Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA)

The organization is now based in Tampa, Florida, offering services to children as young as 5, and touts an “evidence-based” one on one approach to improve outcomes for the children it serves, including better educational outcomes and less risky behavior. According to recent filings, between approximately 2012 and 2022 it reached 2 million children in all 50 states through 243 affiliates. ²

Programming

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America claims to be “the nation’s largest donor- and volunteer-supported mentoring network,” and it promotes several one-on-one mentoring programs focused on poor and otherwise at-risk youth. ³ By the group’s own description, its mentorship programs seek “to change the lives of children facing adversity between 6 and 18 years of age.” ⁴

The group’s Amachi program, named after the word used by the Ibo people of Nigeria to express “who knows but what God has brought us through this child,” focuses on providing mentoring support for children with parents who are in prison. ⁵ Other mentoring programs are community- and school-based, and the group offers its services to children of military families. ⁴

Social Advocacy

LGBT Activism

In the early 2000s, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America announced its intention to allow openly gay men to participate as mentors. ⁶ According to Albert Mohler, a critic of the policy and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, under the new policy, a mentor’s sexual orientation would not be disclosed to a mentee’s parents. ⁶

In 2019 with funding from Altria, a Fortune 200 tobacco conglomerate, BBBSA published a supplement to its mentorship guide specifically to serve LGBT youth, in part by affirming their stated sexuality. The supplement was developed in consultation with 20 local BBBSA chapters, some academics, and multiple groups espousing left-wing gender ideology, including:

• The Children, Youth and Families Program of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, which is the charitable arm of the nation’s largest LGBT activism organization. ⁷
• The True Colors Fund, which provides mentoring for LGBT+ youth living away from home. ⁷
• The GSA Network, an umbrella group of school clubs which began as a support group for LGBT youth, but has since expanded its programming to drive left-wing social causes such as “Abolition of the Police” and “An End of the Cisgender Heterosexual Patriarchy.” ⁷

In 2022, BBBSA awarded one of two national “Big and Little of the Year” Awards to a teen from New Jersey and the teen’s mentor. The pair was picked in part because the mentor validated the teenager’s self-identity as transgender. ⁸

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America received funding from the Starbucks Foundation to develop a JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) training for dissemination throughout BBBSA’s over 230 affiliates. The training developed “Relationship Responders,” to help people impacted by ”traumatic events.” CEO Artis Stevens cited the program as a tool it used to respond in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas where mass shootings had occurred. ⁹

False Claims Settlement

In 2016, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Justice $1.6 million to resolve allegations of misusing of federal funds, by failing to maintain the accounting and financial management standards required for federal grant funds for three grants awarded between 2009 and 2011. ¹⁰ In addition to the $1.6 million payment, BBBSA agreed to new compliance and employee training policies. ¹¹

Federal funding for BBBSA programs has since continued. In November 2022, the Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (DOJ OJJDP) awarded BBBSA $13.5 million through two youth mentoring grant programs. ¹²

Sexual Abuse Allegations

In 2010, a Big Brothers Big Sisters of America mentor in Monterey County, California named Jon David Woody was convicted on 20 counts of child abuse, stemming from the molestation of 4 girls he had mentored at BBBSA. Woody was sentenced to 226 years in prison. In October 2023, one of his victims filed suit against BBBSA and its local affiliate, alleging that not only did it fail to prevent Woody’s abuse, but it was aware of his wrongdoing and attempted to hide it. The lawsuit also cited data from the American Bar Association that found 304 reports of child sexual abuse in the organization’s programs from 1982 to 1991. The October 2023 filing is only one of many lawsuits faced by BBBSA and Boys and Girls Clubs of America in the last few decades alleging similar abuse and neglect. ^{13 14 15 16} Some allegations date back as far as the 1960s. ¹⁵

Leadership

Artis Stevens became the first Black CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America in 2021. In an interview with Forbes, he said that his historic selection was only a precursor to the “Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI)” agenda BBBSA has pursued under his leadership, offering more resources to people of color and LGBT youth. ¹⁷

Mike Carrel is chairman of the board of BBBSA. He is the president and CEO of medical-device manufacturer ArtiCure. ¹⁸

Financials

In 2022, MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos and emerging philanthropist, gave the organization $122.6 million. This gift was the largest by a single individual in the organization’s history. ¹⁹

The organization’s expenses in 2022 were $31,852,174. ^{20 21} In 2021, the organization spent $21,525,566. ²