Addie Nardi and Boys and Girls Club of Washington County
Addie Nardi’s passion for working with kids led her to the Boys and Girls Club. Nardi has served as the CEO and Executive Director of the Boys and Girls Club of Washington County, Maryland, since January 2017 when she replaced the former CEO who retired after forty years of service. Nardi has a bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Maryland, and previously worked as a development director at United Way and as a development director at Humane Society of Washington County,.
The Club was started in 1941 to provide resources to keep boys off the streets, and in the late twentieth century it was opened to girls. Nardi and the Club’s Board of Directors seek to raise one million dollars for the renovations and additions for the new building, to gain the communities’ trust in the organization, reach out to more children and to improve staffing and staff salaries. At the moment about two hundred children participate in club activities. After the renovations and the addition, the Boys and Girls Club will be able to reach a much larger number of children. Another goal is to bring older teenagers into the club, off of the streets and away from gang activity. These efforts by Addie Nardi and the club are geared towards improving the lives and futures of the community as a whole.
Transcript of Interview with Addie Nardi
Julie Vere: Okay, hello, um, you’re Addie Nardi and you're giving us permission to record this?
Addie Nardi: Yes.
Julie Vere: I got some background about you [inaudible] . . . give to the community organization as a whole [inaudible] and, right. How did you come to do this specific job?
Addie Nardi: So, um, I will have been here five years in January and I, when I first started in nonprofit work in this community I started at the United Way of Washington County in . . . and I was the development director so it gave me an opportunity to really learn about all of the different organizations that we supported. And I moved on from United Way, and I was working at the Humane Society, again as a development director, and I was just on Indeed one day and I saw this position advertised and the gentleman who had the position before me, he had been here 40 years. I mean, he literally was the face, the name of the organization and, and I realized that he was probably retiring and I started to think about, like, what I really wanted. You know, when I got into nonprofit work, I wanted to. . . I was lucky enough that by working at United Way it gave me the chance to kind of figure out where my passion was. So I didn't, like, come into nonprofit work saying, you know, I was gonna, like, save puppies. I wanted to figure out what I really . . . I know I wanted to, to I wanted my work to mean something, but I needed to figure out what, where that was. So I was like, “I’ll just apply for it and see what happens,” and um I ended up getting it, obviously. And it's so funny because I now think that everything that I’ve done has led to me to be here, and this is where I’m meant to be. I love this mission, I love the kids, I love the organization. And so I’m, I’m super grateful that I had all the experience that I can come in now and work with this organization, but I think this is where I’m meant to be.
Julie Vere: That's amazing, um, and you mentioned some of your previous experience. We also saw that you worked with some of the baseball teams.
Addie Nardi: [laughs] Yeah, yeah.
Julie Vere: Did you enjoy that too?
Addie Nardi: Yeah, so my first career out of college was minor league baseball, and that only happened because I went—I came home from college and I had a ton of credit card debt, and I had to move home with my parents. Lesson learned. [laughs] And, uh, and the only thing that was hiring—my degree is in journalism—so, uh the only place that was hiring that I was remotely interested in was this, was the Frederick Keys, the baseball team in Frederick. And I was their secretary for a season, and I loved it. So I went to the general manager at the time and I said “look are there other things I could do here?” Like I’m not. . . and I went into a sales position and, um, and I don't know, I just really excelled, you know. Sales is, is interesting and then there was a like an event planning component too. Anyway, so I went up. . . I did that for seven or seven or eight years and I loved it. It was the best job to have in my 20s, you know? I didn't have kids and I wasn't married and I. . . you know, I built friendships with people who are still some of my best friends, and, but ultimately I got to a place where if I wanted to continue to move up—I’ve always been kind of goal driven—and if I wanted to move up any higher I was going to have to move probably farther away from my family than I was willing to. (I say to you all from Sierra Leone,) And so I, uh, ended up. . . I and, I and I had started to think that—not that the work that I was doing was meaningless, but I started to think that maybe what I wanted to use my skill set for wasn't necessarily, you know, line corporate pockets or whatever. So I left. I miss it but— it was, it was hard and people don't ever give baseball credit for being hard, but when the team was in town we would work, I’d work 80, 90 hours a week. It was a physical job like I had to pull tarp—I wasn't just a sales person, I was on the tarp crew [laughs]. But it was great, I mean I loved it so, . . .
Julie Vere: A little bit of everything.
Addie Nardie: A little bit of everything!
Julie Vere: And you said you've been here about five years?
Addie Nardie: Mm hmm [affirmative].
Julie Vere: Um what does your job entail?
Addie Nardie: Oh, so um as the director of the club I am not so much responsible for overseeing the day-to-day of . . . because we have six sites so—four in Washington County and two in Cumberland—I don't so much oversee the day-to-day. I really am more overarching, you know, I oversee some of the fundraising, I oversee some of the day-to-day, um I basically came in here tasked by the Board of Directors, whom I answer to, with changing the organization, kind of taking it to the next level, and so I do a lot of work that gets me to that point, right? So I work with my Board of Directors, we have committees, I’m on all those committees, I carry out the work from the committees, and then um . . . and then, ultimately I’m very lucky I have an operations director, I have a development director and then I have an office manager, so they do kind of the day-to-day of that and then I just have to um
[Break in the video]
Addie Nardi: I basically have done that work, so a healthy non-profit has what's known as a strategic plan, and the strategic plan is a three to five years plan of where you want to go and it's board-created; and it's really my marching orders. So, most of the work that I do is to try to achieve that. . . those goals that are in that strategic plan.
Julie: Okay, What are some of the goals that [inaudible]…?
Addie Nardi: Sure! (laughs) So, actually this is an interesting time, because we just…. This year is the last year of our current strategic plan and next week I have a board retreat, um where we're gonna start the conversation to develop our next strategic plan. So, a couple of the things, . . . there were four huge components to what we were doing, and I think that this plan that we're getting ready to wrap up was really the plan that shored up the infrastructure and made us a healthier organization. There are different components that—in non-profits—that you have to kind of check off to be a healthier organization, and I really think the next plan will be transformative, . . .and I can touch on that in a minute. . . but of the five goals, the first was obviously, this is not a great building, and when I came into it, it had been… I’m not going to say neglected, because my predecessor fixed everything in here which is not a skill that I possess. So we had had some issues with long-term leak, water damage, needing a new roof and et cetera. And so our first goal was to get this building to a place where it could get us through until we could build a new building, and we are at that place now, we're literally right there. So, because this is our biggest club we serve anywhere from pre-COVID, for after school, we would serve anywhere from 85 to 100 kids at this club. So, that was the first goal, the second goal was to kind of gain back some of the credibility in the community I think towards the end of my predecessor's time here, we were kind of phoning it in, and other out-of-school-time non-profits were popping up and taking where we should have been. So, our second goal was to kind of get back into a position where we were the leader in youth development in the community. And you know I don't know that… I don't…. I think we've come a long way. I mean, I have crazy respect for Girls, Inc., I work very closely with Maureen you know, but you know I think that the two of us are now at a place where we're kind of the premier youth development nonprofits. There was a goal around staffing, and that goal was to, you know, really retain our staff and make sure that we give them plenty of opportunities. COVID hurt with that a little bit obviously, but we… it's still something that we still try to do. And then the fourth, I think was to get our average daily attendance, or our membership numbers up, and we were like on target, again, until COVID hit. So… and then, the fifth one was to get back to having a million dollar budget, which I think in 2022 we will end up having a million dollar budget. So…
Julie Vere: That's amazing.
Addie Nardi: Yeah, so yeah, so that's all kind of like the overarching things that I’m responsible for and how I’m, kind of, judged, I’m kind of evaluated (laugh).
Julie: Do you? that leads us to one of our questions, were you very badly affected by COVID? Did you have to close down completely?
Addie Nardi: So, we… so what we ended up having to do was go to virtual programming for three months. We laid off our part-time staffs. So, at any given time we have 30-35 employees, and eight to ten of them are full-time, and everyone else is part-time. We did end up having to lay off our part-time staffs through the pandemic; but we were able to take advantage of the pay- payroll protection program, to keep our full-time staff paid, and we still worked. So, we just worked from home. We did… and we did virtual programming. And honestly, it was not enough for my directors, they were actually, really like, kind of angry that we had to go to virtual programming because the kids that we serve are more at risk. I think any kid can be labeled as at-risk, but the kids that we serve come with particular issues in terms of growing up in poverty, growing up with parents who are maybe addicted or aren't even in the picture. We have a high number of kids who are being raised by grandparents, or aunts, or uncles, or family friends, and so when we closed down my management team was… they were really worried about the kids, and they were not happy that they couldn't come here. But, you know, like the governor ordered it, so what was I supposed to do? So, we closed for about few months, the second we could open, we did. We opened last June or July to a very scaled back summer camp. We didn't do any field trips, of course the kids were masked they had to be “pot-,” “potted” or whatever in their separate spaces. And, then we. . . going into the school year, we actually opened for distance learning, because there are families who, you know, possibly couldn't afford to send their kids to a daycare while they worked, but they still had to work. I mean, I always say our families were . . . represent a different kind of essential employee. You know they work at restaurants, or they work at the grocery store, or they're like medical assistants. You know they're not necessarily bringing in the big bucks that the doctors and the nurses, and whatever are. So, between that, and our members lack of access to internet, and the expectations put on them at home, it was very important for us to be open for distance learning. So, we were open all day, like from seven o'clock in the morning to six o'clock at night, and we did that through, maybe March. And then, we've…. we called it like…. (laughs) enough of the kids were back to school, that I was like, if we don't… the handful that were left, I was like, if we don't close our distance learning, those kids will never go back to school. The reality is, it was… we were a poor substitute for school, and then we went back to just our regular after school program. And we've had a pretty normal summer camp. I’m concerned about what's going to happen going into this school year, because I… you know, the masks aren't a big deal, kids wear masks they don't care, but to have the kids this year, again like last year, maybe have to go in school and out of school, and in school and out of school, like I just worry about it. It's a worry that I think all parents, and you know people, probably even…. I don't know if you guys have kids or whatever, but even just out at HCC, like what's going to happen at HCC? You know, you know my kids go to school in Greencastle and I can feel the anxiety buzzing from them as to what this school year is going to look like. And so, I’m hopeful we can just be a normal club, but ultimately, we're going to do whatever we have to respond to what our members need.
Julie Vere: Have you… (as far as dealing with COVID). When the kids were able to come back did you see more children?
Addie Nardi: Well, we couldn't, . . . so the problem was, we couldn't see more because we are… I mean, you saw when you walked in, it's a little bit of a free-for-all (laugh). When the kids came back, they had to be in groups of like 12 or 13, and with one to two staff members, and that was the group they had to be with the whole day, because of contact tracing. So that… this club has a lot of a… lot more functional space than my other clubs. My other clubs are basically giant gyms, with pr… with like a program room attached. So we had to really limit….I mean, it was so crazy at first, like even though the gyms were massive, we still couldn't put more than one group of 13 kids in that gym for the whole day, you know what I mean? So, we had to severely limit our numbers. We are, as of today, we are not planning on limiting our numbers going into after school, but it depends what…who knows?
Julie Vere: Because of the variant you just don’t know how that is going to affect the program in the future. . .
Addie Nardi: Yeah, yeah.
Julie Vere: What type of programs do you offer here besides the educational?
Addie Nardi: Well, I’ll be honest, we're not really super educational. No, um, what . . . we have our programs from Boys and Girls Club of America, and they fit in these like five categories of positive youth development. I’m not gonna even be able to name them. So, it's leadership, education, arts, health and wellness and there's a fifth one that I always forget. Anyway, so we basically look at our, at what, what programs we want to run, or what programs we get funding for, and we pull from that. One of the…. So, a couple of the staples that we always run, we always run a program called Smart Girls, we always run a program called Passport to Manhood, and those programs basically, take the kids and the members, and in an age-appropriate manner, gives them the tools they need to… you know. For our girls, you know body positivity, how to, you know what to do when you're… you know when you're starting to date, how to be nice and not. . . you know girls get all into their drama. And with the boys, it's you know how do you treat your significant other, how do, you know, there's job development, workforce development pieces to it that… even how to like how to tie a tie. So, we run those at all of our clubs, that's our staple at every club. We also do… we will do a homework program called [inaudible]? Anyway, we do a homework help program for kids who need it and we at some of our clubs, we benefit from partnerships with the local high school to bring in their national honor society, or their student government or whatever. And they come in, and they run that program, which is great, because I have been out of school a very long time and if I learned anything through the pandemic it that I do not understand new math—period. So, we're not necessarily having to teach them, you know the other kids can help with that. We do…. the big draw to our Hagerstown clubs is our gyms, we have full court basketball courts in all four of our clubs, and so we do run a program at all of our clubs called Triple Play, which is an active lifestyle, healthy habits kind of program. We have done, in my time here we also get funding from the federal government to do mentoring, so we do that, which is huge, because ultimately at the end of the day I could pull every program out of here and as long as I had good adults who were willing to come in and be good role models and have relationships with these kids, we'd see the same success. That's really what these kids are lacking, and then, like periodically, we'll do “Street Smarts” which is our gang prevention program. We see issues with our older kids, you know, engaging in gangs. And…otherwise, we're open to… you know we like at one of my clubs we have a woman who comes in and teaches dance. The art school here has asked about coming in and teaching music, and those are great experiences for our kids that they might not normally get. So, we always welcome that, as long as they can pass a background check.
Julie Vere: That's great! You mentioned funding, you get some federal funding. Is that the primary source?
Addie Nardi: No. So, our main funding comes from grants, some of which are federal and state, some of which are private and then we have our next big largest chunk of funding comes from donations from individuals and from corporations. We have a…. so, we have a much…. I mean, we make enough. . . we don't. . . So, we charge our kids for after school, ten dollars a month and it's just a buy-in really for the families, and if they can't afford it, I don't push it, because that's not…, I’m not here…. First of all, ten dollars doesn't do anything to my budget anyway, and I’m not here to make money. And then, summer camp for seven weeks, we charge $325, and again, like I don't… we lose too much money on summer camp, so we really have to go to the community to ask them to support. So that's the bulk of where our money comes from.
Julie Vere: Do only the children “at risk” attend here, or is anyone…?
Addie Nardi: You could make [inaudible]. No absolutely we accept all kids.
Julie Vere: Well, we saw that you mentioned on the web or the website mentioned that a lot of the children who participate are lower income and that type of thing, so we kind of wondered, did you have more of a balance or is it…?
Addie Nardi: No, a lot of that is because of where we are, so three of my…actually five of my sites run in public housing. So in Hagerstown, I have a club in Noland Village, a club in Gateway Crossing, and a club in Frederick Manor, and then in Cumberland we put… they're not full clubs, they're called “Outreach Sites.” We put an outreach site into Cumberland housing authority neighborhoods. Here in, you know, this stand-alone club is, you know, is–I don't even know I don't know the statistics, but clearly we're in a lower income, you know, neighborhood that's . . . and maybe that's how Boys and Girls Clubs started and, and I don't know, but um but I think for us it's just . . . where we are. But I also you know there's also such need among our kids, you know, whether they, whether they come from a family that has money or doesn't have money, we do end up seeing a lot of kids that just, they just need to be here, so. . .
Julie Vere: So, they just need the loving adults around them.
Addie Nardi: Yeah. . .
Amadu Jalloh: And just a follow-up question on that: like, so what are the things that qualify the kids to be here?
Addie Nardi: Honestly anything, as long as...I just need their parent's signature or some adult signature. So we this club in particular because we're not in a community, we run vans and we pick up the kids after school from four elementary schools and one middle school we are a bus stop for another middle school and then North High kids, we just catch them as they walk by. So really like your qualifications to come here to this club is if you can. If you need the van, if you get on the van, if you get, if you get signed up—because there are only 15 passenger vans. So otherwise there's no... I was having this conversation with someone yesterday—because we have kids who come from intact families and or you know who aren't necessarily living in public housing and their parents send them here for a variety of reasons and sometimes it's the cost and sometimes it's because they went here and they, you know, they want their kids to have the same experience so you know. I think in my. . . when I did, when I when I did my report—my annual report last year I think maybe 85% of my, of our kids qualify for free and reduced meals. So that's like our main kind of income demarcation, because that's easy to figure out, um but. . . and then the rest of them don't.
Julie Vere: So, do you have any uh special success stories from any of your children that have attended here that sticks out to you?
Addie Nardi: Well sure, I’ve only been here for five years, but I will tell you something that I know is interesting. So when I was a kid this was just a Boys Club. So I grew up on the south, south end of town and so I had never really been here, but I have been paying attention and people who came here, people who have come to this club and grew up in this club, they really credit the club for saving their lives—and that is due to a multitude of reasons some of which is maybe the people who worked here and took an interest in them, some of it is it gave them something to do, you know? So I think that we have a lot of success stories of people who were just able to become contributing members of society so I, I’ll have to ask E.J. My Development Director has an alumni, uh alumni association and he's an alumni, he's a club alumni and that in that group there are some people who were, who are, you know, in business, who have achieved some success through sports whether they played college sports and you know now they run their own training camp type operation, But you know one of the things that I think I’ve seen over the past five years is that we've had some kids who have really been able to work through some tough circumstances to graduate from high school and go to college. You know, we do a, we do a youth of the year program, um, it's a leadership program. . . and I keep moving, I’m sorry. We do a youth of the year program where the kids, the high school students have to apply and it's not a who has the worst sob story, it's really a conversation of how did the club change the course of your life? And that's kind of how they judge the winners, and in in my time here the the, the woman who won this year, um, you know, she lives with her grandparents and her mom like lives next door, but doesn't have much to do with her, barrow’s money from her, you know, whatever—the club was a place that she could come to and be a kid. And she actually now works for us. The winner before that, um, mom ended up passing away—she had cancer she ended up passing away, and dad got really sick and they are, and through all of this, like, poor 17-year-old student had to deal with being evicted from their home and so on and so forth—and she's starting college this fall you know I think she's going to HCC. And the year before that, you know, that girl, her dad was. . . both her parents were addicts. Mom got clean but had some mental health issues, I think dad's clean so I think she lives with him now, but at different times she's had, she had to had deal with him overdosing and, you know, as a child. She is in her second year at HCC. And the kid before that who actually ended up being the state winner grew up in El Salvador and family and was sent to live with his dad, um, in El Salvador. They, . . . him and his like eight siblings ended up coming back here and the three younger ones went to the foster care system and were adopted into a family, a local family and, you know, he's at university of Maryland studying to become a psychiatrist and so . . . I mean, you know, it's, there's nothing like. . . I haven't been here long enough to tell you that our kids have done x, y, or z but even just the ones that we've seen excel in my five years here they, they have to overcome so much more than, like, what my kids have to overcome you know.
Julie Vere: So, have you found, I know you haven't been here that long so maybe you haven't seen it yet but do some of the older kids that have left the program contribute back to the community?
Addie Nardi: Well we're that's what we're uh hoping for—actually the kids we have contribute back to the community. So we do, um, at my Noland Village club we started a Keystone Club which is a Boys and Girls Club of America leadership club and there's a component . . . . Those kids—this was probably one of the worst parts of COVID—so they, the National Keystone Conference that year was in D.C. so they, but they were a new club and they had to achieve “silver status,” and so they set about busting their butts to do it, and they did it, and then the conference was cancelled. So, um, but anyway as part of that they have to do community service projects and so what they always do is they try and pick something that they can do around the MLK Day of Service and then my, our whole staff goes over. So like last year they somehow got it got it in their heads that as, as parents had to make difficult choices for, through their, through it, you know, with their budgets or whatever what went out the window was, uh, comfortable pajamas, right? So, no, so they did a pajama drive and they, they ended up—and the goal was to make sure every kid in Noland Village got a pair of pajamas—they got so many pajamas they distributed them to Noland Village and then they took the rest down to children in need. So they're, you know, they're already trying. . . . You know, and the year before that they did, um, they did a sock drive for CASA, the domestic violence one. . . , and I don't I don't even know how they got in their head that socks . . . they did a socks and sweets drive and so school was in session then so they were able to go to their schools and put donation, you know donation boxes and so on and so forth and they took a huge thing of socks over to CASA for the kids in the shelter. So they're community-minded kids they're not, um . . . and, and I think that my kids, our kids—especially those keystone kids—have a special understanding of what is needed and like what's really needed and, and they're willing to do . . . . And we're happy to support whatever it takes to get to that.
Julie Vere: It’s good that you're giving them that incentive now early because, yes, it takes the whole community to, to raise kids. Um what are some of the challenges that you face either as a club or you personally?
Addie Nardi: This building is a big challenge. There are, I mean there are parts of this building that like, I can't, like, kids who have like asthma or whatever, like, they can't go into it because it’s old and whatever. Um, but we are, you know we have, um, chance to replace and we're starting, you know, we're starting the fundraising to try and replace the building. And the new building's gonna be amazing—32,000 square feet. Funding is always a problem. There's never enough money when you work in a nonprofit or even a for-profit, but, um, and, and right now we're in this position where we pay minimum wage which is great compared to like what minimum wage in Pennsylvania is or West Virginia or whatever but it's, it's going to go up here every year and we're not we're not a competitive employer. So, um, the people who work here, work here because they feel a calling, um, not because, not for the paycheck because they could go anywhere else and make more money. So we're, I’m having, we're having that conversation with my Board of Directors of how can we become a, more of a competitive employer so that we can . . . and at this point, you know, like I’d say I wanted to do it to broaden our pool of candidates, but now it's just to be viable because you could go to Sheetz and make $16.50 an hour, you know, um so that that's an issue. Um. . . . You know, our kids, some of the issues that we've seen our kids have to face other than just the day-to-day, you know is that they, they are getting wrapped up in gang life and they're making decisions, um violent decisions that affect their whole life. So that has calmed down a little through COVID, but it hasn't gone away and the kids are still, you know [inaudible].
Julie Vere: [inaudible] still a big problem?
Addie Nardi: Yeah so, um, it's weird. It's not it's not like we have these national gangs, although I do think there are there is some pocket of, of Bloods or Crips or whatever. But what we're seeing what we have seen over my five years here is that our kids are engaging in gang activity— and they call them hybrid gangs so they're, they're not identifiable by what they wear or how they mark themselves or whatever um and they, they flip up a lot there's just like I’d say there's like no formal hierarchy like there are with the national gangs. Um, so there are, um you know there are people who want to brush it off as not being a real problem or them not being legitimate gang members and that's fine but they're still like legitimately trying to kill each other. So you can call it whatever you want—it's still a violent issue so, um, and like I said it's. . . things calmed down through COVID through the shutdown, but prior it was it was a big problem and we were, you know, we were seeing our kids in middle school engaging in behaviors that, um, that ultimately were going to lead them down that path which is why we implemented “Street Smarts.” We had an incident at one of our clubs a couple years ago and after that incident, um, I started talking to whoever would listen to me, “What are we doing in this community?” There was no like formal, um, conversation around gang prevention and there's so much more to that because it's not just prevention it's you know intervening, you know, it's, it's talking to these kids who are who are in jail and, and trying to figure out what their life's going to be like. It's giving the family support around all of that and so we did, we are forming, and we have formed a community-wide violence prevention partnership, and we're still we are one of the lead agencies on that. It's us, the City of Hagerstown and the Hagerstown Police Department and so we're still building that up, but once that is going I think we'll see some, I think, I’m hopeful we'll see some progress in giving these kids other options.
Julie Vere: [inaudible] backlash from that, from the maybe the older teenagers? Are they not aware of the program yet or?
Addie Nardi: It's not I mean, honestly, our philosophy is I’m not going to keep you out of the club if you are affiliated, uh, but there are things you cannot do in the club. You cannot recruit, you cannot bring a weapon into the club, you cannot start fights, you cannot harm. But if you just want to come and play basketball, and, then let's do it because you're safe with us, you're not out. But no we haven't seen any. I don't know if we will because at the end of the day they are still kids, you know, they do still think with an undeveloped brain [laughs]. But, and I actually, you know, there are clubs, there are clubs in bigger cities where there are a bigger presence of the national gangs that, that the clubs have protected space. I need to get to that point—the club has to be a protected space.
Julie Vere: So how do you accomplish that?
Addie Nardi: You know those bigger, the bigger national gangs are, you know, you don't, if you're, if you're affiliated with that you don't do anything without them telling you you can do it. So it's just, it's like, I don't know I mean, you don't. . . . Talk about being out of your element, I came from the Humane Society into that. I’m like oh well, well, we have to figure it out, we have to figure out something.
Julie Vere: That’s true. As far as your core organization here, and the Boys and Girls Club of the United States. Are all the groups autonomous?
Addie Nardi: We are. So the way that works is we hold, we're a charter member so we hold a charter to the Boys and Girls Club of America and we're governed by a local board of directors. You know I have resources at BGCA but I don't answer to BGCA, there are membership requirements that we have to hit every year. You know some people say they're a little overarching, and I think they're fine because, for what we get from them. But there are safety standards, there are finance standards, there are program-, programmatic standards that we have to hit, but otherwise we make, we make our own local decisions. So and what they are great for is we get a lot of training, we get all the branding, and then we have national partnerships are all filtered through them which are great because—I don't know if you've ever tried to fundraise, and go to like Michael’s, and be like, “Hey, can we do a school supply drive?” But they're going to say “no,” because they have a corporate up-line too, and so basically Boys and Girls Club of America talks to them and then it filters down to us.
Julie Vere: Do you benefit from the head organization?
Addie Nardi: We do, yeah.
Julie Vere: But you don’t necessarily answer to them directly?
Addie Nardi: Right. Yep.
Julie Vere: The regulations…[inaudible]. We were curious about one other issue or two other issues, but one is, I know this is when you first came as a New York Times article that you're probably familiar with about the sexual abuse at the Boys and Girls’ Clubs—not in Maryland—and, but as close as Virginia. So, you probably haven't had to deal with that personally, but that sort of . . . from what we read online the national club is like “We're one happy family,” but if something happens, they're like “Oh they're their own entity.” Do you find if a crisis comes up, that's the case or if you're separate from them?
Addie Nardi: No as a matter of fact we do. o we have, we do have to report critical incidents—so that can be anything from a report of that, of sexual abuse to—I’m trying to think of something, something lame that I’ve had to report on . . . . What was it? Oh gosh, I had a, I had a van driver t-bone another car and there were no kids in the car, I think in the van—thank god— but I had to still report that. So and though I honestly in my experience, they've been really supportive. I will tell you what they have done though is, through all of that, is that their safety standards have changed and so some of it is in, like, liability insurance. Like I have to carry a set amount of abuse and molestation insurance, but then the flip side of that is that I also have to make sure . . . like if you're in this club, you'll never be one-on-one with an adult. So, the goal is that you have to be viewable and interruptible. So, you know…we've put…. I know you guys have probably haven't walked through the club, but we have signs on the bathrooms, and where if there's a staff member in there, kids can't go in and if there's a kid in there, staff members can't go in. So, there have been those just those are very specific, but there was a lot of safety protocols that came down from Boys and Girls Club of America that we had to then implement. Furthermore, we through so, one of our grants, one of our federal grants comes through the one of the governor's offices. It's not a state grant but we have the ability to engage with the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Youth, which is out of Delaware. We are in the process right now of getting our “seal of protection,” which means that we're like perfect, well, we're like high achieving. And it was interesting the things that they…. And so basically, they come in and they take a look at everything, all of our safety protocols, they take a look at… and they come back with suggestions, and then they help us to implement those suggestions. And so, whereas BGCA was great with the ratios and the, and the physical. What the Beau Biden Foundation brought in for us that we've had to really take a look at is the electronic stuff. So, for instance, we use, we use a club Instagram account to communicate with our teens. But there's only one adult on that account so we have to, we now are going to go back and figure out, okay can we put a second one in that account, can we just not communicate through Instagram? You know whatever so, that our staff and our kids are never… that's like another one-on-one thing that I honestly hadn't thought of. So, we'll have that seal hopefully here in the fall and it is, it is our number… you know for me when I came into here, I don't have a youth development background, but I’m a mom and I’m a daycare mom so my kids have been in daycare since the day they were born. That's not true [laughs], since they were 10 weeks old. And so, and I have always really taken everything here, like how I take how I handle things with the daycares that my children attend, and that … and you know my kids aren't old enough for Instagram. So, it’s not perfect, but it was the best way that I could figure out how to make things safe. I think there's been a lot of support from Boys and Girls Club of America and they've put a lot of effort into what we're doing, and you know, should they have waited until that article came out to do it, I don't know, I don't know, but they, but they did it and a lot of times, you know… and that's a little bit with these Boys and Girls Club cases, but you know the Boy Scouts and… like those cases were are so old, they're from so long ago that people who are currently, you know, working in the field it's such a catch-22 because you want to acknowledge the feelings of the victim and care for the victim on one hand, but on the other hand, you weren't here then. So, I don't know, it's, it's really, it's just such a crappy position it's just you know…
Julie Vere: You know, the church, everybody yeah you know, yeah they're all kind of caught up in that right now and it's making a lot of headlines so…
Addie Nardi: Well and I’ll be honest, I think, you know, as someone who grew up Catholic, I think how you react to it is just… is super important and I think Boys and Girls Club of America reacted to it by putting more things in place to make sure it doesn't happen anymore. I don’t think I can say the same thing about the Catholic Church.
Julie Vere: And again, maybe, since you were just coming in at that time did the scandals affect how people perceived the organization or you as far as you know? [Inaudible] And we’re curious about if you know the history, like after the [economic] depression, and now with the opiate epidemic. Are the clubs… do they tend to flourish in those types of difficult times coming through and out of crises in the communities.
Addie Nardi: I certainly did during COVID because I went after everything that I could, going after any funding that I could go after I went after. You know I don't really know, it’s because, it's because we are so... and almost all Boys and Girls Clubs are like this, we're so dependent on grant funding and individual donations, it's… You know people actually… when you look at, at fundraising as a whole, and you look at fundraising for, there's a, there's an ebb and flow to it and there's a peak. So, so as we went through the pandemic, the peak… like people were like couldn't give up, couldn't give away enough money in like last February, March you know when the pandemic first hit. And then, it really for us I really haven't seen it drop off, but it will drop off at some point as people become more concerned about, you know, their, their money and their, their investments, and so on, and so forth. But if you research like, crisis fundraising, there's a whole like fascinating–maybe not to you all but to me, because I’m a fundraiser—there's a whole fascinating like… ebb and flow to it and so you know. I don't know, I don't know—that's the best answer because I don't really know otherwise…
Julie Vere: We wouldn't think that when a crisis hits, that people would think about donating but…
Addie Nardi: But think about it, when you think I mean what, what was the first thing that you wanted to do after, like, or what's the first thing that, that someone like me wanted to do when I, when I was seeing on the news about the horrible wars where you're from? I wanted to go to save the children and start a check and, and direct it right to. . . you know so but, but you know then when you look at like, even nationally, if you look at something like, like a hurricane you know a hurricane hits people. What's the first thing you do? You start to gather all your stuff up to take to the Red Cross for you to send down there, and you start to look and see where you can give money and so on and so forth. And then you know if it's a big enough national level of it at some point you're like well hold up I, I still need money.
Julie Vere: At some point they get there….
Alhassan Bangura: Yeah, yes for me she had already touched on everything.
[40:26 – 40:30, there are parts where the voices get cut off]
Amadu Jalloh: Yeah pretty much it I think it's a great interview and I was just like you make mention of some of your goals, like the staffing and the million dollar house so budgets that you guys are planning. So like… how, how, how do you know you raised… you use fundraising to get that, but like having that project what's, what's that impact like you trying to get to use that budget for?
Addie Nardi: Now in my mind first, the first, and foremost thing we have to do is make sure we're paying our staff accordingly. I walked into a staff that was grossly underpaid, I am not someone who believes that nonprofit work should not… I understand that I’m not going to become a millionaire running a nonprofit, but I also know that I could go to a for-profit and make twice what I make if not more. I think that nonprofit people—I’m taking myself out of the equation because I’m, I’m not talking about me—but I think that non-profit people are some of the most brilliant minds. And there's… and not one of us took a vow of poverty to work for a non-profit so, and people have problems with that. People you know people, I can, I had this conversation with this woman I was meeting with yesterday. People want to give to programs and they want to give to brick and mortar, but they do not care how much you get paid in the interim to do it. So, you know as, as we try to transform our organization and kind of level up what we're doing, I think we need to pay better so we can attract better. I do not have a unit director right now who has a college degree. And they are, they're wonderful and I’m not trying to take away from the work that they do, but they're but they… you know, my colleagues across the state they're hiring staff that have bachelor's degrees and master's degrees and you know to be a unit director and for the club in metro Baltimore you're going to make 60,000 right, walking in the door. That doesn’t happen here. And you, sure you can make the case that it costs more to live in Baltimore, but it's not cheap to live here. And there's this really interesting report that United Way puts out called the ALICE report, it, it stands for asset limited income constrained and employed, and basically it's the people who work, the subset of people who work and, and make too much money to qualify for any assistance, but don't make enough money to pay their bills. I grew up that way, I grew up in a prime example of an ALICE household both my parents worked and they and we were still going to the gas station to get diesel to put in the heating tank because they couldn't afford to fill the tank. And they, you know, and did they mismanage their money? I don't know, you know, it's so hard to climb out of poverty it's just like one of the most difficult things, and my staff doesn't … they do not deserve that. They deserve to make more. So for me as we grow the first thing that I, I feel like we need to do and what we've been trying to do is to pay better. I think that brings better programming, I think that brings better… you know less turnover, so on and so forth. So, you know we can always bring in more programs, and more vans, and you know to be honest I could go out and ask someone for a van and have it tomorrow. That's not difficult. But to grow a general operating budget with as much unrestricted dollars as I can get, I want to put towards making sure that we're hiring the right people and keeping the right people.
Julie: For the program, right, to have that consistency.
Addie Nardi: Right.
Amadu Jalloh: So that's what's pretty much the idea.
Julie Vere: All right thank you so much.
Addie Nardi: Thank you guys for coming. It's been…
Julie Vere: It was great, oh thank you. You answered so many questions.
Addie Nardi: Yeah I’m interested in your, in your program.