MetaFund Helps Crossover Community Impact Reach Funding Goal for New Community Center

Apr 4

Media Release: April 4, 2022

Allegra Williams stumbled across the Crossover Sports Association a few years back when she was looking for a little league football team for one of her sons. That discovery moved the needle for the single mother’s family, improving their lives in ways she couldn’t, at that time, even imagine.

Fast forwarding to 2022 finds Williams and four of her sons active members of the Crossover community. They are all excitedly awaiting the estimated August 2023 completion of the Crossover Community Center which is planned for 36th St. N. and Peoria Ave. The project was recently approved for a $19 million allocation of New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) from the nonprofit, MetaFund. The tax credits incentivized private investment from US Bank and created a subsidy which closed Crossover’s fundraising gap to develop the new community center.

“From the moment we started talking to the Crossover team, their hopes and ambitions for this community center were contagious. We are honored to invest in those aspirations through the NMTC program and confident that the center will further compound the amazing work Crossover is doing in North Tulsa,” said Blake Trippet, president of MetaFund.

Williams is familiar with North Tulsa, she lives there. With a poverty rate around 39 percent, the area experiences various problems. Few businesses and limited job opportunities have opened the door to crime and created blighted neighborhoods.

However, programs like the Crossover Sports Association, operated by the nonprofit organization Crossover Community Impact, are quietly working to change things in North Tulsa, particularly the Hawthorne Neighborhood area.

With a vision statement that includes the phrase Restoring Our Community, the nonprofit is tackling the issues living in their backyard. Their goal is for their community to become one brimming with healthy individuals, faithful families, peaceful neighborhoods, and thriving institutions.

“The Crossover Community Center has been a dream of ours for over 16 years. Our hope and prayer is that God will use this facility as a catalyst for community transformation in North Tulsa,” said Philip Abode, Co-founder of Crossover Community Impact.

Through their network of multifaceted ministries, members of Crossover Bible Church and their affiliated nonprofit have been operating a medical clinic, after school and summer programs for kids, youth jobs program, athletic programs, schools, and an affordable housing development company as a holistic approach to the problems in their area.

And thanks in large part to their efforts and programs, Williams’ younger sons are not only succeeding, but excelling, in sports and academics.

“That football team is like a family. The coaches care about the kids, they work with the families, and they win championships,” Williams noted.

While her son was playing little league, Crossover opened the boys’ school. She was so impressed with the way the sports association was conducted, she sent him as well as her younger sons to Crossover Prep.

“My kids were struggling in public school. I transferred them over and my son, who had an IEP, started making straight As and winning awards. Another one of my sons — whose father and grandfather had recently passed — had started acting out and was not doing well in public school. I transferred him to Crossover Prep. I’m not sure how they reached him, but he soon became a good student making good grades. The Crossover Prep teachers really care about these kids and interact with the students and parents. If one of my boys makes a C, I hear from them and we work together toward improvement,” she added.

Williams became so involved with her sons’ activities, she was offered a part-time job with the church. She is also active in the Lion’s Den, an organization geared toward encouraging parents to interact with students at the school. When Crossover opened their health care clinic, Williams was excited because it provided local services, reducing her drive time to receive health care. Now, she is really excited about the coming community center.

“This center will open doors to these kids. It will keep them focused, off the streets and help keep them on the right path,” she observed.

The center will house multiple Crossover-affiliated community development programs including:

Crossover Health Services’ programs for the family medical clinic, which will be located next door and whose client capacity will increase from 8,000 to 24,000 with the community center.
Crossover Preparatory Academy, an all-boys, 6 - 12th grade, tuition-free private school. The community center will provide a permanent home for the school and expand their student capacity from 135 to 315;
Crossover Kids and StreetLeaders Programs offer tutoring, after-school, and summer day camp STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) programs serving students from the surrounding schools, while simultaneously creating jobs for high school students. The center will provide a permanent home allowing them to increase capacity from 50 to 180 elementary age students and 10 to 30 high school students while providing library and computer resources not currently available for Pre-K through 12 graders;
Crossover Development Company’s Personal Finance classes, which will help individuals in the community become homeowners of the revitalized and new homes Crossover constructs. Construction job certification courses will also occur at the community center helping individuals in the community become certified through the National Center for Construction Education & Research;
Crossover Sports Association provides extracurricular youth sports and wellness programs to the surrounding community. The new center will provide 2 full-sized basketball courts, a weight training center, and cardio rooms, allowing the organization to begin serving 500 families, including teens and adults.

Construction on the project is expected to begin in the middle of May. Estimates show that it will create 100 temporary construction jobs as it’s being built and at least 59 new full-time jobs when the center opens. More information about the organization and the project is available at https://crossoverimpact.org/crossover-community-center/