In an interview with Invest:, Jaene Miranda, president and CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Palm Beach, discussed the organization’s growth in the past year, challenges for the nonprofit sector in the current environment and her outlook for the near term. “We’ve made some investments in our development team so that we can continue to raise the money that we need to bring even stronger programs to the clubs that will continue to help children meet the challenges that they may be facing,” she said.
What have been the major milestones for the Boys & Girls Club in Palm Beach County over the past year?
We had the best year this organization has had to date, after celebrating our 50th anniversary in 2021, which was another good year for the organization despite COVID. This is a transformational moment for the organization in many ways. We opened three new club sites here, where we are serving children in the community. That took us to 20 clubs in Palm Beach County. That represented substantial growth for the organization and helped us to achieve our highest membership to date. We’re now over 13,000 kids here in Palm Beach County.
From a financial standpoint, we also had a very successful year. We secured seven new Community Learning Center grants from the Department of Education, which will allow us to expand our educational programs. Another milestone for the organization was the launching of a new $50 million campaign. The funds will be broken down over five years to do projects like a new club that we want to build in West Palm Beach.
What have been the biggest obstacles for nonprofits in the area as a whole and specifically for the Boys and Girls Club of Palm Beach County?
The biggest challenge is the lack of employees available to us in the marketplace. It is a very competitive marketplace right now. It’s all about human capital. We don’t exist without people to help us do the work, which is why the majority of our budget is in salaries and benefits. It’s all about the people who do this good work with the kids. We want to make sure that we’re able to do these expansions as we continue to grow the organization. The challenge is finding the right people who are willing to come to work with us.
There have also been some challenges regarding the kids we work with. The biggest challenge from that perspective has been the change that has occurred since COVID. As kids came back from the pandemic, their social skills and their ability to deal with conflict were diminished. As a result, we had a lot of situations that we had never seen before where kids were reporting that they wanted to harm themselves, which is shocking. We have invested in things like mental health programs to deal with that change.
Which of the organization’s programs is the most in demand?
Our career-bound program is in demand. We have made a big effort to help kids with their goals and their aspirations. We want them to have the ability to have a good life and to learn how to make money. To that end, we’re offering internships and apprenticeships as part of our program. We’re finding partners in the community who will give the kids a chance to participate in real-life work experience. We are also offering jobs within our organization so we have a chance to teach them soft skills. That could be anything from learning to show up on time, proper etiquette, how to speak to a manager and helping them to do a resume so they’re prepared to present something to a future employer. It’s about teaching them everything that they need to know.
What is your outlook for the next two to three years?
Over the next three years, we’ll open our new club, which will be our flagship. It’ll be the biggest club that we’ve opened. I also hope that we’ll have a stronger organization. We’ve made some investments in our development team so that we can continue to raise the money that we need to bring even stronger programs to the clubs that will continue to help children meet the challenges that they may be facing.
I’m also looking at technology and what we can do with artificial intelligence and just stay in tune with everything that is changing. Our new strategic plan will be our roadmap. That includes the infrastructure growth that we need and making sure that we have everything in place to continue to deliver the programming that we have today but at an even higher level.
