County nonprofits rebound after pandemic
Heidi Nicholls Bowser, director of membership and healthy living at the Butler YMCA, said community support has taken the nonprofit from “surviving to thriving” in the aftermath of the pandemic.
“That’s really what happened,” she said. “We held strong through those couple tough years, and then we really started this year to look toward growing.”
In the last year alone, Bowser said membership numbers at the community center have risen 15%.
“We’re kind of back to numbers that we saw in 2019,” she said. “That’s been a big goal for me, personally and for the branch, to just get back to where we were.”
This resurrection tale has held true for a number of nonprofits across the county, including the Butler Y’s sister location: the Rose E. Schneider Family YMCA in Cranberry Township.
Membership in the Cranberry Township location rose to over 10,000 members this year, according to executive director Carrie Ohorodnyk, growing by 11% with the addition of a new child care facility.
“Our programs are actually over where we were pre-pandemic, because anything to do with youth right now is just really thriving,” she said.
Amy Smith, director of development for MHY Family Services in Adams Township, said the organization’s school, Longmore Academy, saw its own growth, expanding classrooms to include children with autism and special educational needs.
“During the pandemic, we know that the emotional needs, the learning needs of especially children in special education really grew,” she said. “So we expanded our programming and increased our enrollment by 66% last year.”
After years of fluctuation, Nicholls Bowser said the Butler YMCA was looking forward to a period of stability — a sentiment shared by its sister location and MHY Family Services.
“We’re back to where we were in 2019,” she said. “So, now when you compare, you think, ‘Well, we’re really back, but now how do we grow?’”
With stability comes an opportunity for innovation in the county’s nonprofits.
“Now we’re looking toward growth,” Nicholls Bowser said. “We hired a new aquatics and program director — what that means is that we’re starting to grow some of our flagship programs.”
And in addition to the recently opened Early Child Learning Center at the Cranberry YMCA, Ohorodnyk said the organization is looking at its own expansions for youth programs.
“Anything with kids is really blowing up,” she said.
The center has already added one-on-one mentoring to its evidence-based youth mentoring program, Reach & Rise, according to Ohorodnyk, and increased its summer camp offerings, including additional clubs and activities.
“We’ve had our best camp season that we have ever had in our entire history of the Y here,” she said.
The Butler YMCA has also been preparing a comeback for its own youth sports programs, according to Nicholls Bowser, beginning with basketball and pickleball.
“Youth sports went away during the pandemic,” she said, “so we’re just bringing them back.”
Nicholls Bowser said the organization was also considering other sports programs — including volleyball, soccer and tumbling — and had expanded its group fitness programs.
“We’re just adding, adding, adding more because the members are coming back, so we need more,” she said.
Ohorodnyk said that both locations have seen a 19% increase in program enrollment, and that the Cranberry location was planning additional “enhancements” for members at the center.
MHY Family Services has also begun its own growth initiatives, finishing its first year of offering multisystemic psychiatric care at the facility.
“At a time when we know that the mental health needs of children in our community are exploding, this program came in as we were midway through the pandemic,” Smith said. “We are the first organization in Pennsylvania to introduce this program, and what we want to celebrate is that Butler County was our first county.”
According to the Smith, the success of the program in the county has helped the organization expand it to four additional counties.
“We believe that this is an incredible program because it has been researched and scientifically proven to support children with the most significant mental health needs,” she said. “The same children that would otherwise, without service, need to be potentially in the hospital or removed from their families.”
Smith said the organization is also providing school-based mental health support at Slippery Rock Area School District and working to fundraise a new “sensory-responsive playground” for Longmore Academy.
“Everything is going to be geared toward the individualized recreational and socialization needs of our students,” she said. “That is probably one of our biggest projects right now, creating this fun space that’s also responsive to their needs.”
Fundraising for the project is underway, Smith said, and excavation at the site has already begun — with a segment including a swing set and a game site nearly completed.
“Our mission has always been to be responsive to the needs of the children in our community, so we pay close attention to what those needs are and respond,” she said.
While the Butler YMCA, the Cranberry YMCA and MHY Family Services have all seen increased stability in the wake of the pandemic, all three organizations agreed that the fight was not over just yet.
With the expansion and demand for programs at MHY Family Services growing, executive director Lisa Schiller said the organization is working to fill vacancies.
“I think we suffer the same employee search that everyone does,” she said.
However, Schiller said the organization has worked to make its positions attractive, having success in recruiting for most of its teams.
“We still have a few vacancies, but we’re hoping that being on teams with really good outcomes will make people want to join,” she said.
And while the Cranberry YMCA recently managed to completely staff its new child care center, Ohorodnyk agreed that the “employment crisis” remains a challenge.
“Primarily for lifeguards, that’s really having a tough time here,” she said. “I don’t know if kids aren’t wanting to go into that line of work anymore or what it is, but we’re just trying to identify why that’s been kind of tough.”
Ohorodnyk also said supply-chain issues have been taxing on the organization.
“Two of our HVAC units went. I ordered them March 10 and we didn’t get them until the last week of August,” she said. “We went all summer without air conditioning in our locker rooms and our cardio center.”
And even as programs and revenue increase, Ohorodnyk said the center is struggling to keep up with inflating costs.
Additionally, as a nonprofit, Nicholls Bowser said the Butler YMCA regularly has to compete with for-profit gyms.
“You can’t underplay that even though we’re very different from others, we still face the consequence of more gyms opening up in the area,” she said. “You just kind of have to differentiate yourself.”
For Nicholls Bowser, what sets the YMCA apart from these for-profit locations — as with many nonprofits — is its “strong mission.”
“It’s an international brand with a very strong mission that encompasses spirit, mind and body,” she said. “And that’s who we are.”
