Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Chad Klassen

STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL

STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL: Kamloops YMCA-YWCA

Aug 13, 2019 | 4:18 PM

KAMLOOPS — In the ninth instalment of our series Struggle For Survival, we look at the Kamloops YMCA-YWCA, an organization in the midst of significant changes due to financial challenges. In late July, the non-profit announced it would be cutting staff and shifting around programs, all to save half a million dollars a year. The changes all point to the financial strains the Y has faced in the last couple of years.

The YMCA-YWCA has been in Kamloops for more than 40 years, but it’s in a tumultuous time right now financially. It is coming off a second straight fiscal year in the red.

“We’re trending down,” said CEO of the Kamloops Y Colin Reid. “So we’re at the stage right now where we’re having to take some remedial action to change some things, so that we can bottom out and we can start to climb back.”

The Kamloops Y runs on a budget of about $4.5 million a year. Its biggest source of income is gym memberships, which are down by as much as 1,000 in the last two years thanks to stiffer competition in the marketplace. The drop has coincided with the emergence of Planet Fitness in Sahali.

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The YMCA’s biggest fundraiser is the ever-popular Y Dream Home Lottery, which raises upwards of $400,000 for the organization each year after expenses. Despite its success, it’s just one piece of the funding puzzle. Reid says the organization, in some respects, is doing too much with not enough funds.

“When you’re trying to do all this mission work and you’re trying to do it on thin budgets and thin margins, any time there’s a hiccup, it makes it more difficult to continue to do those services.”

The latest hiccup has been the membership losses, which are forcing the Kamloops Y to make sweeping changes. It’s cutting staff by 20 people, mainly part-timers, and shifting recreational facilities from the John Tod Centre on the North Shore to the downtown location on Battle Street.

Image Credit: CFJC Today

The core of the YMCA, which started in North America in 1851, is about developing healthy body, mind and spirit. It has accomplished its mission in helping Hannah Clark, a mother of five who leaned on the non-profit with postpartum depression after the birth of her fifth child.

“I couldn’t even manage,” she said. “I couldn’t make dinner, I couldn’t even play with the kids. They just watched TV and I just tried to get through the day.”

In the two years since Clark became a member, she has become a volunteer fitness instructor. The Y, in many ways, has been life-changing for Clark and her family.

“I started making healthier meals, the kids started behaving better because they were getting better nutrition,” noted Clark. “I had a four-year-old at the time who was starting to develop significant behaviour issues because I just wasn’t as present as I should be. She thrived going to playcare and it got her completely ready for kindergarten.”

Looking ahead, the Y has more challenges when it comes to addressing aging infrastructure and the costs that will follow.

“Trying to find mechanisms to replace that aging infrastructure is more difficult today than it’s ever been,” said Reid. “If you don’t keep your infrastructure relevant, then you get passed by.”

It’s why the organization is exploring options to replace the current downtown location with a new state-of-the-art facility. But the Kamloops Y is just in the planning stages with no concrete concepts to date. Reid hopes a new facility may help make the YMCA relevant here for years to come.