BGCTriad Regional Board Member and BGC NC Alliance Chairperson, Tom Schaaf, speaking at the 120th BGCA National Conference in Charlotte, NC, about the Future Ready Triad expansion.
Note: This article was published in the High Point Enterprise, May 5, 2026
Staff Reports | Boys & Girls Clubs of the Greater Triad
Eight months ago, the board of Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater High Point voted unanimously to move forward with what is now the largest expansion for Boys & Girls Clubs of America nationally. Ten cities. Five counties. A commitment to grow from six clubs to 25–30 across High Point, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Asheboro, Burlington, Thomasville, and surrounding communities—reaching more than 9,000 youth annually by 2030. For High Point, long known for its resilience and community identity, leading that charge is historic. And the board that made it possible has never been more united.
The context matters. On January 1, 2025, BGCA’s decades-long partnership with The Salvation Army came to a close, and in every community where the Salvation Army had operated Club programming, those opportunities disappeared. The absence was felt most acutely across the Southeast—North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia carried the most concentrated territories. BGCA approached Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater High Point to lead the response. From that conversation, Boys & Girls Clubs of the Greater Triad (BGCTriad) was born—a rebranded, expanded organization now representing 10 cities across 5 counties, stepping into these communities not as a market opportunity but as a moral one.
As BGCTriad prepares to open its first new locations in Greensboro and Winston-Salem—with summer programming beginning in June—Board Chair Leslie Bates reflects on what it took to get here. “We voted unanimously last August because this board had done the hard work of getting aligned,” said Bates. “We studied the data, we stress-tested the strategy, we asked the hard questions—and then we said yes, together. Now we’re watching Greensboro and Winston-Salem go from plans on paper to real places where real kids will walk through the door. That’s everything this organization is about.”
That alignment was built on both urgency and credibility. More than 125,000 young people live across the Triad, thousands of them in communities where child poverty exceeds 30% and quality out-of-school-time options are alarmingly scarce. And BGCTriad didn’t arrive at this moment by accident. In 2022, the organization was one of just 62 clubs nationwide—out of more than 5,000—selected to receive MacKenzie Scott funding based on demonstrated community impact. That $1.2 million gift, alongside the generosity of the Congdon family, made possible the Congdon Hub for Great Futures in the heart of High Point—the anchor from which everything BGCTriad is now building outward. That proven track record positioned High Point to lead BGCA’s largest expansion underway in the country, pairing academic excellence with something that has always had the power to pull a kid through the door: athletics.
Board member Whit Holbrook is direct about what the BGCTriad Athletics League actually is. “What this board approved wasn’t just a map with more dots on it,” he said. “It was an academic strategy disguised as a sports league. Athletics will draw kids in—and that’s intentional. Once they’re in, we go to work. Reading. Math. Life skills. Character. The Athletics League will be the front door. Academic excellence is what waits on the other side.” Board member Sharyn Andrews, whose lifelong love of athletics runs deep, understands that connection personally. “Families across this region have been navigating an unfair system for years, where registration fees and travel costs quietly determine which kids compete and which get left on the sideline,” said Andrews. “What we’re launching says: not anymore. No fees. No barriers. Just extraordinary young people finally getting the opportunity they’ve always deserved—in sports and in the classroom.”
Few people on this board carry deeper roots in the expansion than David Black, one of BGCTriad’s longest-serving board members and an instrumental force in the organization’s entry into Greensboro. Advisory Council infrastructure is now active there, with NC A&T Chancellor Emeritus Harold Martin and Susan Schwartz, Executive Director of the Cemela Foundation, serving as Co-Chairs of the Greensboro Future Ready Triad campaign. “Greensboro has waited a long time for this,” Black said. “This city has extraordinary young people—in East Greensboro, in our Title I schools, in neighborhoods where after-school options are thin, and opportunity feels out of reach. We are almost there.” And “almost there” means something concrete: BGCTriad’s first Greensboro site will launch on the historic Bennett College campus. Winston-Salem is right behind it, with the Advisory Council launch imminent and community champions already engaged.
Tom Schaaf, a board member who has seen more chapters of this organization’s story than most, brings a veteran’s clarity to what has unfolded since August. “I’ve been at this table long enough to know the difference between organizations that announce things and organizations that actually do them,” he said. “Since August, I have watched this team execute—raising our bar, building relationships across the region, standing up advisory councils, hiring and training staff, and getting the right people in the right seats on the bus. This is an organization that means what it says.”
Dr. William D. Gibson, BGCTriad’s President & CEO and a Club Kid himself, has never approached this work as a career move. “This effort has a personal connection for me,” said Gibson. “I know what a Club means to a kid who has nowhere else to go. I know what it means to have an adult in your corner who believes in you before you believe in yourself. And right now, there are thousands of kids across this region who don’t have that yet. But they’re about to, through a Future Ready Triad. Better. Bigger. Bolder—that’s not a slogan. That’s a standard we are holding ourselves to, and we are not taking our foot off the gas.”
Greensboro and Winston-Salem are first, but they are not the full picture. The expansion reaches into Asheboro, Burlington, Thomasville, Kernersville, Gibsonville, Graham, Reidsville, and surrounding communities—each one a city where young people are waiting for what a Club makes possible. And BGCTriad is not abandoning its foundation. Over the next 18 to 24 months, three additional Club sites are planned for High Point itself, ensuring the city that built this movement continues to benefit as it grows. What has happened since that August vote—governance built, partnerships forged, communities engaged, sites secured—that is where the real story lives. High Point answered the call. This board said yes. And more than 9,000 young people across this region are about to find out what that means for them.
Published by High Point Enterprise, Page A7, May 5, 2026