Two Legacies, One Mission: BGCTriad and Bennett College Plan for a Club on Campus

 

Staff Reports | Boys & Girls Clubs of the Greater Triad

 

Boys & Girls Clubs of the Greater Triad (BGCTriad) and Bennett College officially announced a new partnership this week to launch a Boys & Girls Club on Bennett’s Greensboro campus, which will be the latest Greensboro site in BGCTriad’s regional Future Ready Triad expansion.

The announcement drew stakeholders to the Global Learning Center at Bennett College, where community leaders like Councilwoman Crystal Black, BGCTriad Regional Board and Greensboro Advisory Council members, Bennett College leadership, and staff from both organizations gathered for an evening that mixed celebration with vision-casting. The evening set a tone of genuine excitement, and the partnership was not an announcement, but a promise.

For more than 60 years, Boys & Girls Clubs of America operated in the region through a longstanding partnership with the Salvation Army. When that national affiliation ended on January 1, 2025—a mutual, organizational decision—it left a real gap in communities that had relied on Boys & Girls Club programming. BGCA asked BGCTriad to step into that gap, and Future Ready Triad was born: a commitment to grow from six sites to 25–30 sites, and from roughly 2,000 kids served to more than 9,000 young people a year by 2030. That growth will happen across five counties and 10 cities, including High Point, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Asheboro, and the communities in between.

Dr. William D. Gibson, President & CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Greater Triad, framed the Bennett partnership as a meeting of two legacies. “Bennett College was founded 153 years ago. Boys & Girls Clubs of America was founded 166 years ago,” he told the crowd. “Combined, that’s 319 years of two institutions doing the same fundamental work—believing in young people, and building the structures to make sure that belief turns into opportunity.”

Dr. Ronald L. Carter, Acting President of Bennett College, welcomed BGCTriad to campus and spoke to the institution’s more than 150-year history of shaping and investing in young women; a legacy of refusing to lower expectations for what its community can become. Dr. Carter emphasized that the partnership’s success will depend on listening to and learning from the very young people both institutions exist to serve, a posture he called essential to any organization doing this work well.

A third legacy filled the room. Ms. Lorraine Orr, Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer of Boys & Girls Clubs of America, was on hand to represent the national organization. And for Orr, the evening carried personal weight. Before rising to the number-two role at BGCA nationally in 1998, she served as Executive Director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greensboro, meaning her career in the movement began in this very city. “This isn’t just an executive fulfilling a role,” Gibson told the audience, speaking of her presence at the Bennett College announcement. “This is someone coming home, to help build something bigger than what she led here nearly three decades ago.”

Gibson also shared his own story as a “Club Kid,” describing how growing up in a Boys Club gave him adults who believed in him before he believed in himself. “That Club helped put me on a path, into the Marine Corps, into being a first-generation college graduate, and eventually along the journey, into this role,” he said. “None of that was guaranteed. The Club made it possible.”

The Bennett College Club is one of five new sites opening in Greensboro this fiscal year alone, part of what Gibson called Future Ready Triad in action: “better, bigger, bolder, and rooted in the right partners, and located in the right communities.”

Orr returned to that theme when she took the podium. “Nearly thirty years ago, I was building relationships and programs for kids right here in Greensboro, never imagining what this city—and this movement—would grow into,” she said. “To be here now, as part of bringing Boys & Girls Clubs home to this community and to Bennett’s campus, is very meaningful. This is exactly the kind of partnership our national organization believes in—one where legacy institutions link arms to reach more young people than either of us could reach alone.”

What a Club Membership Means

Every young person who walks through the doors of a Boys & Girls Club—including the planned Bennett College site—does so free of charge. That matters. The average North Carolina family spends more than $5,600 a year on quality after-school care, a cost that can eat up more than a quarter of a single parent’s income. BGCTriad removes that barrier entirely, because access to a safe, structured place to belong shouldn’t depend on what a family can afford.

The stakes are real. Fewer than one in three North Carolina fourth-graders currently read at grade level, and students who graduate high school in North Carolina earn $400,000 to $600,000 more over their lifetime than those who don’t. Reading proficiency by third grade remains the single strongest predictor of graduation, which is why literacy and math intervention sit at the center of BGCTriad’s Club model, alongside daily mentorship, athletics, and workforce-readiness programming designed to keep kids engaged, on track, and believing in what’s possible for their future.

That commitment falls largely to Ms. Tamara Campbell, BGCTriad’s Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, who is leading the operational buildout of club expansion in Future Ready Triad. For Campbell, opening this site is a promise kept to the young people of Greensboro, and an investment she sees as urgent, not someday. “Many people say that the youth are our future,” Campbell said. “However, I believe that they are very much our present. The energy, creativity, and potential they bring to our communities are incredible, and it’s our responsibility to harness that potential now. By investing in our young people today, we are ensuring a brighter, more promising tomorrow for everyone.”

Closing the evening, Gibson called on everyone in the room to play a role in what comes next: community leaders and stakeholders to help spread the word through their networks and congregations; and media to help tell a story he called necessary for this moment—when so much feels uncertain for young people, institutions are still showing up, still building, still betting on the next generation.

For potential partners and funders, the investment case is direct. It costs BGCTriad approximately $1,575 a year to serve one Club kid, and in return, that child gains free access to three evidence-based literacy and math interventions and 15 of Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s nationally recognized impact programs, spanning academics, athletics, leadership, and career readiness. It’s a modest cost for a return that can change the entire trajectory of a young person’s life. That kind of growth doesn’t happen without investment—five new Clubs in Greensboro this year alone, and dozens more across the Triad by 2030—and BGCTriad welcomes the conversation about how partners can be part of building it.

What’s next for the Bennett College Club

BGCTriad is now working to onboard a Club Director and staff team ahead of the site’s opening, with a town hall for parents and young people planned in the coming weeks to deepen the collaboration between the Club, Bennett College, and the surrounding Greensboro community. Registration for programming will open soon.

For updates on the full Future Ready Triad expansion, visit bgctriad.org/future-ready/