Dennis Brown

Dennis Brown is the longest-serving president and chief executive officer of Big Brothers Big Sisters Hawaii, with 15 years at the helm and years doing other social service work. Even his graduate degree in urban planning had a focus on social program planning and administration.

But what informs his work most powerfully surely is the fact that, at age 10, Brown himself was the first "little brother" in the agency’s 50-year history.

His Japanese mother met his Caucasian father in Japan after the war and moved to Nebraska, where Brown and his younger brother were born. They divorced when Brown was 4 and the trio moved to Hawaii.

Brown described himself as an angry child attached to his father. By age 10, his mother saw that her son needed support and got him into counseling. The counselor, who had heard of the newly incorporated Big Brothers, urged the mom to sign up her still-resentful boy.

"I didn’t want it," he said. "I didn’t want anything to do with it at first. I still thought someday I’d get back together with my dad, in my mind. I didn’t want anything to interfere with that, or him to find out that now I’ve got somebody trying to take his place."

As things turned out, the counselor, Henry Sumida, was such a good listener that Brown was soon enjoying their outings, and the opportunity to vent.

He added with regret that, other than through their occasional correspondence, he never reconnected with his father, who died when Brown was 24. His mother, 89, still lives in Hawaii.

With Sumida, however, he had a friendship that lasted a lifetime. At his big brother’s funeral two years ago, Brown gave one of the three eulogies.

Big Brothers Big Sisters works with 600-700 boys and girls each year, with adults of all ages but also in group settings with youth volunteers. The support services the agency provides — profiling clients and volunteers carefully and supervising the pairings — are enabled by a $1.5 million annual budget.

Brown hopes that an outreach to individual donors in the next few weeks will provide another revenue stream, in addition to the grants, used-item collection service and other fundraisers that underwrite the agency’s mission.

The married father of three said his life and his work have underscored his belief in the importance of family and close relationships for a child.

The hope, he said, is that "because they feel good about that relationship and that person, they come to trust them.

"So what they say is going to have an impact on them," Brown said. "They’re going to probably choose to do things that make their big brother proud."

QUESTION: What are the major organizational challenges you face?

ANSWER: In 2012 we took a bold step and went statewide. We’re just a little organization here in Honolulu, and our Maui organization is also independent. They’re only about five years younger than we are. We decided to consolidate, because in a small state like this, and both of us struggling, we’d see if we can work together and save some of the expenses.

So while we did that, we had already expanded to Kauai six years before. The only one we had left was the Big Island, and both of us were trying to figure out which one of us would go there. So we merged, and we decided we would, as part of this new statewide organization, expand to Hawaii island. …

So that was a big undertaking, and part of it was we had quite a bit of support in the community from funders who said, "Yeah, if you do that (go statewide), we’ll be able to help you more."

Well, that hasn’t materialized. One large grant we had that was about 25 percent of our budget, we ended up losing earlier this year.

Q: What was that from?

A: Well … it was just a local private foundation. We’re just now having to recalibrate everything and figure out how we’re going to make up that, going into 2014. So it’s a challenge.

I think one of the things that’s difficult for us, people think because we’re part of the national Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization, we get a lot of money from them. We actually don’t. We’re independent affiliates throughout the country.

So whatever we raise here is all used here, locally. It doesn’t go through them; we don’t have to share fundraising. But at the same time they also don’t have very much coming down to us. They’re more of an overseer. …

We’re looking for ways now to be a little less dependent. We do have the clothing-donation operation, which brings in about $100,000 to $150,000 a year, so that helps. It’s something we’re proud of because we like the fact that we’re trying to go out and work and raise our own funds; we’re not just asking for handouts. But we do rely on donations heavily.

I think because people don’t fully understand what we do, we don’t get a lot of individual donations. So we’re hoping we can get more of those in the future, so people understand how the money is used to support each of these matches, with our professional case-management staff.

Q: So the budget is basically to pay the professional staff?

A: Right. And there are some funders who don’t believe in funding that, funding salaries. But for us, it’s the nature of what we do, is basically these match relationships. We don’t want them just going off on their own — you know, put them together and off you go. We need to support them for the life of the match. …

Q: About your personal history? You mentioned being in the Air Force after high school. How did that go?

A: While I was in the service is when I reconciled with my mother. It took a couple of years of taking college classes, realizing, wow, things have turned out pretty well for me. I was about halfway through my four years, and I was overseas and for some reason I just started reflecting back on how much help I had, for someone who had come from a single-parent family.

The reason they brought Big Brothers here is Family Court had seen so many boys coming through who were juvenile delinquents, all having one thing in common: They didn’t have a dad in the picture. …

I realized there were a lot of programs for disadvantaged youth, but the one that stood out in my mind was Henry Sumida, because he did this purely voluntarily. And that stayed with me. …

So I wrote and thanked him. And I also wrote my mom and told her how much I loved her, and how much I regretted how I behaved all those years.

Q: She must have cried (you) a river.

A: She did! (Laughs) And I decided that, I wasn’t sure what it was going to be, but I wanted to get into some kind of field where I would give back, I’d be helping other people the way I was helped. … I never dreamed I’d be back at Big Brothers Big Sisters someday….

Q: To what extent do you think your experience factors into your work?

A: The nature of what we do is so personal — it’s all about relationships — that having experienced it myself does help a lot.

Q: What are the components of a successful match here?

A: There is a formula, so to speak, and it’s on two levels. … Our general program and our mission really centers around three areas.

One is educational success. We want to have the big brothers and big sisters instill a sense of how important education is. … The second one is staying away from risky behaviors. …

And then the third — it’s almost the most important, I think — I know it was for me — is really instilling a sense of higher aspirations and hope for the future. Because so many kids just give up. They feel like they don’t know anything better, and they just feel like, "This is my destiny, I was born into this, and there’s no chance for me. …"

Henry would take me to the University of Hawaii campus. And I was, like, "You know, I don’t even like school." But that stayed with me. …

Then what is key to our model is that there’s a case manager, a professional social worker assigned to each of these match relationships, to support the family and the child and the big brother or big sister. Because they need to know what this child needs. They’re not always going to hear it accurately from the family. …

Q: Are there ever problems where the child confides in the adult, who then must relay that information? Wouldn’t that sour the relationship?

A: We let the children know that up front, that, "Anything you do tell me, I’m going to need to report it if it’s a safety issue for you, or concern." We train the big brothers and big sisters to know why it’s important to do that, and that we are a mandatory reporting agency, so we’re required by law, if you’re aware of anything to report it.

But we don’t sneak around and try to trick the kids into saying stuff, because we know of the importance of that relationship. …

Because child safety is our No. 1 priority, the case manager is not only there to support them but is also there to make sure the child is safe. Because even though we have an extensive enrollment and screening process, there’s no such thing as a 100-percent foolproof process. Sometimes you don’t know, the person closest to you, you didn’t realize they could be a child molester. Match support is designed where they’re in constant contact, and they interview on a regular basis — the big brother, the little brother and the parent or guardian — to find out how things are going. …

Q: Has there ever been an abuse case here?

A: Knock wood, we haven’t had one locally. … It has happened nationally in the organization, but it’s very rare. … Our national organization instituted the service delivery model, with the constant contact, in 2007. We had a system before; in 2007, though, they made it more stringent by coming up with a way for us to monitor, to make sure that all those contacts are not just happening, but on time.