Every year, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Dane County hosts a graduation party event at the state Capitol building where the organization recognizes all of their Littles who are graduating from high school with a mentor by their side. This year, the event was highlighted by a very special announcement made courtesy of CUNA Mutual Group Foundation who told the crowd gathered last night that they will be giving Big Brothers Big Sisters a $183,000 grant to help meet an urgent need to build capacity and serve more children.
“We are really excited. We’re kind of basking in the glory right now. This is the largest grant that the agency has ever received,” Sandy Morales, CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Dane County, tells Madison365. “This will help us increase the scale of our mentoring programs by increasing the number of children served to 900. We will be investing in further staffing to recruit volunteers, to enroll volunteers and to match them and have them assigned to a match-support specialist.
“CUNA Mutual has been a longtime partner for us. Children are one of their focus areas so this will fit in very nicely with the impact they are trying to make in the community,” Morales adds.
Beth Cutler, CUNA Mutual Foundation leader, says that this was an easy decision. She adds that the Foundation was impressed with the analytics and data BBBS presented to them to show that the mentoring approach they use leads to successful outcomes.
“CUNA Mutual Group supports the good work that Big Brothers Big Sisters does for the local community,” Cutler says. “When Sandy and her team approached our foundation about helping build their capacity to serve more ‘Littles,’ we were very impressed with their comprehensive plan to do so.”
The goal is to increase the number of children served from 600 to 900 by then end of 2019.
Right now, children will spend an average of two years on the waiting list before they are matched with a “Big.” To address this, the grant will help fund new positions; a Recruitment Specialist, Match Support Specialists, and Volunteer and Child Enrollment Specialists. This should dramatically decrease wait times.
It is no surprise then, that the grant award was announced at Big Brothers Big Sisters’ Annual Graduation celebration for its “Littles” who are graduating high school this year. The 2017 class that BBBS celebrated last night was one of its largest groups of graduates in recent history with 23 Littles graduating and having been matched with their mentor or “Big” an average of 7.5 years.
“Ideally we want all of our kids to graduate from high school, but we want them to especially graduate with a mentor by their side,” Morales says. “We know that having a mentor by your side throughout your childhood can really affect the direction that you head towards in life. Our mentors help guide our Littles and have a good relationship with the parents so they work in partnership to ensure that our kids our making good decisions and have somebody to confide in, to support them, and be consistent in their lives.”
