Two youth organizations serving children in much of central Orange County have merged, a decision their leaders say will help them stretch their funding to serve more families.
Marcelo Brutti, president of the Boys & Girls Cubs of Central Orange Coast’s board of directors, described the merger with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Anaheim-Cypress as “one plus one equals three.”
“We’re bringing two great clubs together that will actually be able to deliver more,” Brutti, who is also the CEO of Hyundai Capital America, said during an announcement event Monday hosted at Angel Stadium.
Together the organizations are now operating as the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Orange Coast, serving an estimated 12,000 children in Anaheim, Cypress, Orange, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Irvine and Newport Beach with several clubhouses and school-based programs.
The nonprofits put on family and youth programming, including educational and physical activities, college readiness and job skills training. Their leaders say the merger will bring direct benefits to families with better programming and a larger reach by working as one organization.
“We want to make sure that every young person has the resources and mentors to be successful in life,” Robert Santana, CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Orange Coast, said.
Santana was joined at the announcement event by Angels Baseball Chairman Dennis Kuhl, Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken, Cypress Councilmember Bonnie Peat and Chuck Emanuele, who chaired the Anaheim-Cypress Clubs board of directors.
The merger was finalized on Jan. 1.
Santana said the two organizations began having discussions last year about merging and took a closer look by conducting a six-monthly analysis to identify the benefits merging would bring.
A bigger organization will be able to put on more programming collectively, Santana said, and achieve cost savings.
“This will benefit all families that we are currently serving and will serve one day,” Santana said. “This is about getting more resources and more services into our most vulnerable communities.”
This is not the first merger for the Boys & Girls Clubs involved.
Clubs in Anaheim and Cypress merged in 2019. The Boys & Girls Club of the Harbor Area, which was serving Costa Mesa, Irvine and Newport Beach at the time, merged with the club in Santa Ana in 2016.
The oldest parts of the nonprofit, which has merged with other organizations over the years, date back to a Boys & Girls Club founded in 1941 in Costa Mesa.
Some key initiatives outlined for the newly combined organization include expanding teen education and workforce development services, improving mental wellness for families and adding programming to teach coding, internet safety and robotics. That’ll be done with a $6 million investment over the next three years, leaders said.
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Anaheim-Cypress had $5 million in revenue for its fiscal year ending in 2023 and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Orange Coast had $6.4 million, according to their latest public tax filings.
Brutti highlighted an example of the nonprofit’s influence by how many people it was helping guide to college. He said eight years ago, eight students went to college that were a part of his club’s College Bound program. Last year, more than 2,500 in the program went on to college.
“Most of these kids are the first in their families that go to college. They go back home (and) their siblings, their relatives, their neighbors, see that example,” Brutti said. “You have a multiplier effect.”
