St. Alban's Boys and Girls Club

About St. Alban's Boys and Girls Club:

St. Alban’s Boys and Girls Club is in Toronto’s high-priority neighbourhood of Weston-Mount Dennis where graduation rates are extremely low, there is a lack of jobs, and active gangs recruit youth. The charity's mission is to ensure that every child has a safe place to play, learn, and grow, and where they can build positive relationships and strive to succeed. 

St. Alban’s Boys and Girls Club runs 22 programs serving about 3,000 children and adults from the ages of 0-24. This wide age range differentiates St. Alban’s from other Boys and Girls Clubs that typically serve youth aged 6-18. About 800 youth attend St. Alban’s programs daily, with the Weston-Mount Dennis location serving 150 youth daily (19% of St. Alban’s regular youth attending). 30% of the youth participating pay fees for programs and 70% receive programs funded by donations.

St. Alban’s is near the end of a campaign to raise $350,000 for a new youth centre in Weston. The centre will consist of 3 mobile trailers in a high school parking lot providing 1,800 square feet of space for a dance studio, sound studio, and youth lounge. There is already one existing mobile in this location. The youth centre will be open from 5-9pm daily and St. Alban’s expects that 50 youth will use this safe space each day.

Boys and Girls Clubs of America released an extensive program evaluation in February 2017 reporting a high SROI impact of 10:1. It is likely Canadian Boys and Girls Clubs may have similar high impact but this is not possible to ascertain with current data reporting.

St. Alban’s total operating costs per child served is $1,197 in 2015. For comparison, the costs for each child participating at Toronto Kiwanis Boys and Girls Club is $1,850 in 2016, and $1,470 at Boys and Girls Clubs Winnipeg.

Financial Review:

St. Alban’s is a small charity with $719k in donations and special events fundraising. Donations and special events are 19% of its revenues, of which United Way of Greater Toronto and York Region contributes 58%.

Administrative costs are 12% of total revenues and fundraising costs are 1% of donations. For every dollar donated, 87 cents goes towards St. Alban's programs.  Funding reserves are $1.1m and can cover 35% of annual program costs, showing a need for funding.