Home Programs
Five programs, each with a written description of what its failure looks like.
Each section below covers what the program is, who is eligible, how it is delivered, what one unit costs, how we log a failure, and what we deliberately do not do.
Program 01 · Every August
The Backpack Drop
The average U.S. teacher spends $895 a year of their own money on classroom supplies, much of it bought for students. One goal of this program is to get that money back out of a teacher's salary.
What is in it
A backpack with a reinforced base and a lifetime zip warranty, plus a grade-appropriate year of supplies: notebooks, binders, pens, geometry tools, a calculator for older grades, art materials, and three restocks in October, January and April. Lower grades also include one pair of properly fitting trainers — that item came from teachers asking repeatedly, not from us.
Who is eligible
Nominated by a homeroom teacher or school social worker at a partner school. No family files income paperwork. Enrollment renews automatically year on year until a teacher tells us it is no longer needed.
How it is delivered
Shipped in bulk to the school and handed out by the teacher against a roster before term starts, inside the school's ordinary distribution routine. No event, no photograph, no donors present. The backpack the child carries does not have our logo on it.
Program 02 · Every Friday
Friday Bags
14.1 million American children lived in food-insecure households in 2024. School meals cover Monday through Friday. The weekend is a known, weekly, precisely located hole.
What is in it
Two breakfasts, two lunches, two dinners, four snacks and a carton of shelf-stable milk, all no-cook, no-can-opener, openable by an eight-year-old. Menus are set by a registered dietitian, revised each semester on school feedback, and screened against the common religious dietary restrictions and allergens in that community.
Who is eligible
Any child nominated by a teacher or social worker at a partner school. At some schools we distribute to every student, because the cost of making it visible which children need it is higher than the cost of a few dozen extra bags.
How it is delivered
Placed into the backpack by the teacher, in the classroom, before Friday dismissal. Not in the cafeteria, not at the gate, no names called. Plain kraft bags with no organisational marking, so nothing is visible on the bus home.
Program 03 · Renewable to graduation
Semper Scholars
Only 11% of students who are both low-income and first-generation finish a bachelor's degree within six years. The attrition does not happen at admission. It happens in year two: one medical bill, one dead laptop, one form nobody taught them how to fill in.
What it is
$2,500 a year, disbursed in August and January, paid to the student rather than the institution, because the thing that usually breaks someone is not tuition, it is rent, transport, textbooks and emergencies. Plus a laptop they keep, and a $500 one-time emergency fund drawn without having to justify it.
Renewal terms
No GPA threshold. If the student is enrolled, the award continues. A bad semester usually means something happened in that student's life, which is the precise moment not to withdraw support. If they take a leave of absence, the place is held for two years.
The part that is a person
Every scholar is assigned a program officer who initiates contact monthly, not “reach out if you need anything” but an actual call from us. It is the most expensive part of the program and the most effective.
Program 04 · Three-year minimum
One Steady Adult
There is a finding in the mentoring literature that is well replicated and rarely said out loud: a match that breaks inside the first year leaves a child measurably worse off than no match at all. So the floor is three years, and we would rather make fewer matches.
What a mentor commits to
Three years. Fortnightly, roughly two hours, plus contact around birthdays and school milestones. Full background screening, twelve hours of pre-match training, and a monthly supervision session with a licensed social worker. Moving away does not end it. We support long-distance continuation, but it has to be planned for.
Who we turn away
People who can only offer a year. People who want to change a child's life, a motive with poor durability. People processing a recent loss of their own. And anyone whose interview suggests they need the child to be grateful. None of these are judgements about character. All of them are about durability.
On the child's side
A child can end it at any time, without giving a reason, with no effect on any other program they receive. No child is ever told that someone chose them, which turns the relationship into a debt.
Program 05 · Kinship families
Kinship Bridge
About 2.5 million American children are being raised by grandparents or other relatives with no parent in the home. The overwhelming majority never entered the foster system, usually because a relative stepped in and spared the child that rupture. The cost of doing so is that they receive none of the stipend, training or support a foster placement would have brought.
The setup kit
A bed and bedding, an age-correct car seat, basic clothing, a desk and a lamp. It sounds elementary. It is exactly what is missing when a 68-year-old grandmother takes in two children on a Tuesday night and has to solve it that day with no budget.
Legal and administrative navigation
Help obtaining guardianship or a caregiver authorisation affidavit, school enrollment (districts routinely demand documents a relative cannot produce), health coverage registration, and applications for the public benefits they were already eligible for and never told about. Delivered by partner legal aid organisations, free to the family.
Respite
One afternoon a month with a screened carer present, so the caregiver can go to a doctor, get a haircut, or do nothing. Around half of kinship caregivers are over sixty. This is not a luxury; it is what makes the arrangement survivable.
Deliberately absent
What we have decided not to do
Scope creep kills programs. An organisation good at one thing takes a grant for something else and five years later is stretched across ten. Writing down what we will not do helps us hold the line.
- No galas, auctions or golf tournaments. Their net fundraising efficiency is usually far worse than it looks.
- No one-day volunteer experiences. They consume staff time and produce donor photographs.
- No Christmas toy drives. December is not the shortage. February is.
- No sponsorship conditional on filming or interviewing a child we serve.
- No sponsor-a-child pairings. They make a child into something displayed.
- No expansion into a district before the existing ones have held for three years.
Pick one