Living in Pismo Beach, where we connect you with some of our favorite people who live and work on the Central Coast. Those community and business leaders who make living on the Coast such a unique and diverse experience.
Episode #15
Monica Grant, the CEO of SLO YMCA
Monica Grant, the CEO of SLO YMCA, joins Ashlea Foster Boyer, Shannon Bowdey & Jordan Hamm on Living In Pismo Beach.
Ashlea Boyer:
With these.
Shannon Bowdey:
We’re kicking off our [inaudible 00:00:26] koozie photo contest. So, you let any of us know if you live locally and you want a koozie, we’ll drop one off to you and you could take a photo with one of our fashionable koozies and do hashtag #winaYeti, #Pismobeachhomes and you can win a Yeti cooler by Labor Day.
Ashlea Boyer:
So much fun.
Shannon Bowdey:
And you could get one of these amazing koozies. They’re amazing!
Ashlea Boyer:
I know, right? I mean it’s so much better than just a throw away koozie. This is a keep forever koozie.
Shannon Bowdey:
Right. You don’t want to get your hands cold when you drink a cold beverage.
Ashlea Boyer:
No!
Jordan Hamm:
When I told my kids they could keep them they were so excited.
Shannon Bowdey:
Good!
Ashlea Boyer:
Isn’t it funny how they like the things that are like pennies?
Trust me, what I dragged out of Jack’s room over the last weekend… All of the stuff that they get for free, it’s just amazing. The quantities of stuff, so.
Jordan Hamm:
Were you able to donate stuff?
Ashlea Boyer:
Yes.
Jordan Hamm:
Any place to donate it?
Ashlea Boyer:
Goodwill is accepting.
Shannon Bowdey:
Goodwill!
Jordan Hamm:
Hey, good to know.
Ashlea Boyer:
Getting ready for school, getting the home desk set up.
Jordan Hamm:
[Inaudible 00:01:46] ours starts tomorrow.Ashlea Boyer:
Yay, good luck to all of us.
Jordan Hamm:
Cheers.
Ashlea Boyer:
Cheers to that. I’m excited to invite our guest this week on. She’s someone my husband and I have known for quite some time now and she’s just a great human, in addition to what she does for a living. And fun to talk to too. So let me kick off that we’re having Monica Grant on today. She’s the CEO of the San Luis Obispo County YMCA. She’s been in that role since May of 2013. She has over 20 years of management experience with the YMCA, including the YMCA of Honolulu, where she served as vice president for the $27 million island-wide association. Monica has over 30 years of experience as a nonprofit and development professional, including work with UC Santa Cruz, the Nature Conservancy, United Way, and Sierra Club.
Jordan Hamm:
She also provides [inaudible 00:02:51] consulting, planning, organizational development, training, and facilitation for nonprofits with a focus on capacity building and sustainability. She has a B.S. in Recreation Administration and a M.S. in Organizational Leadership.
Shannon Bowdey:
Monica currently serves on the boards of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, SLO County Chapter as Past-President, and Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center. She serves on the Economic Development Committee for the [inaudible 00:03:22] Chamber and Legislative Affairs Committee for the South County Chamber. She lives in [inaudible 00:03:28] with her wife, Colleen Murphy and their son Angelo.
Jordan Hamm:
The San Luis Obispo County YMCA has been deeply rooted in the community for more than fifty years. This nonprofit is service based and reaches nearly every area of the county. Some of the programs include fitness classes, Silver Sneakers, afterschool programs, preschools, before school program, youth, and Bitty Sports.
Ashlea Boyer:
The mission of the YMCA is to develop a total person, spirit, mind, and body through value based programs that build strong kids, strong families, and strong communities. So let’s help welcome Monica.
How did you become involved with the YMCA?
Monica Grant:
Wonderful. First of all, thank you for having me here with you today. I greatly appreciate it. I got involved with the Y in college, so I was a rec major and I was going to school in the mountains of North Carolina and got involved with the Y at a camp and conference center in the Blue Ridge Mountains called YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly. And then did my internship with the Y, and went on from there. I came out to California for my first real summer camp director job in 1983. And I’ve been in the Y many years and I’ve also been out of the Y at points in my career for various reasons, mostly professional, but happy to be in the Y now for over seven years in my current role.
Ashlea Boyer:
That’s awesome.
Jordan Hamm:
So can you tell us about how COVID has had an impact on YMC services in San Luis County?
Monica Grant:
I would say many businesses given our business model, which is heavily tilted toward youth programs, especially before and afterschool childcare and camps, and then adult and family fitness. We definitely got the double whammy. So within three days we were a three point, almost $7 million operation with over 120 staff. Within three days, we were fully closed and have been able to relaunch, which I know we’re going to talk more about in some capacities, our fitness center was fully reopened and then now of course is closed again, so we’re doing outdoor fitness. Many businesses are having to continue to adapt.
Shannon Bowdey:
Wonderful. [crosstalk 00:05:55].
What is YMCA Camp C.A.R.E?
Monica Grant:
YMCA Camp C.A.R.E is the emergency childcare program that we launched during COVID, pretty much launched it in early April. It stands for camp, obviously, as day camp stands for childcare assistance and response to emergency. It’s basically a half day and now full day, day camp program that started out first for emergency workers, then essential workers, and then basically is now.. most parents are pretty much if you’re working you’re pretty essential.
Summer day camp is ending this week and we are now relaunching Camp C.A.R.E for fall, given school closures.
Jordan Hamm:
Can I ask really quick how you are doing that? Like how do you work with the kids? Are they in smaller groups?
Monica Grant:
I would say.. one of the things that I, even though it’s been challenging, I feel very grateful that the Y has had the months of experience we’ve had running these kinds of childcare programs during COVID because it’s pretty rigorous guidelines and definitely adds a whole other layer of compliance and work, a workload to staff and expenses to be honest. Typically our day camp programs would be anywhere from a ratio of 14 to 20 kids, depending on age for one staff person. And now it’s pretty much, depending on age, one to 10 to 12 kids on average. So that’s a pretty significant change right there.
We’re obviously doing a lot of fresh air programming, but we are in classrooms. The classrooms have to be controlled by age. You can’t mix classrooms, like one day Johnny’s in this classroom the next day he’s in that classroom. That’s pretty strict. And then a lot of obviously ongoing sanitation on sanitizing throughout the day. Our staff wear masks. Kids are encouraged to wear them. I think this fall will probably begin going to another layer around mask wearing for kids. It’s pretty rigorous. Does that answer your question? How do you do it?
Jordan Hamm:
Yeah, yeah. I have just been curious.
Monica Grant:
The things that is really wonderful is when you go visit our camp programs in spite of all these, oh my gosh, you feel as a leader and as a person or staff working these programs, it adds another whole layer of responsibility to what you already have the possibility of running any youth program, but the kids are still having fun. They’re having a great time. They’re being, as kids are, very adaptable.
Ashlea Boyer:
They’re a lot more resilient than we give them credit for.
Jordan Hamm:
Completely.
Ashlea Boyer:
So, that brings us kind of around to that there has been some YMCA in the news. Not in our state, obviously, but in states that decided to roll out overnight camps when they were allowed to. I know Georgia was one of them that started back to overnight camps in early June, and then pretty immediately were forced to close due to COVID outbreaks. What were your thoughts on those incidences and did that have any effect on our local operations here?
Monica Grant:
No. California I think made personally the right call around not having overnight camps running. They have not been running all since the pandemic. While that’s really hard for kids and also for those camps, we don’t have a local Y resident camp in our county, but some of our neighbors do in a lot of camps in California. So it doesn’t affect us personally, our day camps or day programs. And again, I think our protocols are based on all the state and county and CDC guidelines. So I think we’re.. no, you can never be too careful, but I feel very comfortable with our model. And we’re going to be providing academic support to kids.
Obviously this is not just a day camp program this fall because kids are in school and they’re just doing virtual school. We were doing that already this spring, where they bring their Google Chromebooks in. It’s going to be really interesting because there’s going to be a whole lot going on there. It’s going to be in their own world. But again, my staff are amazing and we’re going to give kids the support they need.
Shannon Bowdey:
Many of us rely on YMCA before and afterschool programs on campuses that are elementary schools. I know I did. How are those programs planning to operate in the next few weeks as school begins?
Monica Grant:
So basically we are running out the clock currently on our day camp program and Camp C.A.R.E is launching next week. It is unfortunately a very downsized effort from what we typically do, and I wish we could be serving the normal 650 kids a day that we would a regular year afterschool or during just any kind of a school based program. But, that is primarily due to staffing. You know it’s more challenging than I wish right now getting staff for a variety of reasons. I think too, because of the protocols, you really don’t want a lot of a million kids in your programs. So we are looking at roughly, again per classroom, probably ideally four classrooms worth of kids. So that would be around 40 kids on average, that you can kind of rotate being outside, inside. That’s probably the biggest we’d want to manage at any one site. So it’s pretty limited space, unfortunately
Ashlea Boyer:
So I imagine that means wait-lists and things like that, for those that don’t get on the list or get in the class?
Monica Grant:
I think initially it’ll be wait-lists and then hopefully we can continue to expand with more staff coming on board.
Ashlea Boyer:
Yeah. Are you having trouble finding staff because they’re afraid or is it what we’ve been seeing in the news about they get more unemployment and so on then a lot of employers can give? What’s the sticking point with finding that?
Monica Grant:
Great question. I think there were some staffing challenges pre-COVID already just with this type of work. Our staff typically tend to be more in a transitional mode in their careers, or they’re starting out in their careers, they’re college students. So obviously that whole landscape is being impacted. I do think some of it is around the unemployment. Some of it is around an uneasiness as for various reasons around working in anywhere right now in this environment in regardless of anyone’s protocols, and some of it’s valid. I mean, nobody’s wrong for making the choices they’re making, but I sure would like to be able to serve more kids.
Ashlea Boyer:
Yeah. That was a great program. We totally utilize it when we were needing it when Jack was younger and it was a huge savior.
Jordan Hamm:
All right. So you recently completed the adoption of your son, which congratulations! We’re so excited for you. Can you tell us a little bit about the process and now being a family of three?
Monica Grant:
Yeah. So I’ll try to make it.. give you the short version of the story, but my wife was a volunteer mentor through Family Care Network over two years ago now. And she was paired up with this wonderful young boy who was in foster care, had been in foster care for a little while. And it really was kind of like a big sister kind of model. We really had no intentions at this point in our lives. If anything, you’re planning retirement, not planning to be a parent [inaudible 00:14:17] career. Really did not have a go into this thinking that this was going to happen.
But, given the stages of his case, he was needing a permanent solution, a permanent home. And at first we said, no, that’s not something we can or really in our place to do. And then we did a 360 and said, yes. And so he moved in with us in April a year ago. And then with COVID the adoption process got delayed obviously, but we had our ceremony last Friday, a week ago. So it’s been a year. It’s been quite a journey. Very humbling. I will say that.
Ashlea Boyer:
Yeah. My sister-in-law has adopted three sets of siblings and each case is completely different then the next one, but they’re a little bit of a roller coaster ride to say the least. I remember you calling Michael though and saying, what’s it like to have a son your age, that’s your son’s age and have him be an only child? We’re like, well, we don’t think we’re ruining him yet, but I guess [inaudible 00:15:28]
Monica Grant:
Yeah. You know, and I think to there’s just my experience, but all the families, including some of yours, probably, going into month.. getting close to month six now. Were seeing the impact on everyone, on our staff. We’re seeing the impact on our families of just that many months of stress and trying to manage so many layers of what we’re all trying to manage. This is actually probably going to be the first year that we’re going to incorporate a mental health intern from Cal Poly into our efforts. We’ve been wanting to do it for a long time, but it’ll be through Transitions Mental Health just because I think that our families have needed a lot of support and this is its own form of trauma, going through a pandemic like this and it has.. and effects an impact.
Ashlea Boyer:
I agree completely. It’s definitely something we’ve struggled with with Jack because we can’t expand our bubble very much because of Michael’s health. And so he has a few friends that are doing overnights at other friend’s houses, and it’s just not something that we can allow him to do, which kills me. But, he understands. On the one hand he’s old enough to comprehend, and then the other side, it keeps creeping in that that’s what he wants to do. It’s a struggle for sure. I mean, we are not the people he wanted to be quarantined with for this long of a time.
Monica Grant:
Nor are we. I would say too, you pick two older moms that don’t have a yard and have kind of big job and it’s [inaudible 00:17:13]
Ashlea Boyer:
Yeah. We’re not the most fun people,
Monica Grant:
But it is what it is, right?
Ashlea Boyer:
It is. Well, I really appreciate you coming on and talking with us today, Monica. It’s been a pleasure, it is always. Are you still in the middle of the YMCA fundraising campaign right now? Is that going on right now?
Monica Grant:
Well, I will say you’re never done fundraising, right?
Ashlea Boyer:
Right. In a nonprofit. Yeah, for sure.
Monica Grant:
For sure. Right. I mean, what you’ve done in nonprofits. You know our annual support campaign did and, thankfully before the pandemic hit. But, in spite of the pandemic I.. happily our fundraising has remained healthy. And I think it’s because we went into this pandemic with some really solid donor relationships. And, I think we have a good case. I think we have a good case for support during this pandemic, because one of the things that was really important to me was that if we’re going to stay open, which I felt was important, we have to actually be serving the community. We have to be doing something that’s not just about us keeping staff employed. All of that’s nice, but we have to continue to have our mission, even in these challenging times.
And, I’m proud again, it’s been a smaller footprint, but I still think the families that we are able to serve.. it’s having it is a lifesaver. I mean, there’s no doubt for the families that we’re serving. They would not be able to have a livelihood right now. Some of these.. we’ve arranged a diverse range of families, but we do serve a lot of low income families who don’t have the luxury of, I say, luxury, I’d have the luxury of getting to work remotely. That’s not true as you know for many people in their jobs.
And so to be able to be there for those families is I think very important.
Ashlea Boyer:
Yeah that is, definitely.
Monica Grant:
In our family fitness facility, we have a large population of seniors. And I think for anybody keeping up your health during the pandemic, we’ve all been doing that our own ways, is critical, right, and that mental health aspect as well. So to be able to do outdoor fitness right now, we’re having surprisingly good of number of people coming out for that. And I think a lot of it is just connection. The safety with others.
Ashlea Boyer:
Interaction with other humans. I agree.
Monica Grant:
Absolutely.
Ashlea Boyer:
Well, awesome. Thank you so much for coming on today and we will continue to support what the YMCA does.
Monica Grant:
Thank you. And thanks for what you’re doing in the making connection.
Jordan Hamm:
This is Ashlea Boyer, Jordan Hamm, and Shannon Bowdey with the Pismo Beach Homes team!