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The Robert Crown Effect
The Robert Crown Effect
BY MIKE ELLIS
Many local residents will recall the news released in the fall of 2017 that the Robert Crown Center for Health Education (RCC) was selling its property on Salt Creek Lane in Hinsdale to the Hinsdale Humane Society.
Thousands of students in the western suburbs passed through the doors of this facility, designed to function as a “health museum,” since it opened in 1958.
But the RCC story did not end with the sale of its property—in fact, the Hinsdalebased non-profit organization moved to the next block over, and is now located within a large office building on Spinning Wheel Drive.
“It was intentional,” RCC executive director Bar Thayer said of the move. “It was really to give us a sustainable operating structure.” “Selling our building put us in a very good financial position,” staff accountant LeeAnne Stifflear said. “It allowed us to revamp and redevelop the programs, as we needed to do and as we wanted to do.” Thayer said prior to the sale of the facility in November 2017, RCC had been delivering 80 percent of its programming in schools, before converting to a 100-percent in-school delivery model that past August. “The building was very much underutilized,” she said. “It just wasn’t cost-effective for us to continue to operate the building, so we made that conscious decision to move to 100-percent in-school delivery.”
In addition to selling its well-known center, Thayer said RCC also cut four administrative positions to create a more “streamlined operating structure.”
Thayer, who was then functioning as chief operating officer, became executive director, while her previous position, the director of communications, director of development and special events organizer roles were terminated entirely.
At the time of its relocation, RCC had 17 employees; but since that time, the nonprofit organization has added eight to that total, increasing its health education staff from nine to 15.
“We’ve grown in that time, mostly through health educators,” Thayer said. ... “We’re continuing to deliver more programs to more students in the schools.”
RCC conducts a variety of programs for students across 165 public school districts and a number of private schools in the Chicago metropolitan area under two general heads: drug education and sex education. In addition, it offers parent programs on puberty and teen sexual health. Director of education Katie Gallagher said over the past few years, the organization has been modifying its program delivery. “All of our drug programming is currently delivered in a blended learning model,” Gallagher said. “That means it incorporates both technology with some advanced pre-work that students access through a laptop or a device at school.”
After kids complete the pre-work, RCC health educators come out to their schools to deliver a 90-minute in-class program, and students and teachers then gain access to post-program materials designed to apply what they have learned.
“We are able to increase the number of touch-points with students for each program,” Gallagher said. “We are able to increase the number of minutes and the content that we are able to deliver. We are also infusing social-emotional learning into all of our programs, with the hope of giving students some coping skills and some strategies for managing some of the situations that they’ll face throughout adolescence.”
Gallagher said to date, all of RCC’s drug and puberty programs have been updated to the “blended learning” format, and the organization is in the process of converting its “life begins” and teen sexual health programs.
In addition, Gallagher said RCC has adopted a “storyline” approach to its instruction.
“In order to further engage students and help them retain and understand the information, they follow characters, and oftentimes those characters are introduced to them on the e-learning, and then they follow them through the class portion,” she said.
Since the non-profit began conducting all of its programs in schools, RCC staff said they have received positive feedback. actually coming in.”
Business development manager Laura Schwartz said they are “better meeting the needs of the schools” by eliminating the cost of transportation to and from the center, while also reducing the amount of interruption to the day that transportation caused.
Education manager Lance Williams, who has been with RCC for nearly a decade, said kids are “oftentimes a little more at ease when we’re coming into the school,” adding that the center offered a number of distractions to students, some of which could make them anxious or uneasy.
-KATIE GALLAGHER
Williams said parents with suburban roots are still adjusting to the notion that Robert Crown is now coming to schools to deliver programs.
“Sometimes when they hear that their child is going to sit through a Robert Crown program, they don’t know about the transition that we’ve been making over the last few years,” he said. “They’re caught offguard thinking that the child’s going onto a bus, but they don’t understand that we’re RCC recently hired Amanda Byrne as manager of special events and annual giving to assume the position previously held by the special events organizer prior to relocation. Byrne said the organization just wrapped up its “strive for 45” initiative, through which it sought to raise $45,000 in 45 days, coming up just shy of its goal.
“It was a great campaign, and a great way to reengage some of our past supporters that may not understand that although the center closed physically, we are still very much here physically, still delivering endless amounts of programs to students in the area,” she said.
Byrne said she is trying to incorporate new events and fundraising concepts, while handling the annual RCC golf outing, now hosted at Ruth Lake Country Club, which will take place on June 8.
Over the next year, Thayer explained that RCC will be completing a rebranding process that includes a name change.
“The Crown family has shifted their strategic priorities, so they’re no longer funding the work that we do,” she said. “They’ve been supporting us in a small way for the last ten years, maybe; but they will no longer fund us at all. It’s time to get the name changed to something that’s more proactive and more in line with what we’re doing now.”
Thayer said the new name, which has not been settled on, will be unveiled during the 2020-21 school-year, along with a new logo. ■
For more information about the Robert Crown Center for Health Education, visit www.robertcrown.org.
