Semper pro pueris · Always, for the children
A backpack that arrives before the first day. Food that arrives every Friday. A mentor who is still there in year three. For American kids growing up in poverty, and for the 2.5 million being raised by a grandmother, an aunt, a neighbor, the rarest thing in their lives was never money. It was somebody who kept showing up.
Where we stand
The December toy drive. The August back-to-school fair. The one-off motivational assembly. These are real, and they are kind, and they address a moment rather than a situation. The lesson a kid takes from them is that good things come once.
Every Semper program is built as a repetition, not an event. The backpack is a year of supplies, not a bag. The food is every Friday, not a holiday hamper. The mentor signs a three-year minimum, because the research is consistent and uncomfortable: a mentoring match that breaks inside the first year leaves a child measurably worse off than no match at all.
Who this is for
Every figure below comes from a government or independent source, linked at the bottom of this page.
American children lived below the official poverty line in 2024 — roughly one in every seven.
U.S. Census Bureau, P60-287 (2025)children lived in food-insecure households in 2024. For many of them, school meals are the two most reliable meals of the week.
USDA Economic Research Service (2025 report, 2024 data)children are being raised by a grandparent, another relative, or a close family friend with no parent in the home, usually without any of the support a foster placement would receive.
Generations United / Annie E. Casey Foundation (2025); GAO-26-107658children were in foster care in FY2024. Thirty-nine percent of them were placed with a relative.
HHS Children’s Bureau, AFCARS FY2024 (preliminary)of students who are both low-income and first-generation earn a bachelor’s degree within six years. For continuing-generation peers, it is 55%.
Pell Institute; Common App / NSC Research Center (2025)is what the average U.S. teacher spent out of their own pocket on classroom supplies in 2024–25. In high-poverty schools, that money is usually buying for someone else’s child.
AdoptAClassroom.org 2025 Teacher Spending SurveyWhat we actually do
Program 01 · Every August
A backpack built to last four years, plus a full school year of supplies: not one week’s worth, but enough to restock in October, January and April. Delivered to the teacher against a roster, so no child has to queue for it in front of the class.
Program 02 · Every Friday
School meals cover Monday to Friday. They do not cover the weekend. Before dismissal we put a bag into the backpack: shelf-stable, no stove required, openable by an eight-year-old. Every Friday, all year, with no income paperwork at the door.
Program 03 · Renewable to graduation
$2,500 a year, renewable to graduation, with no GPA cliff attached — one bad semester should not end a degree. Every award is tied to a program officer who initiates contact monthly, because the real attrition point for low-income first-generation students is not admission. It is sophomore year.
Program 04 · Three-year minimum
Mentor matching with a three-year floor, full background screening, training, and monthly supervision for the adult. We turn some applicants away, not because they are bad people, but because they can only offer a year. The three-year floor exists because the research says shorter matches do more harm than good.
Program 05 · Kinship families
For the grandparents and aunts who became parents overnight: a bed, a car seat, legal navigation for guardianship and school enrollment, and one real afternoon of respite a month. These families save the public an estimated $10.5 billion a year and receive almost none of the system’s support.
The programs page lists eligibility, delivery method, our published definition of failure for each program, and the things we have decided not to do.
How it works
Names come from homeroom teachers, school social workers and kinship support groups. They already know who is quietly struggling. No family submits proof of poverty, and no child appears in a fundraising photo.
Backpacks in August. Bags every Friday. Scholarship disbursed in August and again in January. Mentor sessions fortnightly. Nothing depends on whether a gala came together.
A one-time handout and a year of weekly meals both count as one child served. The three numbers we commit to publishing are match survival rate, consecutive years enrolled, and scholar re-enrollment. Until the first full fiscal year closes there will be no figures here. An invented one would be worse than a blank.
Scholarships renew to graduation. Mentor relationships have no expiry date.
This space is empty on purpose
What will appear here when the first fiscal year closes are the four below, published whatever they turn out to say.
children served for a full consecutive school year
mentor matches that reached three years, and the count that broke before it
Fridays on which a rostered child did not receive a bag
average consecutive years per child
Two of those four measure failure rather than success. That is deliberate.
What is not on this page
We have not been running long enough for anyone to quote. When a family is ready to speak, their words will go here.
So what sits here is a commitment rather than a track record. When a family is willing to speak and has completed the written consent process, their words appear here under a pseudonym, without a photograph, and withdrawable by them at any age.
Where the money goes
A low overhead ratio sometimes means efficiency. Sometimes it means an organisation is not paying its people enough to stay, or not spending anything on measuring outcomes. We publish the ratio together with what sits behind it, including the cost of supervising mentors, which books as administration and is the reason the program functions.
| Gift | What lands on the child’s side |
|---|---|
| $25 | Five straight weekends of Friday Bags for one child |
| $65 | One Backpack Drop: bag plus a year of supplies |
| $180 | A full school year of weekend food, 38 weekends |
| $400 | A Kinship Bridge setup kit: bed, car seat, legal help |
| $1,100 | One supervised mentor match for a year |
| $2,500 | One Semper Scholar for one academic year |
Monthly giving can be cancelled any time. Receipts are issued immediately.
Three ways in
One · Give
Not because of the total, but because of the predictability. Forecastable income is the only thing that lets us promise a child three years. Monthly donors are the floor this whole thing stands on.
Two · Time
Mentors, scholar tutors, and Kinship Bridge respite volunteers all require screening and training. We also genuinely need people to pack Friday Bags on Friday afternoons, and that one is fine as a one-off.
Three · Organisations
Most large employers will match your gift one-to-one, and most employees have never checked whether theirs does. Campus chapters can run a local Backpack Drop end to end. Legacy gifts are the single best-shaped money for a long promise.
Straight answers
Yes. Semper Foundation is tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, EIN 13-4141897. Gifts are deductible for U.S. taxpayers to the extent allowed by law, and a receipt is issued immediately. You do not have to take our word for it. Look up the EIN in the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search and confirm it independently. We are separately verified by Goodstack, the same verification Google, Canva and TikTok use to confirm nonprofit status.
You can, for any of the five programs. But we will be honest: an unrestricted gift is worth more to us. Earmarking produces a common and avoidable problem, where the backpack fund overflows while the food fund is short and we are not allowed to move the money. If you trust our judgement, choose “where it is needed most.”
This is deliberate. A meaningful share of the children we serve are connected to domestic violence, immigration status, custody disputes, or parental incarceration, and a photograph can create real danger. Beyond safety: turning a child’s worst year into fundraising material is something they may reasonably resent as an adult. Every image on this site is a licensed stock photograph and depicts no child we serve.
Each program has a written line. Mentoring: any match that ends before three years is logged as a failure, whatever the reason. Friday Bags: any Friday a child on the roster does not receive one is a failure. Scholars: any scholar who leaves over paperwork or money is a failure. These counts appear in the annual report, not in an appendix.
Yes. Two caveats: our U.S. exemption is still pending (see above), and even once granted, 501(c)(3) deductibility generally does not extend to taxpayers in other countries. Check with a local adviser. We do not give tax advice.
One last thing
Sources cited on this page
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