Things are calm and organized at the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County offices on the West Side. Some of the mood is owed to the dreary, rainy mid-afternoon darkness. But most of it is intentional. It’s the way Interim CEO Rod Mitchell wants it. Easy-going but purposeful. Everything is running exactly the way it should and precisely as planned.
That’s because Mitchell, who is taking over for longtime CEO Michael Johnson, has for years been an integral part of building the infrastructure of the BGCDC behind the scenes. So now, in the awkward period any company would go through after losing a leader as dynamic and driven as Johnson, Mitchell has the benefit of already knowing the terrain.
“The core of the club, which is the main thing that keeps the club going, is still here. All our donors are still here, our board is here, I’m still here, my staff is still here,” Mitchell told Madison365. “These are the things that keep the club moving forward. We are definitely still in the community. We’ll still be top-of-mind for folks here to think about kids and families. But we’ll do that probably through a more generalized social media campaign where we’ll focus on the club and the mission of the club. We’ve hired a marketing staff now to do that work.”
Indeed, the BGCDC’s presence has been felt around the community all week long. On Tuesday, the club brought in former Wisconsin Badger and Buffalo Bills wide receiver Lee Evans to run the Boys and Girls Club annual football camp for kids from across the county. Evans was the choice of the club because of his local connections.
Additionally, the BGCDC is in the midst of buying a new facility out in Sun Prairie that will be a brick-and-mortar club akin to their Allied Drive building. Mitchell said the club is looking to have that purchase and building completed in August and certainly before the end of the year at the latest.
The facility would have a licensed infant daycare in the basement and a licensed school-aged child care on the second floor. The BGCDC also wants to remodel the property next door to that site to hold a stand-alone teen center.
“The reality is we are the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County not just of Madison,” Mitchell said. “Sun Prairie has a need. There has always been a need for us to be out there. We have been asked by different entities in the community for years to come bring our programs out there. Over the years we have always done work in Sun Prairie. So now with this opportunity to purchase this facility and then work with kids in the surrounding area and have them come and take advantage of our affordable services, usually free services, would be a good thing.”
The BGCDC is also creating a Skill Trade Center that would enable kids from Middle and High School, as well as adults, to drop in and learn skilled trades. They would earn certifications in those trades and be trained by professionals from around Madison.
These growth ventures for the BGCDC have been largely a result of the efforts of Mitchell’s predecessor, Michael Johnson, whom Mitchell has worked with for over 15 years. Mitchell calls him The Rainmaker for his bombastic and, at times, hard-line style.
Mitchell says it was necessary for Johnson to lead in the way that he did in order for the club to grow into what it is today.
Now, however, Mitchell says the club is in a strong enough place to take a more organic approach to growth in the community.
“Down the road, we are looking at building off of the legacy that was left by Michael,” he says. “We’re going to do that in a way that allows us to be more purposeful in our efforts. We’ll focus on the quality first and let the quantity come from that quality. We have three major goals currently and those goals are really quality driven. That slows the pace down for us to be really purposeful. When you’re just focused on quantity it makes you push too fast sometimes. So, we will still have growth but it will be organic and purposeful and will allow for everyone to come along on the ride at the same time. I think we just basically keep the arrows pointing north. We definitely won’t change the goals oriented way that we think. But how we achieve those will change naturally. We will still be driven to hit our goals. But we will be quality driven.”
Those goals include maintaining the 90 percent graduation rate for the club’s high school seniors (a mark Mitchell says has been attained nearly every year he’s been there) as well as expanding to serve over 10,000 kids around Dane County by 2021. Mitchell says the club also needs to make sure that it is being supported financially enough by the community to enable it to provide quality programming for kids.
To that end, the club is currently engaged in its largest annual fundraiser, Bike for Boys and Girls Club. It is the 16th year of the Bike for Boys and Girls Club event, which consists of families and the community at large meeting at McKee Farms Park in Fitchburg for bike rides of 8, 25, or 50 miles.
This year’s event will take place on Saturday, July 21rst. The ride is expected to be well-attended and the club has raised $233,000 of its goal of $500,000 by July 21. So, anyone who wants to attend the ride or join the fundraising is encouraged to visit bike4bgc.com and sign up for the popular bike ride.
“This is our biggest fundraiser every year,” Mitchell said. “We have people from the community build bike ride teams that can do an 8-, 25-, or 50-mile ride. These are family friendly rides, not races! But each dollar that goes into supporting it goes into our operations and programs.”
To Mitchell, Madison is a community that benefits from recognizing how vital events like these are. It is fundraisers like this one, where every cent goes into making the community safer and more fulfilling for kids and families, that keeps Madison above water. Cities that don’t do these things, Mitchell points out, are the ones drowning.
Mitchell grew up in Walnut Park, an area of St. Louis that is very rough, especially during the era in which he was in high school. St. Louis has many areas that have become downtrodden and ragged, just like many areas in Milwaukee or Chicago.
But, Mitchell says, those areas weren’t always that way. And it was the like of things like a community supported family entity like BGC and many, many other community-oriented programs that helped them get that way.
“Madison is a great place to live. I think people in Madison need to really understand that, yes, Madison has challenges,” he says. “The racial economic and academic achievement gaps are huge in Wisconsin overall. But at the end of the day, if I had to raise a family, I would raise it in Madison versus where I grew up where I experienced the best and the worst of that community. And I think Madison needs to take heed of that.”
Mitchell points to the hardships of inner-city Milwaukee or Chicago to illustrate his point.
“Those communities were not always what they are,” he says. “The inner city of St. Louis wasn’t always like it is currently, the inner city of Chicago wasn’t always like it is. Same with Milwaukee. These communities got that way in progression because people ignored the signs and I would definitely implore Madison not to ignore the signs. To continue to support things like Boys and Girls Clubs and local community centers. You have to keep kids and families engaged in programs that keep their hands and minds occupied.”
Purposeful, quality-driven programs, that is. Ever since Michael Johnson implored Mitchell to leave his post running the campus at Columbia College in St. Louis and join him up north in Madison, Mitchell has been seeing the effects that entities like BGCDC have on the community. Now, after being COO of the club for more than half a decade, it’s Mitchell’s turn to stem the tide of waters rising above the heads of kids and families in Dane County.
“The club is still here,” Mitchell said. “We’re still moving forward. There has been no slowing of the club.”
