CENTRAL FALLS — Once or twice a year, the founders of Project GOAL (Greater Opportunity for Athletes to Learn) meet with other members of the Urban Soccer Collaborative during conventions centered around their sport.

And while Project GOAL does have a great deal in common with the 10 other organizations in the collaborative — all work to foster soccer in inner-city communities around the country, many with an academic component tied in — there is one major thing it lacks.

Big-time sponsors.

Darius Shirzadi, Javier Centeno and Peter Whealton, the three men responsible for running Project GOAL, long for the type of financial status other groups like the Starfinder Foundation in Philadelphia, Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Wave, and even CityKicks, in Boston, enjoy. Those groups have annual budgets that are often in the millions of dollars, thanks to donations from companies like Starbuck’s, adidas, Johnson & Johnson and Comcast.

Program directors there are just program directors; they don’t have to balance a full-time job to pay the bills at home with the full-time job of keeping their organization afloat.

“We’re one of the founding members of the Collaborative,” Shirzadi said recently. “All the others have full-time employees and we’re scraping by.”

That’s not to say that PG founders are ungrateful for the help that they have gotten to this point. On one occasion, an anonymous donor stepped forward, providing the money to keep the four-year program going, and they do receive some support from the communities they serve as well as a good deal of in-kind help.

But as the students in Project GOAL — middle school-aged boys from Central Falls and Pawtucket, many the children of immigrants for whom English is a second language and most from lower-class backgrounds — continue to thrive in the classroom and on the soccer field, other cities and towns have sought out the program.

The problem is, there just isn’t the money to help.

Founded in 2004 by Shirzadi and Centeno, both prominent members of the Rhode Island soccer community (Whealton is a board member), Project GOAL uses soccer as a reward for academic success. Twice a week, 40 students meet after school for 90 minutes of classroom work, and with five teachers available, there’s lots of personal attention.

Only those young men who have had good attendance and performance in school can then take part in 90 minutes of soccer. Those who don’t remain in the classroom. PG also provides transportation for its best players to club team practices, the elite Olympic Development Program, which about 16 students are part of, and tournaments.

And all at no cost to participating families.

There is example after example that the PG system works, perhaps no more so than the nine boys who have been accepted to and are thriving in area private schools in the last couple of years, all receiving near-full scholarships. But there is great success all around, not just from those students who are suited for the rigorous demands of a top-notch secondary school. Grades that were once D’s and F’s are now A’s and B’s, with students rushing to proudly tell Shirzadi and Centeno that they’ve made the honor roll. Attitudes improve and soccer skills improve, as well.

Students who have graduated from the program return to mentor the younger boys. Michael Parkhurst, the Rhode Island native who has become a star defender for the New England Revolution, visits often, and members of the URI, Brown and Providence College soccer teams serve as part-time tutors and playing partners, as well, finding time to work with the PG boys while balancing their own schoolwork and soccer schedules.

Other members of the Urban Soccer Collaborative recognize the great job Project GOAL is doing, and programs in soccer-mad England as well as Bermuda have singled out PG, wanting to create special exchange-type programs with them. But unless a major sponsor steps forward, it just isn’t possible.

Shirzadi and Centeno try their best to look for potential donors, and Whealton leaves no stone unturned, as well.

“You don’t want to sit next to me on an airplane. I pitch Project GOAL to everybody,” Whealton jokes.

Perhaps they should enlist Miguel Lara to make his pitch. The 14-year-old just completed his freshman year at Hendricken, but will transfer to Rocky Hill this fall to be with his brother, also a Project GOAL student.

The impact that PG has had on himself and other boys isn’t lost on Lara, who says, “The kids in this program are probably the luckiest kids in Central Falls and Pawtucket.”

He makes a good argument.

smanza@projo.com