Austin Angels
We wrap community around children, youth and families in the foster care community.
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Love Box Program
The Love Box program provides foster families with community and holistic support so that they can continue to do the important and meaningful work of being a foster parent. As a Love Box group, volunteers will be matched with a local foster family based on compatibility and scope of needs. When our families are matched with committed volunteers who show up monthly, parents feel more supported and children gain a greater sense of belonging and self-confidence. This program requires a one year commitment.
Dare to Dream Program
The Dare to Dream program is an opportunity to individually serve an aged-out or at-risk to age out youth in foster care (ages ranging from 11-22). Our mentors are advocates, teachers, guides, role models, valued friends, and available resources.
The heart of the Dare to Dream program is to walk alongside youth as they navigate through life's challenges. The youth in our Dare to Dream program need the wisdom, advice, encouragement, and community that mentors can provide. Mentors meet practical and emotional needs as well as provide guidance through developmental milestones (such as obtaining a drivers license, opening a bank account, understanding financial literacy, higher education prep, etc.). The goal is for youth to be engaged and to feel supported and equipped to navigate life. A mentor commits to meeting with the youth every other week to set goals and help them achieve their dreams. These relationships will hopefully last a lifetime, but the program is a year commitment. Mentors matched with a high school student are strongly encouraged to stay with the youth until high school graduation.
We tell mentors that the simple act of telling their youth “I believe in you,” “You are special,” and “You are going to do great things” can change their path completely.
Where we work
Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of Children Served Monthly
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of volunteers
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Children Served at Back to School
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of families served
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Children Served During the Holidays
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of Adoptions
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Other - describing something else
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Children placed in foster care face very high risks for much worse outcomes later in life than their peers who are not in foster care. This isn’t only because the situation that caused them to be placed in the care of the state was traumatic, but also because the experience of being in foster care layers on additional trauma. An overwhelming body of evidence shows that the kind of ongoing, chronic trauma experienced by these children not only severely impacts their emotional state and behavioral needs during childhood, but also leads to drastically poorer outcomes as they reach adulthood. One of the main contributors to the trauma children experience in foster care is the lack of community support and stable relationships with caring, responsible, dependable adults. Placement in the foster system can sometimes equate to stability, but more often children are repeatedly moved, often far from their community and all they know, uprooting and re-traumatizing them again and again.
In addition, the parenting of a hurt child takes tremendous resources of time, education, and heart. And when a foster parent gives up, effects ripple in our community and social and economic costs begin to accrue.
Children, youth, and families experiencing foster care desperately need community. This is why we have developed the Love Box and Dare to Dream programs––for people like you, who may not be called to foster or adopt, to create real impact through intentional giving, relationship building, and mentorship.
We know that trauma can be healed in the context of healthy, supportive relationships, and our programs help bring just that––relational healing, empowerment, and hope. We believe that “Not everyone is called to foster, not everyone is called to adopt, but everyone can make a difference in the life of a child.”
We've invented a new way to serve: heart-to-heart in the home of a family. Showing up for children. Encouraging youth. Supporting caretakers.
Our hope is that through our programs we can:
1) Walk alongside children, youth, and families in the foster care community by offering consistent support through intentional giving, relationship building, and mentorship.
2) Increase placement stability and minimize trauma by supporting the entire family unit.
3) Provide children, youth, and families with a sense of normalcy, during a time that can feel very uncertain.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
1) We accomplish this through our Love Box and Dare to Dream programs, which match dedicated volunteers with youth and families experiencing foster care. These volunteers commit to being a consistent support in their lives, by meeting a minimum of once monthly with families (in our Love Box program) or twice monthly with youth (in our Dare to Dream program).
2) It is our hope that with this added layer of community, foster parents would have the support that they need to continue fostering, children would stay in placements longer, and the trauma caused by moving from home-to-home-to-home would be minimized.
3) We increase normalcy by helping provide children with experiences like Spring Break and Summer camps, a “Back To School Bash”, fulfilling holiday wishlists, and helping fund extracurricular activities like baseball, gymnastics, ballet, and more.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Austin Angels has 16 full time staff members and 5-6 interns every semester who are committed to pushing the mission forward. In addition, we have hundreds of committed donors, as well as volunteers, who play critical roles in making the work that we do possible. In 2020 alone, the combination of all of these efforts looked like an incredible 1,294 children and 220 families served by 312 volunteers.
Our long-term vision is to reach and serve every single child and family experiencing the foster care system in Region 7 through our Love Box and Dare to Dream programs. We believe that with the help of our community in building awareness, we will continue to grow our support base to a place where this vision will be realized.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Austin Angels measures its success in a number of ways:
1) Through the number of children and families who are consistently being served on a monthly basis through our programs (this number is currently at just under 300)
2) Through mandatory volunteer report forms, which outline the ways in which each youth and family is being served by our volunteers (including time spent, and progress in relationship with the youth/family, miles driven, and value of items given to the youth/family)
3) Through the number of children and families who are being served through events like our Spring Break and Summer camps, Back to School Event, Holiday Basket Drive, Holiday Wishlist Fulfillment, and more
4) Through the number of families on our waitlist who are receiving one-time boxes while they are waiting to be matched with volunteers
5) Through feedback we receive from foster families in our programs, speaking to the impact that our programs and their volunteers have had on their children and family as a whole
6) Through families who are able to move to adoption because of the support they have received through our programs
7) Through the partnerships we form with CPS and other child placement agencies, who refer families to our programs
To date, we have served thousands of children and families experiencing foster care in Region 7 through our Love Box and Dare to Dream programs, as well as events, service projects, and one-time boxes. The impact of our Love Box and Dare to Dream programs have been documented mainly through anecdotal evidence thus far––and foster parent feedback, changes seen in foster children, volunteer reports, collaborations and partnerships built with child placement agencies and other community groups are clearly indicating success. We are seeing lives being impacted right here in our community. We are seeing children and families experiencing foster care differently.
“I grew up in the system, I know how hard it is for these kids. My husband and I have been fostering for 15 years and we have never had the kind of support that we have gotten from Austin Angels. It is such a blessing to have people love our kids the way we love them.” –– Nikki, foster mom
“I’m a stay at home dad. We thought we would foster one or two kids, but when we got a call for a sibling set of five we couldn’t say no. It has been the hardest thing we have ever done, and the Love Box program couldn’t have come at a more perfect time.” –– Ryan, foster dad
Our vision for the future is to continue to expand our programs and reach within Region 7. We are currently serving just under 300 children on a monthly basis through our programs, however, there are currently 4,855 children in foster homes or substitute care services in our region. Our goal is to grow our funding, staff, and volunteer base to be able to serve every one of these children.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We share the feedback we received with the people we serve, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, We don’t have the right technology to collect and aggregate feedback efficiently, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection, Staff find it hard to prioritize feedback collection and review due to lack of time
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Austin Angels
Board of directorsas of 03/27/2024
Amanda Teodecki
Tavia Hrabovsky
Chris Stege
Amanda Teodecki
Chip Reed
Moetaz Homsi
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Not applicable -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Not applicable
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
No data
Gender identity
No data
Transgender Identity
No data
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 09/01/2023GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.