Boys and Girls Club seeks funding as attendance grows

ANTIGO — At a Langlade County Board meeting Monday night, leaders from the the Boys and Girls Club of the Northwoods requested a slight funding increase from previous years due to an increase in children attending their programs.

CEO Dillon Gretzinger and Director of Resource Development Tammy Walrath said they are hoping to receive $15,000 from the county’s 2025 budget for the club, which has received $12,000 per year from the county annually each of the last several years.

The pair said they are actively seeking other funding sources as well.

“The biggest issue or hurdle that we’re running into is a financial hurdle with our budgeting and with grants running out,” Gretzinger said. “This year, our budget’s about $1.2 million. That’s funded through donations, state, local, and government grants. The state, local, and government grants make up just over 60 percent of our budget normally. With ESSER funds running out, that’s about $150,000 or 12.5 percent of our income going forward. So that’s ending very soon.”

Walrath said grants the local Boys and Girls Club received following the COVID pandemic, as well as from other sources such as the school district, also will no longer be available.

“We did know that the funding was going to go away, but what we didn’t anticipate was how much we would grow in that time,” Walrath said. “So we had that to support us through those times, but now we’ve grown so much in that short amount of time that we’ve not been able to catch up.”

During her presentation to the board, Walrath said this year, 450 youth from the community registered at Antigo’s branch of the Boys and Girls Club, including approximately 250 this summer.

Gretzinger said the club serves “just over 50 percent of the kids in the school district…at some point during the year.”

“This year it’s slightly more than last year that we’ve had, but the amount of growth since COVID has been exponential. I know coming in, some years it was doubling after COVID,” he said.

The two said the cost of attending the Boys and Girls Club is $150 per child for the summer, and just $25 for the school year, but that it costs $15,000 to serve each youth.

“Our financial model is we don’t want to put the burden on parents who are already working to make ends meet at home. We like to reach out to the community and crowd source it so we can have a better community for our youth,” Gretzinger said, going on to explain that the organization has now tightened its budget as much as possible. “It’s very hard to pare down expenses while our membership base grows. We like to keep a student to staff ratio at 12:1. That’s ideal for any sort of classroom environment or environment of children, for safety and for learning. So the more kids we have, the more staff that we need to hire. So that obviously drives up our budget with that.”

The larger issue the club’s growth has caused, according to the pair, is lack of space. Next spring, the organization’s lease on its teen center on the east side of 5th Ave. will expire. A potentially larger challenge also looms.

“Realistically, down the line, even at our main clubhouse, we’re running out of space,” Walrath said. “So whether that looks like adding on or renovating — which would be difficult — or creating a whole new space, it’s in our future.”

Both leaders said adding on to the building would prove difficult due to the small property the Boys and Girls Club sits on, as well as the logistical unlikelihood of continuing to allow students in the building during the project, making the other option — constructing a completely new building — the ideal one.

The predicament, too, is exacerbated by the area’s recent childcare shortage.

“There’s a lot of families where both families work or single parent households have to work to make ends meet,” Gretzinger said. “We’re the only place around that is able to take their kids during the day and provide a safe space and meals and structured programming while they can go to work. So think about those 250 kids (without childcare) this summer. That’s 250 kids’ families that are able to go out and work and make ends meet without a huge daycare bill waiting on the other side.”

Because of all this, planning for additional space has become all the more pressing for the club.

“If somebody needs our services, we want to be able to welcome them with no problems,” Gretzinger said. “Right now, if we keep growing, which we hope we do, we’re going to outgrow it pretty quick.”