IMPACT DRIVER
CEO seeks to build a foundation for YMCA of Greater Houston’s more equitable future
Drawn by the challenges and opportunities of making a difference in a resilient and multicultural city, Stephen Ives took the helm as CEO of YMCA of Greater Houston two years ago, having played the same role at the organization’s outposts in Columbus, Ohio, Lawrence, Mass. and Biddefort, Maine, during his 28-year tenure with the nonprofit.
“This is where we figure it out,” Ives said in reference to the YMCA. “Figure out how to be a thriving community that is also diverse and multicultural. The notion of being part of that as a capstone in my career was really aspiring to me.”
The YMCA is positioned to accelerate equity initiatives in Houston, thanks to an $18 million gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in December. Scott, an author and ex-wife of Amazonfounder Jeff Bezos, is one of the world’s wealthiest women. The gift also enabled the Y to lift its entry level wages for frontline employees to $15 an hour, demonstrating its commitment to equity and a more livable wage.
Ives spoke with the Chronicle about the YMCA’s role in building strong communities and pursuing a brighter future.
Q: What will MacKenzie Scott’s gift do for your organization?
A: That arrived in late November at a time when we had depleted nearly $9 million of our reserves and were anticipating an operating loss of $10 million to $12 million. It certainly allowed us to have some confidence in moving forward the initiatives under way around repositioning the Y to engage more people, redesigning many of our programs to have them make sense and be valid post-COVID. It’s going to help us get through the next year of continued disruption. We’re readjusting our staff and our overall cost structure. We’ve eliminated our corporate headquarters and are working virtually and/or in one of our centers.
Q: So no more headquarters?
A: We were in leased facilities where we housed administration services, our leadership team and back office operations. That lease
ended and we did not renew it in January. We’re no longer in need of a central headquarters.
Q: How big a hit did operations take during the pandemic?
A: March 16 (2020), we were forced to shut our doors without any sense of how long that would be or what kind of long-term impact that would have. I believed at that time that it was not going to be a short interruption and began to position ourselves accordingly. We put thousands of people on furlough and re-positioned our staff to do different kinds of work that were most needed. That included food distribution in a partnership with the Greater Houston Food Bank.
At one point we had about 200 staff working on that initiative. School was canceled, so essential workers needed a place where their kids could be that was safe that had some educational component to it. We redeployed our buildings and our staff to that purpose. We also were very actively involved in reaching out to shut-in seniors to make sure they had access to the virtual YMCA content that was being built and also had a call from a caring citizen in the community to check in on them.
Q: I imagine membership was impacted.
A: We saw about 50 percent of our membership stay engaged. As a result, between both membership depletion and school-age child care interruption and school-based program interruption, more than $50 million in operating revenue disappeared.
Q: What has that done to your budget?
A: It’s about $100 million now. Pre-COVID was $140 million.
Q: How did you respond?
A: We kept on doing the right things. We kept on being there where we could, finding philanthropic support, some government funds and through partnerships being able to really expand our food distribution work, essential care, childcare and our outreach to older adults and the building of virtual content to make it available for community members.
Q: How many facilities do you operate? How many people do you serve?
A: Pre-COVID, 26 facilities and 175,000 people in membership. Closer to 500,000 in all of our programs.
Q: And now?
A: In membership, it would be half that number and probably a third of the 500,000 total people served. Nearly 1 million people in food distribution. We’ve seen a huge uptick in people served when it comes to access to healthy food and nutrition. Because we didn’t have it before, we had a significant uptick in people participating in virtual programs and initiatives.
Q: How many employees do you have now?
A: About 1,200 to 1,300. Right around 400 or 500 full time. The gift has certainly helped us to reset and stop eliminating positions and start to rebuild.
Q: What are top initiatives of 2021?
A: We have some staff positions we’re bringing back, primarily in child care, youth programs and our Equity Innovation Center. We are also able to commit to a $15-an-hour entry-level pay for all of our frontline workers that are full-time going into the new year.
Q: What kind of funding do you receive from businesses?
A: We receive funding from businesses in a few ways. One is through corporate sponsorships and partnerships and membership agreements and philanthropy.
Q: How has that been affected by the pandemic and recession?
A: Now, 30 percent is membership dues, 20 to 25 percent philanthropy, grants and sponsorships, 20 percent government funding for our international services division, 20 to 25 is program, child care, summer camp swim lessons, etc. My answer to that would have been very different a year ago.
Q: A year ago, what would it have been?
A: More than 40 percent membership and less than 20 percent philanthropy. That’s the big shift where this happened.
Q: With some companies struggling during the pandemic, is it difficult to secure philanthropic and corporate donations?
A: Yes and no. Obviously, people have limitations of funds. The things that companies are about are so aligned with the work we are doing with equity, community health and community strengthening.
Q: Has this affected your mission at all?
A: Absolutely not. For 135 years, the Y has been committed to strengthening the foundations of the community. For more than a decade, social equity has been a strategic priority to the Y and our board of directors.
Q: What are some of the things you’re doing to address equity?
A: We launched late summer what we call our Equity Innovation Center in partnership with Reliant. It’s a hub to coordinate, coalesce and curate opportunities for businesses and for individuals in the community to learn more about being an equity-minded citizen or leader in the community. Phase 1 of our rollout has been almost entirely internally focused. We’ve been having conversations internally with our staff around race, around unconscious bias and around white privilege. Our belief is that we aren’t the experts on this, but we’re really good at doing the work first internally and then sharing what we’re learning with others along the way, so that’s how we’ve been approaching it.
Publicly, we did a virtual freedom tour for adults that was a virtual experience of the civil rights movement in Houston. We did a Sunday Supper, the Sunday before Martin Luther King Day, which was well attended. We found more than 15 other partners in the community that are doing great work in this space that we’re helping to elevate their work and bring it up front and center to be more accessible to more people in the community.
Q: Tell me about the Be Why campaign.
A: It’s a communication campaign to tell the story and clarify in people’s minds what the Y is and what we’re about. The Y is not a place, it’s a purpose. When you engage as a program participant, member or volunteer, you are participating in the social impact work of the YMCA.