With nearly 4,000 local affiliates as it celebrates its centennial, Boys and Girls Clubs of America still is learning how to keep everyone funded, happy and on the same page.

By Nicole Rollender

To that end, in 2005 Aschermann’s team asked 26 clubs in California’s Los Angeles County to help the national office test a BGCA-funded direct-mail program.

“They’re a skeptical and tough group,” he says. “They were asking us, ‘What are we getting from our national office?’”

From the beginning, the national office and participating clubs set ground rules about who owns the donor. The clubs committed to placing donations generated from this program into a revolving fund for five years. The national office would receive 15 percent of the donations, with the rest staying local. If a donor mentions a specific local club in response to the direct-mail appeal, that donor’s name is forever owned by that local club, even though his gift goes into the revolving fund.