Michael Baker

CEO

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Michael began is career with Boys & Girls Clubs while a college Student at the State University of New York in Albany (now UAlbany) in 1988. Michael graduated in 1990 and took a full-time job with the Boys & Girls Clubs in Lodi, New Jersey. When Michael arrived in Lodi, they had 4 members. That’s right, only 4. Michael created a very successful partnership with the elementary schools where he would go and conduct recess programming daily. He also launched Saturday programming for the first time at the Lodi Club as well. When Michael left Lodi in 1993 membership had grown to 750 members and Saturdays were the busiest day of the week.

Michael then moved on to take a job as the Club Director of the Everett Boys & Girls Clubs in Everett, Washington. Michael created a very successful outreach partnership program with the Everett Housing Authority. This resulted in free memberships for all of the school-aged youth that lived in the complex nearest to the club. One of those members, was Liberty Franklin, who went on to win the National Youth of the Year Award for all of the Clubs in the Country. This is the highest honor given to one member from the entire movement.

Baker left Everett to start a new Boys & Girls Club organization in Skagit County Washington. They opened their first club location in a shopping mall in Burlington Washington. During Michael’s tenure in Skagit County he built relationships with several school districts and secured a $500,000 grant from Senator Patty Murray’s office.

Michael then went on to run the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bellingham Washington. During his time there he was able to lay the foundation for a very successful merger that resulted in the creation of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Whatcom County.

Michael then moved on to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Anaheim. During his 15-year tenure there he grew the organization from a $350,000 annual budget to a 1.5-million-dollar budget. He created a very successful Motel Outreach Program that helped the, more than, 2,000 school aged children living in motel rooms in Anaheim with daily services to and from the clubs for free.

Michael then moved to Santa Barbara California where he took over an organization that was $750,000 in debt. During his 11 years there the clubs eliminated all their debt and grew their reserves to over 1.5 million. Michael helped navigate the organization through a devastating wildfire at their Camp, a roof collapse at a club and of course all of the COVID 19 pandemic.

Michael started with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bend on November 3, 2025 and is thrilled to be here. Michael has said, “I have 12 more years to go and then I will have reached a pretty significant milestone….50 years working for the Boys & Girls Clubs” “I want to finish my career here in Bend and help grow this organization to serve all of Deschutes County.