2025 Foundation Grantees
Each of the following organizations is making a measurable impact in the lives of foster youth and kinship families. We’re proud to support their work. Over the course of the year, we’ll introduce you to each of them.
- Adoptee Mentoring Society (Seattle, WA) – Provides mentorship and community for adopted and former foster youth.
- Fostering Hope Foundation (Colorado Springs, CO) – Supports foster families and children in care with holistic, wraparound services.
- Route 21 (Seattle, WA) – Offers transitional support for young adults aging out of foster care, including housing, life skills, and mentorship.
- Project 1.27 (Aurora, CO) – Equips faith communities to recruit and support foster and adoptive families.
- Project Lemonade (Portland, OR) – Empowers youth impacted by foster care through back-to-school resources, internships, and confidence-building programs.
- Treehouse (Seattle, WA) – Promotes educational equity and graduation success for youth in foster care.
- Bridge Meadows (Portland, OR) – Builds intergenerational communities that support foster-to-adopt families and elders.
- Family Education & Support Services (Restricted for the Kinship Care Program, Tumwater, WA) – Strengthens families through kinship care resources, education, and advocacy.
Why We Give
When I first joined the CFO Selections Foundation board, I didn’t come with a personal tie to foster care. I brought deep nonprofit expertise and a belief that access to opportunity shouldn’t depend on luck.
My background is in nonprofit and government work, and as a CFO I serve almost exclusively nonprofit organizations. So I understood how they operate, how funding works, and how hard it can be to find meaningful, flexible dollars. Joining was a natural fit. But the more time I spent with the Foundation, the more I was impacted by the personal stories: listening to my fellow board members’ lived experience; the founders of these nonprofits who are boots on the ground. They are the ones doing the truly heroic work. We’re just lucky enough to come alongside them.
Rooted in Values, Not Optics
That belief, that nonprofits are doing heroic work, and business should be in service of community, is baked into the very DNA of the Foundation. It’s not a marketing initiative or side project. It’s a commitment. One that was instilled by Founder Tom Varga and championed today by our Managing Partner Kevin Briscoe.
“Even when I first joined CFO Selections as a billable consultant,” Kevin recalls, “Tom was already talking about the moral and ethical obligation to give back. It wasn’t just about the work. It was about doing something more substantive, to actually make an impact in the communities we’re part of.”
Targeting Our Impact
From the beginning, the Foundation has focused that impact on youth. Early on, that meant all kids. But we quickly realized that "kids" was too broad a category to serve well. So we narrowed in on foster care and kinship care, areas where needs are urgent, funding is insufficient, and outcomes are life-changing.
If a child goes to a foster home, the state pays the family a stipend. If they go to grandma and grandpa? They often don’t get a dime. Kinship care is the better solution in many cases, but the system doesn’t make it easy. These families are caught between wanting to care for their kids and being able to afford it. We want to help remove that tradeoff.
Trust, Not Control
That sense of urgency and the desire to be truly helpful has shaped the Foundation’s giving model. The board, made up largely of community experts and practitioners, plays a critical role in vetting potential partners and evaluating the invite-only list of grantees. Almost all grants are unrestricted. The goal is not to micromanage outcomes, but to empower organizations to do what they do best.
“We ask ourselves, do we see a path to this gift being valued and utilized in a way that moves the needle?” Kevin said. “If the answer is yes, then let’s trust them to do it.”
The Power of Early and Ongoing Support
That trust pays dividends. In several cases, the Foundation has been among the earliest funders of promising new organizations. One example is Adoptee Mentoring Society, which supports adopted and former foster youth of all ages. We found them when they were just getting started. Now we’re in our third year of partnership, and it’s been really rewarding to watch them grow.
This is what compounding impact looks like. The Foundation doesn’t just write a check and walk away. We listen, learn, and stick around. Sometimes for years. Our goal is to complete the puzzle. Since many grants don’t cover the full need, we can help fill the gaps that make these programs actually work.
It Comes Down to People
For all the structure and process the Foundation brings to the table, its power still comes down to people. That includes my colleagues and partners, our consultants who donate their time and clients who help fund the work, and of course the leaders who roll up their sleeves.
“We choose to prioritize this,” Kevin said. “Giving is not mandated. We do it because it matters. And because the truth is, it feels better this way.”
A Question Worth Asking
It would be easy to let this work fade into the background. To treat it like an annual giving report or line item on a website. But the real opportunity is to let it do what it’s always done: pull us closer to one another. Not just the Foundation and its grantees, but every person who makes up the CFO Selections community.
When we believe that every kid deserves a shot, and every business has a role to play, the conversation doesn’t end when the check clears.
It starts when we ask: How else can we help?
