The Boys and Girls Club of Geneva has served the community’s youth for 25 years. During the pandemic, that service grew substantially as the organization coordinated large-scale efforts to provide food for needy families. Now that the Boys and Girls Club of Geneva has learned how to meet that need, Executive Director Chris Lavin says it will be part of their service going forward.
“That’s now part of our DNA. We’ve added walk in coolers and walk in freezers to our building so we can keep up the flow of food. We learned there’s more free food out there and there’s a greater need in the community. Not only that, but giving food to families that are poor and working poor is a double payment. It helps them with their income, but it also gives a higher quality and more nutritious food in the house, which grows better kids. So, we’re going to keep doing that and it’s really part of our effort to become more fiscally sustainable. This new work is important to the community and we need to keep it up.”
Keeping that up requires the maintenance and upkeep of the Boys and Girls Club of Geneva’s primary home, the Geneva Community Center. That’s about $150,000 of the organization’s annual budget. Over the years the Boys and Girls Club of Geneva has grown their endowment in the hopes of covering that line item exclusively with proceeds from the endowment. They have not had to dip into endowment funds for the past five years and on Thursday, they hope to grow the endowment further with a day of giving.
“We’ve set up a special website that people can go to and learn about not only this event, but also to learn that the Emerson Foundation from Auburn has given us a $40,000 community challenge. It basically says if Geneva raises $80,000, they will give us $40,000 more. So, we’re looking hard and fast for the $80,000 mark so that we can leverage the $40,000 donation and that will give us enough money to push us about $1,200,000, which is about half of what we need to have enough income every year to operate this building.”
The link to the website for the Giving Day can be found on the Boys and Girls Club of Geneva’s website.
