IU first lady Laurie Burns McRobbie. Photo by Shannon Zahnle
BY CARMEN SIERING
Oscar Gonzalez is the unit director for the Ellettsville branch of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bloomington, but when he talks about what his organization does and what it values, he could be speaking for many nonprofits. The focus is on clients. Many of the kids who come to the Boys & Girls Clubs are from low-income and single-parent homes. “We offer our kids a myriad of opportunities each month,” he says. “We bring in presenters to teach healthy lifestyle habits; we have dance groups; we discuss literacy and finance and careers. We need to let them know they aren’t limited by their environment or their circumstances.”
So when it comes to allocating funds, programming comes first. “It’s not that we don’t want to put money toward IT,” he says. “It’s that we can’t.”
Finding money for information technology is a low priority at most nonprofits. More often than not, they choose to spend their limited dollars in ways that directly benefit their clients.
