Partnership yields next phase of Boys and Girls Club vision 

Published 12:08 am Thursday, May 29, 2025

Dr. Charles Patton, one of the many leading the charge behind bringing Boys and Girls Club of the Piedmont to Rowan County confirmed this week that they have secured a premises for their nonprofit with Christ United Methodist Church on Mooresville Road.

Patton indicated that a member of the church started coming to the Boys and Girls Club board meetings a few months ago and that the partnership blossomed out of that connection.

“Once they saw the facility over there and wanted to know more about it, they asked if we would consider their facility,” Patton said. “Last month, in April, we voted on making that our initial site.”

The location offers an abundance of perks that make it an ideal site for the nonprofit organization that offers after-school programs for area youth.

“It sits on 11 acres, has a full basketball gymnasium and then it has five rooms associated with that on the same floor,” Patton said.

The church campus also offers ample parking and an auxiliary space for Students In Training, a course that instructs teens on computer programming that works with the Boy and Girls Club.

Patton and his group are hoping to bring what they see has hundreds of success stories in their Statesville office and Mooresville satellite space to Rowan County. In Iredell County, the program serves more than 500 students, offering tutoring, meals, book bags, supplies and teachers.

Once the location is prepared and ready to open, Patton believes that the organization will be able to serve a few dozen children but added that the future offered great promise for more.

“We initially are going to start with 50 kids,” Patton said. “We could easily go up to 200 kids at this facility.”

Patton remains optimistic that the location could be functional by fall of this year. However, he said they were prepared to hold off until 2026 if the funding requirements are not met.

The Boys and Girls Club of America states that an expansion club site needs 18 months of funds before opening. The club’s critical operational costs come from the Boys and Girls Club of the Piedmont. Those amounts include pay for services for that club’s professional staff. The staff provides grant writing, human resources tasks and other similar functions. Once the Rowan County site is established those costs may be partly covered by the national organization’s pass-through funds, state and local donations or individual donations. The remaining funds must come through grant writing.

A 25-member partial club inside a pre-existing facility costs $80,000 for 12 months. That cost includes expenses like insurance and utilities. So for 18 months, that cost jumps to $120,000.

Those costs cover a part-time director at $35,000 per year, one part-time staff member at $20,000 per year and a tutor who comes in one day per week at $4,320 per year.

A 50-member partial club is more cost effective in per-student spending. For 18 months, those costs are $157,500. The increase can be attributed to the need for more staff members as two part-timers would be required with this participation size. The tutor would also cost twice as much because they would come in two days a week instead of just one.

Currently at the sites in Iredell County, tutoring focuses on the core subjects: math, reading and science, and the program teaches core values like ethics and scholarship. There are other activities like art and recreation and the students are treated with a snack and a meal.

The Boys and Girls Club of the Piedmont runs an eight-week summer camp as well.

“It’s a good, wholesome, safe place for kids to be and it really addresses the academic needs as well as the social emotional needs of the kids,” Piedmont Club Development Director Brady Johnson said.

Johnson retired as superintendent of Iredell-Statesville Schools a few years ago and was superintendent when the club was formed. He said the program is particularly beneficial for low-performing schools and gives them hours of exposure to a good environment to learn in.

The demand for afterschool programs today is greater than ever. According to the National League of Cities, for every one youth in a program, three more are waiting for a spot.

The National League of Cities (NLC) is an organization comprised of city, town and village leaders with a stated focus on “improving the quality of life for their current and future constituents.”

That same site offered poll results of voter sentiment indicating that 80 percent of voters believe that afterschool programs are necessary and that newly elected federal, state and local leaders should provide more funding for those programs.

Patton said that the organization is exploring fundraising options, but did not have anything concrete as of this writing.