YELLOW RIBBON FUND INC

We offer supplemental assistance to wounded, ill and injured service members and their caregivers – that bridges the gap between their needs and earned benefits – enabling families to stay together during critical recuperation phases. Our priority has always been to keep families together during the recovery process for wounded, ill, and injured service members. We do this by providing housing and transportation during recovery and with family caregiver support when and where it is needed.

Our Crossroads Program provides free fully-furnished apartments, hotel stays and rental cars for
visiting family members and patients returning for medical treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Our purpose in providing these services is to relieve the family from crushing financial cost of medical travel and lodging while receiving treatment for injuries or illnesses acquired as result of their military service to our country. Recipients of our services are referred to us by medical staff at Walter Reed Hospital

Our Keystone Program offers peer-to-peer support, family retreats, health and wellness opportunities, life skills development, training and job placements to military caregivers.

Our Keystone Program goals are to:
- Grow the number of chapters across the country
- Increase the number of appropriate activities that promote health and wellness, life skills development, and peer-to-peer network support.
- Strengthen the family be encouraging participation in our events, activities, and retreats.

Our overall goal is to keep these families together and help them overcome the difficulties of dealing with often lifetime medical struggles by providing a safe and nurturing environment.

Our strategies for managing our Keystone Program include:
- Increase the number of caregiver chapters throughout the country, primarily focusing on areas where large numbers of disabled veterans reside.
- Expanding programs to provide educational opportunities, networking and bonding.
- Providing activities and retreats to caregivers to promote their wellness, give them respite from the burdens of caregiving, and strengthen their families.

We have been building and nurturing partnerships with nonprofit organizations serving similar communities to help us achieve our objectives. Such partnerships include Wounded Warrior Project, Elizabeth Dole Foundation, Fisher House, Luke's Wings, Code of Support Foundation, FourBlock, VetAdvisor, Military Veteran Caregiver Network, and Vail Veterans Program. We also maintain a strong presence and healthy relationship with the military medical staff and case workers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The latter refer military families in need of assistance and help us screen to ensure we are assisting deserving individuals.

Our chapter caregiver coordinators reach out to medical facilities serving the local veteran population, including military and Veterans Affairs hospitals, and help identify military caregivers needing assistance.

Our Keystone Program caregiver coordinators give us extra strength in experience and contacts as each coordinator is also a caregiver of a wounded, ill or injured American veteran. Thus, they fully understand the challenges, issues, and obstacles military caregivers face in their daily lives and those of their military veteran.

If our budget allow, we offer retreats at special locations across the country to provide caregivers a closed and safe environment to develop their physical and mental well-being, thus providing them renewed strength to continue their caregiver duties. Retreat locations have included a West Coast location, an East Coast location, and special retreats at Patriot Point on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland through a special relationship we have with Patriot Point and the Military Bowl Foundation.

In 2021, we began offering a special family retreat in southern Florida at the Ocean Reef Club where we bring 10-15 families whom we feel have special needs or difficulties where a respite would be beneficial. We solicit applications from our recipients for the limited number of spots. We then provide four days of special activities and full accommodations for these families where we promote networking, story telling, and bonding. We also provide club members and donors to meet our families to gain a fuller understanding of the challenges the families face and how the donations make a difference in the lives of our recipients.

To improve our organizational effectiveness, our board has contracted with an outside expert to review our board policies and bylaws, our organizational mission, and assist the board in coming up with new strategies to met future challenges with our recipient base and our mission.

Keystone Program chapter growth has been as follows:
FY 2019 - 6 chapters
FY 2020 - 11 chapters
FY 2021 - 10 chapters
FY 2022 - 10 chapters
FY 2023 - 10 chapters
FY 2024 - 10 chapters
FY 2025 - 12 chapters

In FY 2021, we successfully launched a national chapter for military caregivers who do not reside in one of our local chapter areas. The National Chapter members are provided virtual and online support, including family activities, training, and networking. This chapter had over 600 unique members as of mid 2023. But all caregivers can participate in National Chapter events.

In FY 2024 and 2025 we launched a South Florida chapter to address a growing demand from families of disabled veterans for programming in the Miami area.

The presence of our Keystone Chapters are based in part on our ability to attract participants and finding qualified and suitable local leadership for those chapters. Thus the number of active chapters has fluctuated from year to year. We are also competing with other veteran service organizations, some with much larger resourses. The strength of a local chapter depends in part on our ability to hire a local, qualified part-time coordinator and sustained interest by Chapter members.

Keystone Program Partnerships: In FY 2021, we leveraged connections with Wounded Warrior Project, VetAdvisors, and the Elizabeth Dole Foundation for financial and strategic assistance, allowing us to maintain and grow our Keystone Program in spite of the Covid-19 pandemic. These partners helped us improve our metrices to provide us with outcome-based performance measure. We've had approximately 300 participants using the MyVetAdvisor mental health application, in partnership with Rose Health and VetAdvisors. We also implemented a case management program to improve our metric information, track the status and participation rate of our Keystone members, and record Crossroad services (lodging, temporary housing, and local transportation) provided to disabled veterans and their families. We also implemented anoymous surveys to collect feedback on the quality of our activities and other items of interest. In 2023, we began a concerted effort to ensure that all Crossroads recipients are automatically enrolled in our Keystone Program so that they receive follow-up assistance back home after their medical treatments.