EVERYTHING ABOUT Gary Yazwa's office suggests a man on the move.

A sticker emblazoned with the word "Enthusiasm"clings to a lamp. Papers splay across his desk. Framed school degrees, photos and posters - one of Michael Jordan soaring towarda monster dunk - watch over him from the walls.

It all makes sense. Yazwa works relentlessly. He talks about a planned vacation as if it were a tall, cool drink of water after a day in the desert.

"I've never taken a month off, ever," he says, settling his 60-year-old, 6-foot-1, 230-pound frame into a high-back leather chair. "I never did that before, you know? I just need to do that."

Keeping Yazwa busy is his position as president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound, a post he's held since 1996. Upping the ante is the nonprofit's ambitious $60 million campaign to build seven more clubs in the South Sound, which will set the stage for a major rethinking of the organization's mission. The nonprofit wants the clubs to serve not just as places for sports and other after-school activities, but also as places that offer a mix of health, education and recreational services aimed at making measurable improvements in the lives of kids and their families.

Yazwa calls them HOPE centers: Home to Opportunity, Possibility and Empowerment. The centers, 25,000 to 31,000 square feet in size, will be built near schools and public transportation, making it easier for families to use them. The nonprofit publicly kicked off its campaign in September 2005. So far, $37 million has been raised. And the first center is under construction in Lakewood, where it will share space with an elementary school and community service organizations.

The $60 million goal puts the campaign among the largest ever by a social service organization in the Pacific Northwest, says Stuart Grover, a former owner of the CollinsGroup, a fundraising consulting firm with offices in Seattle and Portland.

Further distinguishing the campaign is its break from Boys and Girls Club tradition. A May 2004 report outlined the new direction: Rather than pick a few communities in which to build stand-alone clubs, the organization would build many new facilities in places where children are under-served. Each facility would offer a mix of nonprofit services tailored to the community's needs.

Grover says the nonprofit's new direction and fundraising goal can be accomplished under Yazwa's leadership.

"He's an extraordinarily outgoing, affable kind of guy, who is fearless and really willing to talk to anyone about the Boys and Girls Clubs," Grover says.

Yazwa grew up in McKeesport, Pa., the oldest of three brothers. He hung out with friends on blue-collar White Street. His father, Walter, was a pipe maker at the local steel mill. The work wasn't steady. Gary's mother, Nellie, cleaned rooms at the local hospital whenever Walter was laid off.

When Yazwa was 8 years old, his life changed: A Boys Club went up three blocks away from his house. He went there almost every day after school. "At the club, you could learn woodshop and crafts," he says. "You were taught to be fair - no racism - to treat people with respect."

School was a different story. He didn't like it. A fourth-grade experience cemented his dislike. One day, he acted out in class. The teacher led him to the bathroom. She made him bite down on a bar of soap.

Today, as Yazwa leans back in his chair and recalls the taste of that bar of soap, he doesn't sound like a CEO. "It tasted like crap," he says. "Man, I was pissed."

In his teens, Yazwa developed an ability to talk his way into things. He'd persuade staff at the Boys Club to let him go on field trips even when his grades weren't up to snuff. It's no big deal, he'd tell them. Wait until they saw his report card next time, he'd assure them.

He also listened to Lou JaBore, program director for the club. One day, JaBore stunned Yazwa with something he said.  

"Gary, you're a leader," he said.

"What do you mean I'm a leader?" Yazwa replied.

"Every time you're here, you've got 15 or 16 kids with you - every time,"JaBore said.

"They're my friends," Yazwa said. "They just come up to the club with me."

Later, what JaBore had told Yazwa sank in. And something else JaBore had said stuck with him: Don't pay so much attention to your friends and their jobs at the steel mill and their Corvettes. Go to college. The steel mill won't be around forever.

Yazwa heeded the message. And, despite his early disregard for studying, he plowed through college, eventually earning a bachelor's degree in education from Clarion University in 1969.

All the while, the Boys Club beckoned. Yazwa returned to the club in McKeesport, first taking ajob as physical education director and later becoming program director. Yazwa honed his persuasive powers by observing his boss, Sam LaRosa, a man of slight build who had battled polio as a child.

LaRosa expected those who had the means to give, to give. "I remember him taking a bunch of us to go shopping for supplies," Yazwa recalls, "and everywhere we went, Sam never paid a bill, because he had already struck an agreement with the owner that they could support the club by providing program supplies or other materials that we could use."

Yazwa ascended the Boys and Girls Club organization, becoming executive director of the Tempe Boys Club in Arizona in 1978. He developed allies. One of them, an area land developer named C.W. Jackson, was a hard sell. So Yazwa deployed the lessons he learned from LaRosa.

After repeated phone calls didn't work, Yazwa dropped by Jackson's office one afternoon. "Tell him I'm here, and I'm not leaving until he talks to me," Yazwa remembers telling the receptionist. He waited two hours to meet Jackson. When they finally met, Yazwa persuaded Jackson to at least visit the small, deteriorating club in Tempe.

It worked: Jackson contributed $500,000 to the club. In the 1980s and '90s, Yazwa built on that early success, spearheading the merger and expansion of clubs, and becoming president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the East Valley, which includes the Tempe Club.

By the time Yazwa left his post in Arizona for Pierce County in 1996, the East Valley organization served 10,000 kids and ran a $2.7 million annual budget - up from 300 kids and $54,000 in 1978.

In Pierce County, Yazwa found a new challenge. Rick Allen, president of the United Way of Pierce County, which is backing the $60 million campaign, says Yazwa rarely takes a break. "When we run into each other," Allen says, "we say, 'Let's go down to the waterfront and have a beer.' We probably say that three times every year, and it happens once every three years because he's running."

Back in his downtown Tacoma office, Yazwa checks his computer for the schedule of building tours he plans to give for potential donors. His Blackberry brims with 2,400 names and phone numbers. And he's always ready to talk: A hands-free cell phone lives on his left ear.

When Yazwa was a "very rambunctious" boy, he says, the club gave him a safe place to play, to think, to stay off the streets. Now, he's on a mission "to take my drive and my passion and my persistence and try to use that to serve more kids, to try to change communities and neighborhoods,"Yazwa says.

The man is on the move.

Aaron Corvin is a senior writer for Washington CEO.