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Phillip Mumford, Executive Directory of the Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Neck with Asif Frazier.
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Architect’s Rendering
Asiph Frazier, a senior at Lancaster High School, and Alonza “AJ” Sutton, a Northumberland High School graduate who is a senior at Virginia State University, make very clear the value to the Northern Neck community of the Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Neck.
Both are members of the Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Neck and their stories are similar: The club has had a profound effect on their young lives.
“It’s helped me become a better leader,” Sutton said. “With citizenship, it helped me develop communication skills, and now I do a lot of public speaking events. I received great mentorship, the list could go on.”
Sutton, from Wicomico Church, is studying criminal justice at Virginia State University and has been a member at the club since 2012. The former “Youth of the Year” in 2015 for the Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Neck, he usually volunteers 100 hours a year, he said. He’s coached a cheerleading squad, helped with lifeguarding at the local pool, volunteered with the Kiwanis Club, and done other things.
The mentorship he’s received from the club, along with public speaking skills he’s learned and networking means he has “so many things lined up for me,” he said. He said the club helps youth battle boredom on the Northern Neck and he thinks giving to the capital campaign is a great investment.
Frazier said he’s learned to be more social and not be so concerned about himself. He’s also learned how important it is to give back to the community through public service projects.
Frazier, the second of five children in his family, said he went to the club from the age of 6 to about 9 or 10 before his family moved away. When his family moved back to the Northern Neck several years later, he promptly rejoined.
“I enjoy it,” he said. “I like going there. We go out and help the community, like plant towers at the local library, pull weeds. We went out and helped farmers pick corn. We do alot of volunteer work. It’s all for the greater good. I don’t mind doing it.”
“It helped me to get out there to work and show myself I can work hard,” Frazier said.
The testimonies of Sutton and Frazier about the value of the Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Neck are also very instructive as the club is in the midst of a $2.6 million “Building Great Futures Capital Campaign” that will transform the club from the inside out.
Celebrating its 10th year of existence, the club’s capital campaign will refurbish and modernize current spaces comprising about 20,000 square feet, while also adding another 7,000 square feet of space for youth. Also in the plans are building outdoor recreation facilities to include a basketball court and multi-use field for soccer, kickball, flag football or other events, as well as additional parking.
Some key elements to the campaign include:
- A single, secure point of entry to the facility
- A centralized administrative service area
- Expanded tutoring and mentoring space for youth members ages 6 to 12
- A new “Teen Center” that can accommodate a minimum of 50 teens with dedicated spaces for tutoring, small groups, and future planning
- Upgrades to the existing 22,000-square-foot space that will lower energy costs
Under the leadership of Executive Director Phillip Mumford, the campaign has reached nearly $1.7 million in just 15 months of fundraising. The campaign has also had the benefit of the expertise and fundraising capabilities offered by two sets of honorary co-chairs: Julien Patterson and his wife, Terri Wesselman, and Christopher Newport University President Paul Trible and his wife, Rosemary Trible, who hosted a successful fundraiser at their Northumberland home earlier this year.
The club’s territory encompasses four counties of the lower Northern Neck,
Tappahannock and Middlesex County. Currently, the club attracts kids from all over Lancaster County and the lower portion of Northumberland County. Some families live 30 miles by road away and the club was able to secure a grant from the Jesse Ball duPont Fund and support from Corrottoman Baptist Church to bus kids from upper Lancaster County.
When Mumford arrived as executive director of the Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Neck in September 2012, he was the fourth person to fill that position in its first four years. Six years later, Mumford has provided more than stability. He’s helping drive the capital campaign and is undaunted by the $2.6 million target.
Mumford came to the Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Neck after 15 years working in the Boy Scouts of America in Richmond. In one big way, it was an easy decision to make the move.He went from driving 75 miles to Richmond and staying three to five nights a week in secondary living arrangements to a one-mile commute from his home in Kilmarnock.
“I could bring my life home and help my community,” he said, adding that he’s thankful the club’s board hired him.
“My entire adult career since college has been focused on developing youth,” Mumford said. “I started out working in juvenile justice youth development centers. It wasn’t where I wanted to be because I was dealing with kids who had been adjudicated.”
The club has 450 youth between the ages of 6 and 18 registered on an annual basis, up from 336 the first year Mumford arrived, he said. Average attendance ranges from 130 to 150 per day, depending on the time of year.
“We’ve grown steadily during those first five years,” he said.
The focus is on the kids and also the parents by keeping costs low.
“We want to level the playing field and let all kids access our program,” Mumford said.
The club’s 14 board members—including seven who work full-time and seven who are in varying states of retirement—spend an average of five to six hours per week on Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Neck matters. Three board members involved directly with the campaign have averaged between 16 to 25 hours per week for the past year, Mumford said.
Over the past year, more than 4,100 hours have been dedicated to the club by its 14 board members.
Bobby Thalhimer, senior consultant with The Monument Group who is assisting the club with its fundraising effort, said the club and the capital campaign are all about the kids.
“And we have done it for 10 years on a shoestring,” he said. “We need these improvements to serve the growing membership and do it well.”
Thalhimer sees the campaign as positively affecting the club membership, which has more than quadrupled over the past eight years.
“Many of these kids come three times or more per week,” Thalhimer said. “The opportunity to shape the future of this next generation is enormous, and we want to get it right with this expansion.”
Mumford said aspects of the capital campaign had been bouncing around from before he arrived in 2012. In January 2016, new board member Randy Greene, president and CEO of Virginia Commonwealth Bank, looked at the books and said the club needed to make a change, Mumford said. Greene advocated launching a capital campaign.
By April 2016, the club spoke with six consulting firms about doing a feasibility study, settling on The Monument Group in Richmond. The capital campaign kicked off in 2017, and Mumford said he was undaunted by the $2.6 million target because he formerly was heavily involved with a successful $10 million capital campaign for The Boy Scouts of America.
“I’ve got some great board members,” he said. “There were some early gifts in late 2017 that were a surprise to us all, but it was thanks to board members and volunteers connecting us to members in the community that we’ve never met or connected with before.”
Donors “see our passion. They hear our mission. It resonates,” Mumford said. “Especially when we can get these donors to come in and tour our facility and show them all our activities and what we want to do.”
Mumford made it clear none of the campaign’s success would be possible without Donna Anderson, former board chair and president who jumped in as a lead campaign co-chair along with Greene, and William and Carolyn Hines.
“Donna has stepped up and is running this campaign almost as a staff member of this organization,” Mumford said. “She’s given countless hours. She does it out of the kindness of her heart. We couldn’t do it without her.”
If someone were to ask him why they should give to the capital campaign, Frazier has a quick answer.
“Because it will help us do more,” he said. “I think that if it was to happen, then we’ll be able to go out farther and do more things. We can increase our radius of helping the community around us.”
He also encourages other kids to go to the club.
“More people should go,”he said. “It’s a nice staff. It helps you step out of your comfort zone and do good fort he community.”
“Not only are you giving money to the club, you’re giving the money to the students,” he said. “You’re investing in a facility that will not only help the youth develop leadership and communication skills, it will give them better citizenship and keep them out of trouble.”
Sutton also has high praise for the club’s board of directors.
“The board at the Boys & Girls Club is the most active, most involved, and most caring and compassionate group of people to impact the youth of the Northern Neck,” he said. “That board there is phenomenal.”