Education

For over 100 years the Dallas-headquartered Circle Ten Council of the Boy Scouts of America has utilized outdoor instruction in woodcraft to cultivate leadership skills, independent thinking and good citizenship among the region’s youth. However, the most disadvantaged youths often struggle to participate in scouting, because the volunteer time required to establish and maintain typical grassroots Boy Scout infrastructure cannot be provided by the single parents raising so many of these children. In response, Circle Ten has long been committed to an outreach program to serve underprivileged boys, ScoutReach, which provides financial and human resources to help poorer boys participate in scouting. Last year over 8,400 of the 54,000 Boy Scouts in the Dallas region, nearly 1 in 6, were assisted by the ScoutReach program.

The social and community benefits of scouting flow from the Scout Method, a time-tested program of informal education and character development that the hinges upon the intrinsic appeal of the outdoors to young men. The Scout Method develops in participants individual initiative, self-reliance, collaborative skills, and, in general, encourages young men to achieve their full physical, intellectual, social and spiritual potential. Empirical research suggests that men who were Boy Scouts are less likely to drop out of high school, substantially more likely to graduate from college, and go on to earn higher incomes when compared to the population at large.

Within metropolitan Dallas, the ScoutReach program targets underprivileged young men, bringing the benefits of participation in Boy Scouts to those individuals most at risk of becoming anti-social, unproductive members of society. However, several years of participation in scouting is typically required for these benefits to be realized. Boy Scout statistics indicate that 85% of scouts who go camping in their first year will continue in scouting for another year. By contrast, retention rates among those who do not camp in their first year are appreciably lower, with only 50% continuing to participate for another year. Bolstering Circle Ten’s camping capacity and improving the camping experience is therefore crucial to the effectiveness of the ScoutReach program.

Located on 371 acres just 11 miles from downtown Dallas, Camp Wisdom is the primary campground for scouts participating via the ScoutReach program. Camp Wisdom also serves as a venue for the Boy Scouts’ school-based Learning for Life character-building leadership program and is home to nearly four dozen campsites, rifle and archery ranges, a fully-stocked lake, an outdoor amphitheater, and a high-ropes fitness challenge course. Camp Wisdom’s last round of infrastructure improvements occurred decades ago.

Circle Ten Council hired Crescent Growth Capital to structure and execute a $5.7 million NMTC financing to help fund badly-needed facility and infrastructure upgrades. With a program including construction of a new leadership conference center, to double teaching capacity and replace an antiquated 1940s-era dining hall, the Camp Wisdom improvements will not only be utilized by the Boy Scouts but will also be available for use by outside organizations, such as the Dallas Independent School District.

In the course of successfully closing the NMTC financing for Camp Wisdom, CGC located a Dallas-based multinational corporation to act as the tax credit investor on the transaction. The willingness of this firm to invest at an appreciably higher price than the going market rate resulted in a net benefit to the Boy Scouts of nearly 20% of the value of the New Markets Tax Credit financing, a significant improvement over the 12-13% common to NMTC financings of this size.

Consequently, CGC was able to effect over $1 million in subsidy for the Circle Ten Council in service of their plans for Camp Wisdom, improving retention rates among ScoutReach participants, better integrating the facility with the surrounding highly-distressed low income community, and bringing the benefits of scouting to more individuals far sooner than would otherwise be the case.

Founded in 1852, St. Mary’s University was the first institution of higher learning established in San Antonio. St. Mary’s is the oldest Catholic university in Texas and is a nationally-recognized liberal arts institution with a student population of nearly 4,000 of all faiths and socio-economic backgrounds. St. Mary’s is a federally-designated “Hispanic Serving Institution” with a 70% student minority population. Furthermore, 45% of the student body are first generation college attendees.

Located in the heart of San Antonio’s predominately Hispanic Westside, St. Mary’s is one of the largest employers in the neighborhood and boasts a long history of neighborhood engagement. The university’s students, staff, and faculty are committed to community service. The Westside neighborhood suffers from poverty, high unemployment and poor health on the part of its inhabitants. In 2007, the university established a task force to work with community leaders and local business proprietors in order to develop a comprehensive plan suited to the Westside’s specific needs. The task force identified a targeted area consisting of seven census tracts; all are low-income, and six are severely distressed.

The resulting St. Mary’s Neighborhood Revitalization Project, part of the school’s five-year strategic plan, commits the university to working on the revitalization of the areas surrounding the main campus and to be actively involved in community outreach, development and improvement. The Neighborhood Revitalization Project has three chief components: the Neighborhood Resource Center, the Sports Complex, and the renovation of St. Louis Hall.

The Neighborhood Resource Center component of St. Mary’s Neighborhood Revitalization Project will provide desperately needed technical assistance and microgrants to struggling businesses and residents in the neighborhood.

The sports complex component will combat endemic obesity among the poor Hispanic population of the Westside by providing access to state-of-the-art recreational facilities. The new complex will also generate significant new tax revenues for local government, in recognition of which Bexar County has set aside $6 million to help fund the facility.

The final component of the university’s revitalization project, the renovation of historic St. Louis Hall, preserves for future generations one of the most significant buildings remaining on the Westside and the centerpiece of St. Mary’s University.

In June 2012, Crescent Growth Capital accomplished a financial closing on a $12 million Qualified Equity Investment, providing St. Mary’s University with a significant New Markets Tax Credit benefit. This NMTC financing, the first of two that are projected, will keep St. Mary’s Neighborhood Revitalization Project on track by compensating for city budget cuts that threatened the Neighborhood Resource Center with closure, as well as by alleviating pressure on alumni donors and the university’s endowment.

Funded by a $5 million New Markets Tax Credit qualified equity investment paired with another $1 million of unleveraged sources, the Christian Brothers School new multi-purpose facility constitutes the first new building constructed in the New Orleans institution’s fifty-year history. At last, the school’s student body will have access to modern athletic facilities, a dedicated venue for the arts and a science lab.

Qualified for NMTCs under special Gulf Opportunity Zone (“GO Zone”) targeted population rules instituted to assist the Gulf Coast’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina, CBS’ multi-purpose facility is another impressive illustration of the region’s comeback. Like many other area institutions, Christian Brothers School continues to grapple with general post-Katrina financial constraints; without the NMTC subsidy, the school’s new building could not have been afforded.

In 2008, the circa 1895 Main Building of Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, TX was heavily damaged in a four-alarm fire. A $27.5 million New Markets Tax Credit qualified equity investment was structured by Crescent Growth Capital to enable the rebuilding of the historic Main Building, forcefully reiterating OLLU’s status as the foremost venue for Mexican-American economic advancement in the San Antonio region.

The reconstructed Main Building will constitute the foundation stone of a larger effort to revitalize the immediate neighborhood, a highly-distressed census tract with a 25% poverty rate and unemployment nearly 50% more prevalent than in the United States as a whole.

Absent the New Markets subsidy, the university would have had to make up for a multi-million dollar insurance shortfall by cutting back its curricula, reducing student services or increasing tuition, undermining its historic mission of serving disenfranchised populations.