Our Mission
What began in 2009 as a group of friends working together to assist a single residential treatment center has (ten years later) grown into Building New Foundations. Our mission is to affect a positive transformation in the lives of disadvantaged and at-risk youth in the greater Houston area. We do this through the direct support of organizations working to care for at-risk and disadvantaged youth in our community. Our support for these organizations is both financial, providing funds if needed, and direct, organizing volunteers to assist with the needs of the organization and the kids. Our ability to this assistance is made possible through the generosity and talent of our supporters.
Building New Foundations holds three major fundraising events every year, including Poker and Golf tournaments and a Christmas Concert. Thanks to the tremendous generosity of our supporters, we have been able to build and maintain a strategic fund to assist with our mission. Though we have seen great success in fundraising, and we depend on it to accomplish our mission, it is not our primary objective.
Building New Foundations Three “giving” initiatives, in order of importance:
- Organizing Volunteers: Building New Foundations gathers and helps to coordinate volunteer workers and in-kind material and labor donations for repairs and capital work. Our challenge is finding the need and organizing a timely response. We have a tremendous network of supporters and sponsors, and they are always very generous with their time and talents! It’s simply a matter of finding the need and organizing the action.
- Tactical Giving: Building New Foundations makes small donations or facilitates action to help bridge an immediate need. Whether it’s an emergency repair or meeting an insurance deductible, the challenge is again, finding the need! These needs are typically $5,000 or less, which allows us to react quickly and meet the need head on. We realize that fulfilling needs of this nature can make the difference between a child receiving needed shelter and care or being turned away.
- Strategic Giving: Building New Foundations makes large or regular donations to support specific organizations with specific missions. The challenge is reducing or eliminating risk while maximizing the impact of the donation on disadvantaged youth. We take our role as stewards of the donated funds very seriously; this means that we are very thoughtful about these larger donations; who they go to, and for what purpose.
Building New Foundations is unique in the sense that our strength is in our relationships throughout the real estate and construction industries in Houston. We are most effective in leveraging our relationships with contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, engineers and architects. Because of this strength, we tend to focus on maintaining and improving the living conditions of disadvantaged youth in our community.
Because of our supporter base, we are working to add a fourth initiative to our mission: To facilitate job training and employment for those kids who have, or soon will, “age-out” of the system. We hope to provide more detail regarding this initiative soon.
We can never thank our supporters enough for their generous support over the last decade. We are very proud and humbled to be part of a community that is willing to donate whatever time, talent, material or money necessary to make a difference in the lives of kids in our community. Thank you so much for your support, and we look forward to seeing what we can accomplish together in the next ten years!