Opportunities for Donor Advisors | Spring 2022
The following three co-investment opportunities highlight some recent funding requests from local nonprofit organizations.

Family & Children Services

As families in our community navigate extraordinary challenges—barriers relating to poverty, mental illness, suicide, substance abuse, domestic violence, homelessness, and generational abuse and neglect—Family & Children Services has been answering their call since 1903.

The agency provides individualized, best-practice child welfare, behavioral health, and crisis intervention services to those who have experienced complex trauma. A mobile crisis team responds 24/7 to youth experiencing an acute mental health crisis. Foster and adoptive families receive guidance and support through the foster care and adoption process. Stressed families are provided intensive preservation services, and individual, relationship, and family counseling services are available to the community.

The agency also provides in-home mental health and substance use services, case management, and therapeutic residential services. In 2020, a highly skilled and trained staff of social workers and clinicians served 6,352 individuals in our community, including 3,460 children. Family & Children Services brings hope to those in need when they need it most.

Helping Other People Exceed Through Navigation

Every child deserves the opportunity to be as healthy as possible. Yet, not all kids have equitable access to healthy food and safe, affordable physical activity. That’s why Kids Moving & Thriving partners with families to develop healthy kids in mind, body and spirit by offering inclusive physical activity programming and connecting youth to mental and emotional health resources.

Kalamazoo Refugee Resource Collaborative

Kalamazoo Refugee Resource Collaborative (KRRC) creates partnerships to enhance the local resettlement experience of refugees/asylees by:

1. Streamlining the effectiveness of community organizations and individuals around a mutually agreed-upon agenda of protection, care and welcome. One example of this is their Sponsors’ Training Guide for Newcomers, which helps sponsors and newcomers navigate everything from arrivals and education to healthcare and employment. See https://sites.google.com/kalamazoorefugee.org/sponsorsguide/home.
2. Advocating for access to resources, protection, and rights for newcomers. This includes efforts like speaking against the draft Active Shooter Training in KPS out of concern for triggering the war trauma of refugee students and translating the intake questionnaire at the YWCA for a refugee domestic violence victim.
3. Building excellence and durability in Kalamazoo resettlement solutions and services through alliances with member agencies. KRRC created the first adult ESL summer class, which is now administered by the Kalamazoo Literacy Center. In partnership with WMU, KRRC also administered a private summer school tutoring program for high school students.

Note to Our Donor Advisors:
If you would like to support one or more of these projects through the Advised Fund you established at the Community Foundation, please make a grant suggestion using Kalamazoo Connect at https://connect.kalfound.org or complete the grant suggestion form and return it to us by email, USPS or fax. You also may email members of our Donor Relations team, who are available to provide you with more information about these and other community needs.