Prince George, B.C. – It’s been a stressful few months at Big Brothers Big Sisters Prince George.

Executive director Tim Bennett says the organization is going through a “financial crunch” and as a result have had to make some tough decisions.

Tim Bennett

“The big decision that was made was to delay starting our group programming, so our Go Girls! girls club, Team Up! Game On!, and Strong Youth Fearless Women,” he says. “With that we’ve had to look at reducing some of the staffing levels that support our group programming.”

As a result, Bennett says they’ve been forced to issue three layoff notices – one full time position and two-part time jobs.

He attributes the difficulties to the fact they fell $30,000 short of their fundraising target last year while they were also forced to cope with a delay in some of their provincial funding.

“So as we reported at our annual general meeting this year we ended up with a fairly significant deficit ($60,000) and it made for a big hill to climb out of and while we’re having a really strong 2016, cash flow has been an issue over the last couple of months.”

Despite the challenges, Bennett says it will not impact their traditional programs or their 1:1 mentoring programs.

Looking forward, he does see some light at the end of the tunnel.

“As I said, we’re having a strong 2016 because of the support of the community. The issues we’re facing right now are strictly cash flow,” says Bennett.

“We realize we’re not going to come out of this completely unscathed but we believe that we are going to rebound finishing this year and we have some really great partnerships and things in place for 2017 to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”