SAN ANTONIO – The Boys and Girls Club of San Antonio says it has now enough money to keep its East Side clubhouse open for another year and keep providing programming for the 68 kids registered there.
The nonprofit secured up to $350,000 in funding for the Inner City Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) Friday afternoon, and it says it has received other private donations, including from Harvey E. Najim, Valero, The Malú and Carlos Alvarez Family, and H-E-B.
A spokesperson told KSAT the nonprofit now had a “year’s runway” for its “entire mission,” including the Mays Family Clubhouse south of downtown and in-school programming through San Antonio ISD, too.
The Rayburn Clubhouse on the South Side, however, is still closing as previously announced, though the nonprofit says the kids are getting put into district after-school programs.
The spokesperson says Harlandale ISD in-school programming is also stopping, and those kids are also getting folded into district after-school programming, too.
CEO Debbie Powell took the reins of the nonprofit in July and, according to a news release, inherited less than a month’s worth of operating expenses.
“When I stepped into this role, I knew our first responsibility was to the families who depend on us,” Powell said in the release. “So we built a strategic, right-sized plan centered on those families; one designed to keep our doors open, not to retreat from our community.”
After the Inner City TIRZ board ratified the funding for the East Side clubhouse already approved by the San Antonio City Council on Friday, Powell told KSAT the Boys and Girls Club of San Antonio had a sustainability plan and would be assembling a “council” to ensure they’re giving the community what it needs.
“As we build our plan and as we capture the voice of the community, I think it will look a little bit different,” she said of the East Side clubhouse. “We will still have literacy programs. We’ll still have workforce readiness. We’ll have all of the things that we’ve had. It just may take a little bit of a different approach to ensure that it’s customized to the communities that we’re in. And that goes for all of our clubs.”
Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) represents the area around the East Side clubhouse and had pushed for the TIRZ funding, which he had said was meant to be about six months worth of operating costs for the location.
His office heard from people who were worried about what their kids were going to do after school, as well as from people worried about losing an “institution.”
“I think there’s a citywide commitment to ensuring that the Boys and Girls Club can sustain and can operate,” he said after Friday’s meeting of the Inner City TIRZ board, of which he is the chairman. “And it sounds like they’ve done a great job fundraising since the 15th, and I look forward to, you know, the new leadership being able to really use this for what it what it is, which is a seed.”
Though news of the possible pause at the East Side clubhouse broke around Sept. 15, the spokesperson said fundraising efforts had been going on before then, too.
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