The Boys & Girls Clubs of Southcentral Alaska announced Wednesday that it will shut down all operations by the end of December, an extraordinary admission of failure by the organization’s board after months of scrambling to address a financial crisis that leaders say has been years in the making.
The closure ends more than six decades of service to Anchorage families and leaves the city without one of its most relied-upon childcare and youth-development providers.
In a statement to the community, board members acknowledged they could no longer keep the organization solvent under its current model, despite what they described as weeks of bridge-funding efforts, restructuring attempts, and emergency analysis. Every program will cease, including the licensed Child Development Center at Woodland Park and the licensed afterschool program at Turnagain Elementary.
The last day of childcare is Dec. 24, and nearly all remaining staff will be laid off by Dec. 26. Clubhouse employees who had been placed on furlough are now terminated.
It is a decision, the board said, that reflects a long-developing financial unraveling: delayed government reimbursements, shifting funding streams, rising operating costs, and a donor slowdown that worsened over the past several years. Even with a pause in Clubhouse and athletics operations earlier this fall and an intense focus on preserving childcare services, the financial gap grew too large to close.
Community members donated roughly $70,000 to keep the lights and heat on in recent months, while a skeleton administrative team evaluated options. But leaders acknowledged that the true cost of care far exceeded what the organization could responsibly manage. A small administrative staff will remain during the wind-down to meet licensing obligations and determine whether a scaled-down version of the nonprofit can be rebuilt in the future.
The closure leaves hundreds of Anchorage families scrambling for childcare alternatives at the peak of winter, and it disrupts the lives of longtime employees who had weathered repeated operational crises in recent years. The organization directed families to thread Alaska, a day care referral service, as well as the YMCA as potential resources for finding alternative licensed programs.
Anchorage is not alone in losing local Boys & Girls Clubs this year. Just two other chapters – in Kansas and Georgia – also announced closures in 2025 due to financial instability. But why the Southcentral Alaska organization faltered while many others nationwide remained viable is not fully addressed in the board’s written statement. What is clear is that the Anchorage chapter provided a needed service in a city where licensed childcare is already scarce and costly.
The shutdown will have ripple effects that extend beyond families and staff.
Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance, who continues to make the case for a 3% municipal sales tax, is expected to point to the collapse of the Boys & Girls Clubs’ childcare system as evidence of the city’s strained social infrastructure.
She has consistently tied her tax proposal to the need for more stable funding for public services and community supports, an argument likely to intensify as families confront holiday-week closures and begin the new year without one of the city’s longstanding childcare anchors.
For more than 60 years, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southcentral Alaska was provided services, and the board’s failure this year to keep it going marks the end of an era for Anchorage.
5 thoughts on “Boys & Girls Club of Southcentral faces near-immediate closure”
The one thing the board never tried was replacing the board and eventually having the employees replaced
That’s the one thing that poor management never tries while a non profit or business is showing signs of failure they never replace themselves
You know what’s worse these same board members and employees will go on to apply at other businesses or government management positions because they say they have management experience only to do bring down a new workplace.
Note: just because you were in a supervision position at a place that went under doesn’t mean you should apply for any management positions at other places.
I wouldn’t hire any manager or supervisor to by my manager or supervisor who worked someplace that no longer exists or they are a job hopper.
Not all people can be managers.
It’s okay to be in a position without any management or supervisory roles. It’s less stressful.
There are lots of Anchorage people in a management role who should not been given that responsibility.
The board brought this inevitable closure on themselves.
They sowed bad seeds and are reaping the harvest of what they sowed.
There is a bright spot if they expedite its closure. It could become another warming shelter for the hobos or a place with temporary cots for those choosing the risks of sleeping near other hobos
When exploitative, drug-addicted vagrants suck of millions and millions in public and philanthropic money, as well as most of the public attention, this is what happens. It is quite possible for exploitative, drug-addicted vagrants to suck up ALL of the resources and attention. Choices should be made.
A sad loss and I am sure the mayor will not waste the ‘opportunity’ . My late father, credited both the boys and girls club, the Boys Club back then, as well as the army, for ‘correcting his trajectory’. Historically the Boys and Girls club, started in 1860 as a boys club, was very successful in helping kids and was originally privately funded until the 1950’s.