How a Boys & Girls Club in Birmingham, Alabama funded a splash pad as part of a facility expansion serving members and scheduled community hours
A composite youth-serving-nonprofit case study of a Birmingham Boys & Girls Club whose facility expansion included a splash pad open to club members during programming hours and to broader neighborhood families during scheduled community-access windows, supporting both core club programming and broader neighborhood-engagement strategy.
Summary
A Birmingham Boys & Girls Club completed a $6.4M facility expansion at its Eastlake branch, with a $720,000 splash pad as the most-visible amenity addition. The pad operates under a layered access model: closed weekdays 9am-3pm for members-only summer programming, open weekday afternoons 3pm-7pm for members and registered after-school program participants, and open weekend afternoons (Saturday 12-6pm, Sunday 1-5pm) as scheduled community-access hours for neighborhood families regardless of club membership. First-season operations served the club's roughly 380 daily summer-program members plus approximately 14,200 community-access visits, with scholarship-integrated programming subsidizing membership for low-income families through a 60% sliding-scale model. Two additional Birmingham-area Boys & Girls Clubs are now scoping similar splash-pad amenities citing the Eastlake precedent.
Key metrics
Background: a 1968 club building, a deferred capital cycle, and a board-led expansion vision
The Boys & Girls Club of Greater Birmingham's Eastlake branch occupies a 1968-era club building on a six-acre parcel in a predominantly Black, working-class neighborhood on the city's east side. The branch had operated continuously for 56 years but had not received a meaningful capital investment since a 1994 HVAC overhaul, and by 2022 the building was visibly aging — vinyl flooring buckling at expansion joints, the gymnasium roof producing recurrent leaks, and the outdoor recreational footprint limited to a single asphalt half-court and a fenced, mostly-bare turf area. Branch summer-program enrollment had declined from a peak of approximately 520 daily participants in the early 2000s to approximately 280 by 2021, with parent surveys repeatedly flagging facility condition as a primary disenrollment driver. The board adopted a five-year facility-expansion vision in 2022 that would gut-renovate the existing building, add a 14,000-square-foot programming wing, and develop the rear acreage into structured outdoor recreational space anchored by a splash pad. The splash-pad concept emerged from focus-group research with neighborhood parents, who consistently named affordable summer water-recreation access as the most-desired amenity given the neighborhood's distance from the city's nearest public pool (4.8 miles) and lack of a nearby municipal splash pad.
Capital structure: campaign, NMTC, and foundation supplementation
The $6.4M facility expansion came together through a four-source capital structure designed to maximize philanthropic match and unlock New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) financing through the club's longtime CDFI partner. The first $2.8M came from a 30-month capital campaign across the regional donor base, anchored by a $750,000 lead gift from a prominent Birmingham family foundation and a $400,000 commitment from the city's largest healthcare system (whose pediatrics service-line leadership joined the campaign cabinet). NMTC financing produced approximately $2.1M in net subsidy through a CDFI-allocated investment structured across a seven-year compliance period. A regional youth-services foundation contributed $900,000 specifically tied to the splash-pad and outdoor-recreation programming, with the splash-pad component's $720,000 budget fully covered by the youth-services foundation grant plus campaign-specific donor designations. The remaining $600,000 came from a deferred-maintenance city-of-Birmingham allocation under a community-benefits agreement tied to the city's neighborhood-revitalization strategy. The capital structure has been cited by the club's parent organization as a meaningful demonstration of NMTC-leveraged youth-serving-nonprofit facility development.
Layered access model: members, after-school participants, and community hours
The splash pad operates under a deliberately layered access model balancing core club programming priority with broader community engagement. During the weekday summer-programming window (Monday-Friday 9am-3pm across the 8-week summer cycle), the pad is closed to non-members and operates as integrated programming infrastructure for the club's roughly 380 daily summer-program members. During weekday after-school hours (Monday-Friday 3pm-7pm during the school year, plus year-round after-program afternoon hours), the pad opens to members and registered after-school-program participants from partner schools, with approximately 220 children typically present across afternoon programming. Weekend community-access hours run Saturday 12pm-6pm and Sunday 1pm-5pm across the May-September operating season, with the pad open to all neighborhood families regardless of club membership and supported by a per-visit voluntary contribution structure (suggested $3 per family, no enforcement, no exclusion). The layered structure produces approximately 22 hours per week of community-access programming supplementing the core member-and-after-school programming, with explicit operational scheduling published through the club website and local neighborhood newsletters.
Scholarship integration and the 60% sliding-scale model
Club membership operates under a 60% sliding-scale model with full membership scholarships available for households below 200% of the federal poverty level and partial scholarships available for households between 200% and 400% of the federal poverty level. First-year sliding-scale enrollment data documented approximately 62% of the branch's 1,180 active members participating in some level of scholarship support, reflecting the surrounding neighborhood's predominantly working-class demographic. The splash-pad amenity is fully integrated into scholarship programming — scholarship members access the pad during all member-eligible operational windows without additional fees, and the youth-services foundation grant supporting splash-pad construction included an explicit operational-subsidy component supporting scholarship-related operations costs across the first three years of pad operations. The scholarship integration has been cited as a meaningful demonstration of equity-focused amenity programming, with branch leadership repeatedly emphasizing in regional youth-services-nonprofit publications that the splash pad's value depends fundamentally on scholarship access — without it, the amenity would replicate rather than reduce neighborhood-recreational disparities.
Operational outcomes: enrollment recovery, community-access patterns, and parent feedback
First-season operational outcomes have substantially exceeded the board's pre-construction projections. Daily summer-program enrollment recovered from approximately 280 in summer 2023 (the pre-expansion baseline) to approximately 380 in summer 2025 (the first post-expansion summer), a roughly 36% enrollment increase that the board attributes primarily to the facility expansion overall and the splash pad specifically. Weekend community-access programming served approximately 14,200 visits across the May-September operating season, averaging roughly 700 visits per weekend day and demonstrating substantial neighborhood-family demand for the amenity. Parent surveys conducted across the first season documented unusually high satisfaction ratings, with the splash pad emerging as the most-mentioned positive feature across both member-family and community-access-family responses. Operational issues across the first season clustered around weekend-afternoon attendant staffing (the club initially staffed two attendants for weekend community-access hours and increased to four after July weekend congestion patterns), parking overflow into adjacent residential streets (mitigated through coordination with a neighboring church that opened its parking lot for weekend overflow), and questions about voluntary-contribution structure (resolved through clearer signage emphasizing no-exclusion access).
Replicability across other youth-serving-nonprofit contexts
The Eastlake model is replicable across youth-serving-nonprofit contexts where established member programming, capital-campaign capacity, NMTC-leveraged financing access, and supportive youth-services-foundation infrastructure converge. Several conditions affect replication success. First, established member-programming infrastructure is essential — youth-serving-nonprofit splash-pad development without underlying programming infrastructure produces undifferentiated municipal-style amenity rather than integrated youth-development programming. Second, capital-campaign capacity supporting multi-million-dollar facility expansion budgets requires substantial donor-base infrastructure — branches without established donor bases face stronger pre-construction capital-development challenges. Third, NMTC-leveraged financing requires CDFI partnership and qualified-census-tract location — branches outside qualified census tracts face reduced subsidy capacity. Fourth, youth-services-foundation infrastructure is geographically uneven — Birmingham, Atlanta, Nashville, and similar Southeast metropolitan contexts have substantial regional foundation infrastructure than thinner-population contexts. Fifth, scholarship-integration capacity supporting equity-focused amenity programming is essential — splash-pad amenities without scholarship integration risk replicating rather than reducing neighborhood-recreational disparities. Where these conditions converge, the layered member-and-community-hours pattern produces uniquely strong combined youth-development and broader-community-engagement outcomes.
Voices from the project
“We had not invested meaningfully in this branch since 1994. The neighborhood noticed. The 36% summer-program enrollment recovery is substantial, but the longer-term measure is whether neighborhood families now experience this as a building they own. The splash pad is the most-visible signal that the answer is yes.”
“Sixty-two percent of our members are on sliding-scale scholarships. Without scholarship integration, this splash pad would be a private amenity for families who could already afford it. With scholarship integration, it is a neighborhood resource. Other Boys & Girls Clubs developing analogous amenities should center scholarship programming from pre-construction.”
“The New Markets Tax Credit financing produced approximately $2.1M in net subsidy. Youth-serving nonprofits often overlook NMTC because the compliance structure feels intimidating, but for facility-expansion budgets above $4M in qualified census tracts, the subsidy economics are the difference between a feasible project and a deferred capital cycle.”
Lessons learned
- Layer access programming across member-only summer hours, member-and-after-school afternoon hours, and weekend community-access hours — single-tier access models produce weaker combined youth-development and community-engagement outcomes.
- Integrate splash-pad amenities fully into existing sliding-scale scholarship programming with operational-subsidy budget support — fee-based amenity access risks replicating rather than reducing neighborhood-recreational disparities.
- Stack capital funding across capital campaigns, NMTC-leveraged financing, regional youth-services foundation grants, and municipal community-benefits allocations — single-source funding rarely supports multi-million-dollar facility-expansion budgets.
- Position the splash pad within a broader facility-expansion vision rather than as a standalone amenity — standalone splash-pad development without facility-expansion context produces weaker enrollment-recovery outcomes.
- Plan weekend-afternoon attendant staffing at 2x initial projection — community-access weekend congestion consistently exceeds pre-construction estimates.
- Coordinate parking overflow with adjacent institutions including neighboring churches and schools during pre-construction planning — parking-related neighborhood friction is the most-common operational complaint across analogous projects.
- Document community-access programming through suggested-contribution rather than enforced-fee structures — enforcement undermines the equity-focused programming that makes youth-serving-nonprofit splash pads distinctive.
FAQ
How does the layered access model handle the transition between member-only and community-access hours on weekends?
Weekend operations open at noon on Saturday and 1pm on Sunday with full community-access programming — there is no member-only weekend window. The transition complexity is handled on weekday afternoons, where the pad transitions from member-only summer programming (closing 3pm) to member-and-after-school-participant programming (opening 3pm) without a closure gap. After-school-participant access is registered through partner-school programming relationships rather than open community access. The bright line between member and community programming runs along the weekday/weekend boundary.
Can families join the club specifically to access the splash pad?
Club membership is broader than splash-pad access — it includes year-round programming across athletics, education, arts, and youth development. Some neighborhood families do enroll in part because of the splash pad, but the club's enrollment process emphasizes the full programming spectrum. Sliding-scale scholarship membership is structured to remove financial barriers for households below 200% of the federal poverty level, which is the more-relevant access pathway for most neighborhood families than amenity-specific membership decisions.
What happens during inclement weather or pad mechanical issues?
The club has an indoor recreational footprint including the renovated gymnasium, programming wing, and a dedicated indoor activity space, so member programming continues uninterrupted during pad closures. Community-access weekend hours are canceled during pad closures with social-media and website notification supporting neighborhood-family planning. The voluntary-contribution structure means there are no refunds to process for weather-related closures, simplifying operational coordination during inclement-weather events.
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