Three area business owners are working to help the Boys and Girls Club of Glacier Country and are challenging their counterparts to join in.

Business owners Verne Hebert, Michael Klinkhammer and Sue Thompson are spearheading the Boys and Girls Club Business Challenge.

The challenge is designed to support the club by businesses pledging to make contributions to the club based on new clients. The three business people share a passion for the Boys and Girls Club and recently decided to help the club after it has suffered loses in its fundraising this year.

The club provides after-school activities for children at its facilities in Columbia Falls and Evergreen. Participants spend time working on homework, doing educational activities or fine art projects and physical activities. Membership fee is $10, but a child is never turned away for inability to pay.

Last year the program went to five days per week in Columbia Falls after moving into the former Saint Matthew's Episcopal Church. Attendance is up this year at both locations and some 100 children are members in Columbia Falls. That equates to about 50 students attending on an average day.

Programs have been expanded and are reaching more towards teens. But the year hasn't been easy, with donations down. Funding comes from a mix of the club's foundation, private donations and grants.

"Funding is always a challenge," said Alan Sempf, Boys and Girls Club director. "We lost about $100,000 in funding which means funding is about 40 percent down."

Through new funding sources, Sempf said, the program was able to break even, but is still planning for the future.

"We've had a few cutbacks, but what we're really trying to do is grow."

TO HELP fill the gap, the three business owners decided they wanted to help.

Verne Hebert, along with his wife, Kimberly, owns the Montana Realty Depot in Hungry Horse. Michael Klinkhammer's firm, Klinkhammer Law Offices, has practices in Kalispell, Missoula and Minnesota. Sue Thompson is the owner of Abundance Accounting, a bookkkeeping and cost accounting service, in Kalispell.

Hebert, Klinkhammer and Thompson recently gathered in Columbia Falls to advocate for the club. They are also each making donations through their respective businesses.

The Boys and Girls Club Business Challenge asks businesses to participate by pledging to make a $50 donation for each new client the business signs up. The challenge starts this month and will run for one year until Oct. 1, 2010.

Businesses participating will be added to a list and owners encouraged to refer their clients to those participating for services.

Alternatively, businesses and individuals are encouraged to make individual donations. For these matching donations, up to $100 can be made for any one of the $50 pledges. Then businesses in the challenge will up one of their $50 donations to $100. As a result the club would get a $200 donation.

No donation to the club will be turned away.

The goal is to help the Boys and Girls Club make up the losses this year and maybe even raise more money.

"It's tough for three businesses to do this (alone). If we get 10 involved it's easier and 20 it's a whole lot easier," said Klinkhammer. "This is the kind of support that the Boys and Girls Club needs."

AS A FORMER chapter director and board member for the Boys and Girls Club in Minnesota, Klinkhammer knows the club well. Working in the legal world, he also knows the impact clubs have on keeping youth on the right path during those after school hours.

"I know it first hand — it has a huge impact," he said.

Klinkhammer can rattle off the statistics about improved crime and drug use rates after a Boys and Girls Club enters a community. However, it's the individual stories of the club members that Klinkhammer relates with enthusiasm.

There was the young man with a brain tumor who has stopped growing or the child with a dysfunctional family and yet they both find a place in the Boys and Girls Club.

"These kids go to the Boys and Girls Club and they become stars," he said.

Quick to support the cause, Verne Hebert and Sue Thompson are also great supporters of the club concept.

Hebert himself attended the club as a child and was happy when the club opened in Columbia Falls about seven years ago.

"It was wonderful when the Boys and Girls Club came in here. There was really nothing like that for kids before," he said.

Thompson looks at the challenge as a way to get back to the grass roots of the community and give when its most important.

"We're all tightening out budgets, but we can still give," she said. "This can really have a positive impact for a long time. The saying goes that if you teach the women and children of a community then that community will thrive."

FOR MORE information on The Boys and Girls Club Business Challenge contact Sempf at 752-1045.