls Club of Allentown into the future.
• The Boys & Girls Club of Allentown is committed to partnering with schools and other community organizations to provide the support and services our kids need during the critical out-of-school hours. We are proud of our current standing in the community but recognize that we should continually explore new partnerships to ensure that we provide a continuity of services from elementary to high school that will attract and engage our kids, year after year.
• The Boys & Girls Club of Allentown encourages the development of supportive relationships, not only between kids and caring adults, but peer-to-peer as well. Our past successes tell us that our Club experience already has the capacity to change and save lives, due in very large measure to the relationships between and among our kids and staff. Therefore, we need to provide our staff with affordable, available resources that develop their professional skills to enable them to continue to serve as positive role models for our kids and flourish in their own personal careers.

For over 85 years, the Boys & Girls Club of Allentown has been providing challenging programs and services to youth, ages 6 - 18, in our community. The Allentown School District (ASD), where the majority of our members attend school, is the third largest urban school system in PA, serving a population of nearly 16,000 culturally diverse students - 100% receive free/reduced lunch and 89% are minority. We work closely with the schools, the Housing Authority and other partners to identify youth in need of our services. Our operations include four inner-city Clubhouses. We implement tested curriculums from Boys & Girls Clubs of America to ensure we have the best youth development practices and that we are offering quality opportunities for our constituents to succeed.

The Boys & Girls Club of Allentown has a strong professional youth development staff with the capabilities to accomplish our strategies. The Chief Executive Officer has led the agency for over 20 years and has over 40 years in management of non-profit organizations and as an advocate for youth and families in our community. The Director of Operations has over 6 years with the Boys & Girls Club movement and is very familiar with its mission and philosophy. Several of our youth development professionals have been with this agency for over 25 years. All of the senior staff have college degrees and several hold Masters in related fields.

We operate 4 Clubhouses throughout the Allentown area. Every day, our Club strives to fulfill its mission of enabling young people to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens. By growing our membership, while increasing the frequency of their attendance and lengthening the long-term participation of all Club members, we seek to expand our positive impact on our community's children and teens. We hope to reach and serve more areas with children in need of our life changing programs and services.