The Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston

The Boston Foundation helped put the “girls” in the Boys & Girls Clubs in 1972, when it made a $300,000 three-year grant to the Boston Boys Club to reach out to “special categories of youth who lack opportunities for appealing programs.” These were children who spoke a language other than English at home. And girls.

The Foundation had been funding the Boys Club for decades, “but this grant catalyzed a profound, structural, permanent change,” said Fred Davis, who was the club’s director at the time.

By 1981, the nonprofit formally changed its name to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston and the national organization followed in 1990. The Boston Foundation has been There at the Beginning with critical early funding for more than 100 great ideas and new nonprofits.