The CSF team helps us maximize our opportunities with the funding, supporting our vision as an organization and ensuring we stay true to our core mission of helping children.

The CSF understands that the nonprofit community needs to collaborate. If we all work independently and are in competition or perceived competition with one another, that doesn’t help the kids of Kansas City. And then, I think they put their money where their mouth is, funding a collective impact model. In the funding community, funders often view each and every organization in a vacuum and an entity unto itself, without looking at how we might come together for greater impact. The Children’s Service Fund gets the importance of changing the way we deliver services and work together and that has been unbelievably important for the work that we do. They continue to recognize that though the players may change, the goals are the same and they facilitate achieving those goals for our kids.

It’s really exciting to see the court responding to the needs of kids and families in foster care because of community relationships and opportunities like funding through the Children’s Services Fund.

If the CSF didn’t fund these collaborative approaches, there would be many barriers and many therapy hours that would go unreimbursed. We would spend a lot of time needing to be creative with fundraising and figuring out how to cover complex services like parent coaching and programming. Because of the CSF funding, we are able to serve children and families who have these more complicated dynamics and more complicated therapy goals.