National Fatherhood Initiative

National Fatherhood Initiative's goals are related to its mission to transform organizations and communities by equipping them to intentionally and proactively engage fathers in their children's lives. Our three primary goals are to: 1) Educate all Americans, especially fathers, through social media, earned media, research, and free resources; 2) Equip organizations and communities with fatherhood programs and resources, and through training, planning, and technical assistance services; and 3) Engage and assisting organizations and communities to mobilize at the micro- and macro-level to increase the involvement of fathers in children's lives.

National Fatherhood Initiative employs an ongoing process for developing and refining strategies. Our current strategic plan includes the following tactical priorities: 1) accelerate growth in our partner base of local organizations that provide direct services to fathers and families; 2) increase the number of courses in our Father Engagement Academy™ (our new online, on-demand e-learning platform) that train staff of our partners to more effectively engage fathers in their programs and services; and 3) maintain our position as the nation's leader in providing free online resources that help organizations and communities serve dads.

National Fatherhood Initiative has developed the following core capabilities that allow us to meet our goals: 1) NFI is the nation's leading provider of fatherhood research through the compilation and regular updating of the most comprehensive source of data and studies on father absence and involvement (our Father Facts publication), and helping providers translate the most recent research into practical applications; 2) NFI is the nation's leading developer and distributor of fatherhood skill-building resources used by fathers and organizations that serve fathers and families; and 3) NFI is the nation's leading capacity builder of organizations serving fathers and families through the provision of resources, training, and technical assistance.

One of the primary ways these capacities have evolved in recent years is reflected in NFI's increased engagement of individuals and organizations through its two websites (fatherhood.org and fathersource.org) and social media platforms. One of the most significant impacts of this increased is in NFI's ability to distribute free advice, training and resources to dads and service providers. NFI has more than 150 free resources for download. This development is crucial because the youngest generation of dads is turning to NFI for help in their fathering role and seeks information via the web and social media to perform that role. Moreover, service providers have increasingly turned to the web to locate and receive the free and low-cost resources, training and technical assistance to meet their father-engagement needs.

National Fatherhood Initiative has accomplished much in the years since its founding in 1994 and recently with an increased focus on leveraging technology to increase our impact.

NFI is the nation's #1 distributor of fatherhood knowledge and skill-building resources. Since its founding, NFI has distributed more than 10 million resources.

NFI is the nation's #1 trainer of organizations and practitioners on how to effectively engage fathers in the lives of their children. Since 2002, and through the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021, NFI has trained 15,397 practitioners from 6,809 organizations in person on how to deliver our fatherhood programs. In addition, we have trained an additional 22,067 practitioners online (e.g. via webinar).

NFI is the nation's #1 provider of evidence-based and evidence-informed fatherhood programs and resources, including programs and resources for incarcerated fathers with at least half of the nation's state departments of corrections choosing NFI's InsideOut Dad® program as their standard fathering program across all of their facilities for men.

NFI is the nation's #1 provider of fatherhood programs and resources for military fathers. NFI's programs and resources are used in every branch of the military and by many reserve and most National Guard units. We have distributed our programs and resources to installations in all 50 states, U.S. territories, and in many countries overseas (e.g. Japan, Turkey, Okinawa, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Korea, and the Netherlands).

NFI's most significant challenge related to contributions is our lack of donations from individuals. One of the primary reasons is we are not a direct-service provider. It is difficult for individuals to see the direct, immediate impact of their donations because we use those donations to serve organizations that, in turn, serve fathers and families. Even though a donor's dollar can go farther when given to a capacity-building organization like NFI (i.e. a dollar given to NFI serves many organizations, fathers and families), we must compete for donations with direct-service organizations that can show donors a more direct, immediate impact of their donations.