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Serving Albany & Rensselaer Counties
Our Impact
At the national level:
♦ 75% of Club members ages 12 to 17 from low-income families report receiving mostly As and Bs, compared to 67% of their peers nationally.
♦ Club members in eighth, 10th and 12th grades volunteer at significantly higher rates than their peers nationally.
♦ Nationally, 10th and 12th graders are three times as likely to have vaped in the past month compared to Club members in those grades. Via 2020 National Outcomes Report BGCA
At the local level:
♦ In 2021, BGCCA served over 6,000 Capital Area youth in 21 locations. The Food Program provided 250,000 meals. We logged more than 1,500 community volunteer hours estimated to be worth $42,810!
♦ Following the onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020, BGCCA pivoted to its Food Program and provided more than 750,000 meals to the community. In addition to kitchen positions, BGCCA employees conducted home deliveries, community site drop-offs and much more to ensure meals were received. This service provided critical food security to the community while enabling the Club to keep it's employees working.
Formula For Impact
The true work of Boys & Girls Clubs–the heart of what they do– lies fittingly at the center of our Formula for Impact. To create the optimal Outcome-Driven Club Experience, Clubs provide high-yield activities and targeted programs, actively encourage young people to attend more frequently, and employ Five Key Elements for Positive Youth Development.
The latter component emerged as critically important in a 2004–05 research effort conducted by the Search Institute and Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) to identify quality strategies and practices that Clubs use to promote the positive, healthy development of youth. The findings showed that Clubs have the potential to increase their impact on young people when they make concerted efforts to implement five key elements in their operations.
These Five Key Elements for Positive Youth Development are:
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A Safe, Positive Environment
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Fun
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Supportive Relationships
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Opportunities and Expectations
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Recognition
Subsequent research conducted for BGCA highlighted the importance of regular attendance for achieving impact. A 30-month study published in 2009 found that youth were more likely to demonstrate greater positive outcomes related to Academic Success, Good Character and Citizenship, and Healthy Lifestyles when they attended the Club at least 52 times per year. The positive effects were even greater when they attended 104 times per year.
Now, through the data being collected in NYOI, we have new insights on just how much of a positive difference these components of a high-quality Club Experience may make for young people.
Some Key Definitions:
NYOI measures regular attendance by collecting member attendance data from Clubs on a weekly basis. Once a Club has submitted sufficient member attendance data (at least six months’ worth), the system calculates a Frequency of Attendance score for each member.
Members who are scored as Highly Engaged are those who attend the Club, on average, two or more times per week. Engaged members attend, on average, at least once a week, but less than twice a week.
Occasional Attenders attend, on average, less than once a week. In addition to asking questions related to our priority outcomes, the National Outcomes Survey asks youth about their perceptions of the Club using questions related to the Five Key Elements for Positive Youth Development. Responses to these questions are scored to identify how many members are having an Optimal Club Experience and how many are not.
