Thursday, March 23, 2017

Four



Our 4th birthday came and went quietly.

Quietly is how we do business.

For the past four years we have grown steadily as a nonprofit with a mission statement that has held true.


We've funded many opportunities for children over the last four years and we are especially proud of the ways we've helped them afford the peripheral items & equipment needed to participate in their chosen activity so they can truly show up and blend in.  We are fiercely determined to make blending in an option for our K50 kids. However, this consistently leaves us with a marketing dilemma.

Making a choice to keep the details of our K50 children's lives private (financially and otherwise) means we are not able to leverage their stories to help us raise funds.  This topic comes up in conversation at all our Board meetings and we always land in the same place.  We are not willing to exploit the very lives we are working to improve.

In the early years we were concerned this decision would make for a short-lived nonprofit, but we stayed the course.  Now, in year four, we can see that our decision is not only wise, it is right.  We want our K50 kids to step into their funded opportunities with a clean slate and if this means we take a financial hit so they don't have to, then that is how it will be.  Providing opportunities for them to be free of constraints in their young lives is incredibly rewarding for us.  They deserve that and much, much more.

How have we been able to stay afloat without any significant marketing plan?  Our donors are incredibly committed to our mission and our circle of support grows wider every year.  Word of mouth is our greatest tool and people simply volunteer to donate.  In our first year, we solicited local businesses for donations.  Since then, we've been held strong by unsolicited donations.  People get it.  They don't need to see the face of a child or hear about the child's struggles to be convinced to donate.  They simply remember their own childhoods, draw from those experiences and donate as a way to pay their own gratitude forward.  Meantime, we continue to promise that 100% of all donated funds will go directly to the children we sponsor.

There will never be a shortage of children who need our financial support. And, hopefully, there will never be a shortage of people who want to fund the activities our K50 kids both want and need in their lives.

The experience of being part of an organization that is truly doing good in our community brings rewards that can't be measured.  Our most heart-felt thanks to all of you who have made the last four years so remarkable.  We truly could not do it without you.