The Colorado Institute for Social Impact (CI4SI) was hired by Fostering Hope to conduct a study for Social Return on Investment (SROI). The CI4SI SROI Team received data directly from Fostering Hope and then collected metrics and analyzed the data for the year 2019. You can review the entire report by downloading it below. Here is a brief summary of the findings:
1
This program is about Depth as well as Breadth
Often times mission focused organizations are only able to share their outputs in the form of such data as “number served”. SROI takes even the smallest number served and breaks out impact across categories and at the same time assigning a dollar value that everyone can understand.
2
This is a Future-Focused Program
Much of the work that Fostering Hope is doing will have an impact that shows its strength years down the road as these children and young people venture out on their own and are able to maintain financial stability, healthy relationships, and prosocial behaviors. Because long term outcomes are such a crucial goal for the success of Fostering Hope, we recommend that those viewing this report take into consideration all the categories of impact, not just the immediately tangible impacts in the Established category.
3
This is an Intermediary and Mentoring Program
It is important to recognize that much of the work that Fostering Hope does for foster children is behind the scenes, and in support of the families taking in those children, not always directly working with the children. Fostering Hope also partners closely with donors and other organizations that seek to do good for these children taking in donations and monetary gifts—but without the guidance and expertise of Fostering Hope working with these families—that good could easily have less impact. So although Fostering Hope is only awarded partial credit on some of the support categories in this study due to others playing an equally important role in the welfare of these children, Fostering Hope is a critical component of their success.
For every $1 spent, $2.79 is returned to the community.
See Our Economic Impact, download our Social Return on Investment Study.
Fostering Hope CI4SI SROI Basic Infographic
What do foster parents, volunteers and caseworkers say?
- Stress levels are significantly reduced among the foster parents.
- Foster families can take and keep sibling groups together with the help of teams.
- With the support of a team, foster parents are persisting and continue working with extremely challenging children.
- The volunteers support foster parents through crises with foster children and minimize the disruption in the foster home.
- Foster parents use the teams to provide enriched educational, recreational, and social activities for the children, including transporting children to appointments, take them camping and horseback riding, help them job hunt and purchase gifts and needed clothing or supplies.
- Foster parents experience social support from the teams. Foster parents tend to be somewhat isolated socially, because their lifestyle makes it difficult to interact with their friends, or their neighbors may be suspicious and are often concerned about the children they bring into the neighborhood. The teams ease the loneliness they experience.
- The volunteers remain enthusiastic and report high levels of satisfaction and personal growth.
- The foster children respond to the volunteers and engage in activities with them. Most have asked: “Why do these people care about us?” Many have bonded with the volunteers.
- Finding, training, and teaming volunteers and matching them with foster families have become relatively simple and natural. Volunteers feel like “extended family” for the foster family.
- Faith congregations are increasingly committed to the program with the strong support of their pastors. Volunteers frequently ask their congregations for additional volunteers, or clothing, school supplies and funding for the children.