The pandemic has consumed most of our free moments while engulfing our brains on what we should be doing next.
It has been one sea of events after another. At the Boys &Girls Club, serving our members is one of the biggest highlights of our jobs. But when it is in unison with serving the community, we can feel the impact in our hearts.
Being a corporate nonprofit is a complicated process.
You require the “know how” of running a successful business, but your market is in people, specifically youth, and some who have faced much adversity in their lives.
A “successful” nonprofit business plan includes the “heart component,” which is your member, and a “financial component,” usually a stakeholder or contribution made for a specific purpose.
On a rare occasion, you have a community contributor who sees the value in your work and wants to invest in your heart, unconditionally.
When you find those people to support your work, you are able to build resources beyond your dreams and care for others unconditionally, which drives success to the people you serve.
In today’s world, nonprofits require adaptable income that is not heavily loaded with reporting, additional tasks not in line with our mission, and overloaded with data collection.
Available services and resources need to be directly funneled to the people who are most in need and described in your 501 (c) 3, which triggers the immediate community support.
Most nonprofits are barely able to keep their head above water, employing just a couple of employees who run program, fundraise and report out on their services. The exhaustive cycle is what hampers their ability to be productive in a situation such as a global pandemic.
For the last four years, Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, though the Chan Zuckerberg Kaua‘i Community Fund of Hawai‘i Community Foundation, have invested considerable amounts of funding in the youth of Kaua‘i through the BGCH-Kaua‘i clubs.
These contributions have literally kept our program doors open, provided scholarships, extended spaces, expanded capacity, provided leadership programs, invested in Out of School programs, Afterschool program, sports, gardening, STEM, the arts, career development and evidence-based curriculum, as well as kept staff working throughout the pandemic.
Sometimes in turbulent seas, it is really difficult to find the time, the right moment, the right words, to give credit where it is truly deserved. However, today is not one of those days. The Boys &Girls Club of Hawai‘i wants to recognize Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg though the Chan Zuckerberg Kaua‘i Community Fund of HCF for the steadfast investment in some of the most-deserving youth in the world.
Contributions made were definitely to support our financial operations, but the outcome was investment in the heart.
The mixture of corporate and nonprofit can be a winning combination to meet the needs of our community and providing direct resources to members in times of distress. Thank you for being willing to share your resources with the many deserving families on Kaua‘i.
•••
Tina Albao is the Kaua‘i director of operations and development for the Kaua‘i Boys &Girls Club of Hawai‘i.
