Last year brought forth many challenges for our Enrollment department.  We started off the year with 223 Bigs who were in process, and none ready to be matched.  Thanks to a phenomenal team effort, we were able to give a huge push over the spring and summer, at one point, staff members from nearly every program were conducting Big Brother and Big Sister interviews!  The result of this push, was the acceptance of almost 100 Bigs into our program - with a total of almost 150 Littles on our wait list, you can imagine how excited we were about this! 

As we settled into this new territory, where Bigs were now waiting to be matched, we hit a devastating speed bump in the road.  In November 2009, we lost both of our Enrollment Coordinators due to financial cutbacks, resulting in our decision to stop accepting new Bigs and Littles onto the wait list, and instead to focus on creating matches with those already accepted and in process.  With some restructuring to our team, we were able to build a system which has helped us to maintain our programs, if not to grow, than at least to assure that we do not lose dedicated Bigs and Littles who were already committed to the program.  Since then, our focus has been on creating matches as quickly as we can, but what it is sometimes difficult to appreciate, is the amount of work and support that our Mentoring Coordinators put into each and every match that they make. 

Some of the factors that we look at in matching are; geographic location, interests, family history, and experience/preferences.  Once we've found a Big and a Little who appear to fit well together, it's more than a matter of sending them out into the community together!  Mentoring Coordinator's organize an intro meeting, offer support to help build up communication, provide activity suggestions, help to work through any conflict that arises, and assure that our National Standards are being met; all this is done through frequent phone and in person contact during the early stages of a match.

Due to the amount of support provided to each match, only a certain number can be created per month - a reality that regrettably limits our ability to eliminate the majority of our wait list in a short period of time.  A general comment summarizing this dilemma has been a message about embracing this as the best kind of problem that we could possibly have!  Although it's certainly not ideal to know that we have so many wonderful Bigs, waiting eagerly to be matched up with any one of the deserving Littles who have been waiting, for some, as long as 3-4 years, it is still preferable over the alternative! 

We would like to thank all of our Big, Littles and parents, who have been waiting patiently, and have shown such great appreciation for the work that has been done and our continued efforts to create matches as quickly as is possible.  We are looking forward to the time that we can begin taking new applications again, as we do recognize there that are still so many volunteers and children out there who we'd like to connect with in the future.  In the meantime, it has been a great joy to see so many of the children who have been waiting since 2006 and 2007, finally getting their chances to come into our office and meet their potential Bigs.  There's no better bottom line to things in my opinion!!