The CFOS Foundation is proud to announce that nine grants have been awarded for 2024, totaling $200,000! We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to work alongside these outstanding organizations, empowering communities across the regions CFO Selections serves. Together, we are making a meaningful impact!
The mission of the CFOS Foundation is to invest in Nonprofits supporting youth and families impacted by foster and kinship care within the communities CFO Selections serves.
The 2024 grantees include seven repeat organizations and two new organizations. The repeat organizations include Kinship House, Adoptee Mentoring Society, Fostering Hope Foundation, Route 21, NorthStar Advocates, Reach Northwest, and Embrace Washington. The new organizations include Foster Source and Family Education & Support Services.
Below is an expanded description of the 2024 grantees:
Kinship House
The Kinship House provides outpatient mental health services to foster and adopted children and their families. They specialize in championing children and families with target interventions during all stages of foster care, reunification, and adoption. Founded in 1996, they are a locally accessible facility based in the Lloyd District east of Portland, Oregon.
Kinship House serves over 500 children annually with innovative and individualized outpatient therapy, helping them work through the trauma of foster care and adoption, connect with safe adults, and thrive.
Adoptee Mentoring Society
The Adoptee Mentoring Society exists to support adoptees through compassionate, virtual mentorship. Their mission is to stimulate connection and build community for adopted persons worldwide. They provide virtual mentorship for adoptees – by adoptees, including group mentorship via 3-8 person support groups and individual mentoring sessions. Although AMS is a relatively new organization, it served nearly 200 people in the last year alone.
Fostering Hope Foundation
In partnership with faith communities, businesses, and other nonprofits, Fostering Hope Foundation supports over 40 foster families in the Colorado Springs region and dozens of teens and young adults who are emancipating or aging out of the child welfare system. Their volunteer network acts as the extended family these kids missed out on and the foster parents need to keep going.
Fostering Hope Foundation recruits and trains teams of 4-8 people/households who act as aunts, uncles, and grandparents to individual foster families in El Paso/Teller County. These teams provide practical and emotional support to parents and children intending to create the safe, stable, and relational environment inherent in healthy families and known by neuroscience to help heal development trauma.
Foster Source
Sticking in Colorado, Foster Source is a new grantee of the CFOS Foundation, but has been serving foster and kinship families since 2017. Foster Source offers trauma education, relief services, and therapeutic services to foster and kinship families throughout Colorado.
Up to 70% of new foster parents quit within the first 1-2 years. Foster Source is changing that. They believe that when we pour services into foster parents, they foster better and they foster longer. When this happens, children remain in stable placements and heal, so their vision is to inspire lasting healing in vulnerable children through confident, compassionate foster and kinship parents.
Family Education & Support Services
Our other new grant recipient in 2024, focusing on Thursday, Lewis and Mason Counties in Washington, is Family Education & Support Services. Their Kinship Program works to advance activities and training that support Kinship care providers, their families, and the professionals who work with them.
While extended families have always helped with child rearing, a growing number of grandparents and extended family are becoming primary caregivers. Often, these families need additional support to navigate complex social service systems. Additionally, the CFOS Foundation grant will be applied to Kinship youth requesting financial support for social activities, academic challenges, and cultural events.
Route 21
Route 21 is a unique seven-year mentoring program serving youth and young adult mentors. We believe it will be the best mentoring model in the country for youth aging out of the foster care system. The mission of Route 21 is to find young adults who grew up in foster care to be paid and supported to mentor youth currently in care.
Reach Northwest
Located in Newberg, Oregon, REACH Northwest mobilizes the community to support & equip children and families impacted by foster care with programs, resources, and tools to help them thrive. REACH NW works in Polk and Yamhill County to love and care for vulnerable children in foster care and their parents and caregivers. Additionally, they organize an overnight summer camp experience for foster children ages 7 to 11 years of age.
NorthStar Advocates
NorthStar Advocates is a young, small, grassroots organization that is mission-driven and laser-focused. It is the third nonprofit organization founded by Jim Theofelis, including The Mockingbird Society and A Way Home Washington. An early decision was made to support and partner with other organizations focused on improving the other care systems, including foster/kinship, juvenile justice, and inpatient/residential behavioral health. NorthStar Advocates is also a start-up organization.
Embrace Washington
Embrace Washington is committed to caring for and supporting children in foster care within our community. We do this by raising awareness of vulnerable children's needs and identifying how to meet those needs by connecting individuals and organizations with a heart to serve the foster care community.
They strive to eliminate any roadblocks that foster parents face to provide an everyday happy life for a child in foster care. These roadblocks could be various things, such as providing a foster child a new bed, educational support, paying for summer camp, music or sports, and educational support, to name a few. Activities for foster children and their families build healthy memories and experiences that allow kids to feel loved and stable in uncertain times.
About the CFOS Foundation
Founded in 2007, the CFOS Foundation invests in Nonprofits that support youth and families impacted by foster and kinship care within the communities CFO Selections serves.
The CFOS Foundation annual grant making and application process is by invitation alone. Unsolicited grant request will not be considered.
