2 years from the date of our incorporation, and 8 months after filing our application, Forever Homes has finally received its letter of determination from the Internal Revenue Service declaring that we are exempt from Federal Income tax. Although I knew that there wouldn’t be a problem receiving this status, I am relieved that we finally have it. We have heard horror stories about some organizations that waited two or more years from the application date to receive their letter of determination.

So what does this mean to our donors and families? First, donors gifts dating back to August of 2006 are, in fact, tax-deductible, as are all gifts, bequests, and devises from this point on. Second our families can count on increased level of support as we are now able to launch publicly, begin public fund raising, and seek grant money for programs to help abused and neglected kids find permanent safe and loving homes.

Since this is such a momentous occasion, I thought I’d take a quick trip down memory lane and take a peek into the future of Forever Homes.

Our History

In December of 2005 Jennie and I felt the unmistakable call to help foster children and orphans. We obeyed God’s call on our lives and searched the country for organizations doing this kind of work. In February 2006 we moved from Wisconsin to Florida to help open an emergency shelter for boys in sunny Palm Beach County.

During our time there we came to realize that although keeping kids housed was much preferable to letting them run the streets or stay in abusive homes, that it was not the final answer. We continued our search for organizations that were helping find these kids permanent homes, but it seemed that for just about everyone, adoption was the end of the process. We felt that adoption was just the beginning of the process of helping these kids heal. It seemed, however, that since state and federal money stopped with adoption, so did the assistance to the children who were adopted. Furthermore, we discovered that 120,000 kids were waiting each year to be adopted (that is the U.S. number – the world wide number is more than 3 million.)

We caught a vision to make sure that every child had a family by breaking down the barriers to adoption. That meant we were going to have to become experts at foster care and adoption and the problems associated with the transition to adoptive homes. We left the group home we were serving in and moved to Washington where we began the hard work. Over the next 4 months Jennie and I read every article published during the previous 10 years relating to foster care, adoption, and attachment issues. We studied what other organizations had done, what the government was doing, and focused on understanding the shortcomings of our system and how we can fill the holes.

The fruit of our labor was Forever Homes. We incorporated in August of 2006 and began working on implementing the vision. First, though, we would do something practical and tangible about the problem. We adopted 3 children from foster care and spent the next year focusing on them while Forever Homes simmered on the back burner.

In March of 2007 we started the first support group for families of foster and adopted children in our area. It was hugely successful. In June of 2008 we finished filling positions on our board of directors and submitted our research and vision to the IRS for their stamp of approval. This week we got it.

Before our public launch, which is scheduled for May 15, 2009, we provided more than 800 hours of volunteer labor to about a dozen families, started the support group and conducted training for extended support networks – all with only volunteer staff.

The Future

The need is great and the work is abundant, so we hope to hire our first full time staff this year. We’ll begin a public campaign for funding at our kick off concert on May 15 hoping to raise enough to hire the staff to help make this vision a reality, to provide desperately needed support for the families, and to chip away at the three million kids waiting for adoption.

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