Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption

The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption is committed to dramatically increasing the number of adoptions of children waiting in North America's foster care systems. Our vision is that every child will have a permanent home and a loving family that honors and respects their personal journey, self-identity and right to grow and thrive without fear of rejection or harm.

To advance our mission, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption believes it is not just about building an approach that finds forever homes for waiting children. It is about understanding the needs and lived experiences of the children we serve, improving access for families who want to adopt from foster care and building an organization that serves the broader child welfare community in North America. The Foundation’s strategic priorities and signature programs are grounded in research and created with a racial equity lens. We are committed to nurturing a diverse, inclusive and equitable work environment for our staff, while advocating for measurable change toward racial equity within the child welfare system.

In 2004, the Foundation created our signature program, Wendy's Wonderful Kids, to aggressively find permanent homes for the longest-waiting children in foster care, including teenagers, children with special needs and siblings. Through Wendy's Wonderful Kids, the Foundation supports the hiring of adoption professionals, also known as recruiters, who implement an evidence-based, child-focused model. While other types of adoption recruitment can be successful, child-focused recruitment has been proven to be the most effective approach to achieving permanency for young people in the Foundation’s focus population, because it focuses on finding the right family for the child, respects a child’s voice, privacy and dignity and is rooted in the belief that every child is adoptable.

We also work to break down barriers for families through programs, such as Adoption-Friendly Workplace. Year-round, we promote the importance of providing adoption and foster care benefits and offer employers a toolkit to help develop their policies. Each year, the Foundation also recognizes organizations across the U.S. leading the way in making adoption and foster care supported options for every working parent and share their stories of impact to inspire others.

We take a collaborative approach to raising awareness of the urgent need for foster care adoption. More than 20 years ago, we co-founded National Adoption Day to encourage courts to open their doors on or around the Saturday before Thanksgiving each year to finalize and celebrate adoptions from foster care. To date, National Adoption Day events have recognized the adoptions of more than 80,000 children across the U.S.

Finally, we provide national grants in the U.S. that target specialized foster care and adoption communities, post-permanency support and critical child welfare awareness, research and policy enhancements. In addition to funding Wendy’s Wonderful Kids program grants, the Foundation awards strategic national grants to adoption agencies and organizations that help advance the Foundation’s mission.

The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption’s valuable relationships with policymakers;, government and agency leaders and national, state and local decision-makers provides the appropriate platforms for us to influence attitude, policy and practice change on behalf of vulnerable and at-risk children and youth.

The Foundation created Wendy’s Wonderful Kids in 2004 with seven pilot sites as a means to engage more partners, to transform failing child welfare practices and, most importantly, to aggressively find the right families for children waiting much too long to be adopted.

By 2007, the Foundation was supporting Wendy’s Wonderful Kids recruiters in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and launched our first site in Canada. In 2012, backed by rigorous evidence of the program’s effectiveness, the Foundation secured a significant public-private partnership with the state of Ohio to scale Wendy’s Wonderful Kids. The model for this partnership has led the way for the Foundation’s scaling expansion across the United States and Canada.

We currently support more than 550 Wendy’s Wonderful Kids recruiters who serve children lingering in foster care across the U.S. and Canada. The Foundation also employs more than 71 staff members with expertise in child welfare, finance, law, human resources, training, information technology, data management, fund development and marketing, with plans for growth to serve even more children within our focus population.

The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption implements evidence-based, results-driven national service programs. Through our signature program, Wendy's Wonderful Kids, the Foundation has helped to find permanent families for more than 14,000 children lingering in foster care across the U.S. and Canada. Permanency may take the form of adoption, legal guardianship or family reunification when it is a safe option.

A rigorous, five-year national evaluation by Child Trends revealed that children referred to Wendy’s Wonderful Kids are up to 3x more likely to be adopted.

In 2017, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption launched an aggressive, multi-year business plan to expand the reach of the Wendy's Wonderful Kids program in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. During phase one of the plan (2017–2020), statewide expansion began in Colorado, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah and Washington, while continuing to support scaling in Ohio and building momentum across the nation.

Currently in phase two (2021–2026), the Foundation is working to deepen and sustain our impact in phase one scaling states while pursuing expansion in at least 10 more states in the near term. To date in phase two, new scaling states include Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Texas and Vermont. The Foundation has also launched a new strategic effort that recognizes that a youth’s needs for services may not stop at adoption. Given the multiple layers of trauma children experience prior to and during foster care, adoptive families may need access to mental health providers, networking, respite care or educational services. The Foundation, through its grantmaking, is testing various post-adoption efforts in seven states, building a bridge between families formed through the Wendys Wonderful Kids program and post-adoption services in their community.

Along with successfully finding safe, permanent homes for thousands of children in foster care, the Foundation commissions research to understand public attitudes about foster care and adoption and inform messaging. The 2022 U.S. Adoption and Foster Care Attitudes Survey, conducted by The Harris Poll, revealed that more Americans are considering building their family through adoption, with 37% of adults who have not adopted considering adoption (3% increase from 2017). Additionally, 67% of adults believe every child is adoptable (a 9% increase from 2017). Unfortunately, more than half of Americans (51%) mistakenly believe that children are placed in foster care because they are juvenile delinquents. It is a misconception that we must continue to fight.
The Foundation’s community of generous and diverse donors are critical to sustaining and growing the reach of our work to give more children waiting in foster care the best possible opportunity for a bright future with the support of a permanent, loving family.