Programs and results
What we aim to solve
There is a false, pervasive narrative that non-custodial dads are "deadbeats" who don't want to be involved in the lives of their children. Two other outdated norms — that unmarried parents cannot be effective co-parents and that mothers should be the primary caregivers of children — have compounded the myth. This combination has led to practices, programs and policies solely focused on the mother-child dyad, putting a greater burden on single mothers, sidelining non-custodial fathers and greatly limiting the mobility and development of our country’s most vulnerable children, especially children of color. Nearly 15 million U.S. households were led by single mothers in 2019, and almost half of children under 6 in such households lived in poverty. For all families, the poverty rate for children under 6 was 15.5 percent.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Engaging Fathers
Good+Foundation works to support programs that engage low-income, often non-custodial fathers to be active dads to their children, and supportive co-parents to the mother of their children. To achieve this goal, our fatherhood program partners provide support in positive parenting and discipline strategies; help fathers establish their role within the family by providing individual, couples, and group counseling; and provide access to resources like employment assistance, financial literacy programs and bonding experiences for dads and their children.
Supporting New Mothers
Many mothers served by our donations are in their teens, grew up in the foster care system, and/or have been victims of abuse and trauma. The goals of the programs serving moms include improving prenatal health for mothers; helping mothers provide informed, nurturing, and developmentally-appropriate care for their children; improving a mother’s economic self-sufficiency by helping her develop a vision for her future, often including continuing education and achieving professional goals; and creating a community of support for women who often do not have their own mothers or families. A key partner is Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), an evidence-based program model in which visiting nurses work with low-income, first-time mothers from their 20th week of pregnancy until their child turns two years old. NFP nurses have repeatedly shared that Good+Foundation has been instrumental in helping the NFP nurse home visitors implement their curriculum with their clients.
Investing in Early Childhood Education
Since 2006, Good+Foundation has been making donations to select Head Start and Early Head Start (HS/EHS) sites that provide comprehensive development services to economically disadvantaged children and families across the nation. The program teaches parents to engage in their children's learning while also providing assistance with their own educational, literacy, and employment goals by offering ESL courses; safety workshops; health and nutrition education; and access to certification programs.
Where we work
Awards
4-Stars 2017
Charity Navigator
4-Stars 2016
Charity Navigator
4-Stars 2015
Charity Navigator
4-Stars 2014
Charity Navigator
4-Stars 2013
Charity Navigator
4 Stars 2013
Charity Navigator
4 Stars 2018
Charity Navigator
4 Stars 2019
Charity Navigator
External reviews

Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Evaluation documents
Download evaluation reportsNumber of organizations signing onto policy guidelines or proposals
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Economically disadvantaged people
Related Program
Engaging Fathers
Type of Metric
Context - describing the issue we work on
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
This figure refers to the number of grantee partners in our NY/LA networks. It declined following a mandate that all partners track fatherhood metrics, but we expect it to hold steady going forward.
Total dollars received in contributions
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Economically disadvantaged people
Type of Metric
Input - describing resources we use
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
This figure reflects the financial contributions we receive from corporations, foundations and individuals outside of special events. It does not include the value of in-kind contributions.
Estimated dollar value of product secured for donation
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Economically disadvantaged people
Type of Metric
Input - describing resources we use
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
Good+ is putting more emphasis on corporate product donations and less on individual product donations, so quality is increasing along with quantity.
Number of donations received as a percentage of donations requested
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Economically disadvantaged people
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
Good+Foundation measures success based on the percentage of our partners’ requests for critical gear (e.g. cribs and high chairs) that we are able to fulfill. Our goal has gradually increased.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn 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?
Good+Foundation is a leading national nonprofit that works to dismantle multigenerational poverty by pairing tangible goods with innovative services for low-income fathers, mothers and caregivers, creating an upward trajectory for the whole family.
Founded in 2001 by Jessica Seinfeld, Good+Foundation began operations in New York City. As an organization founded and led by women, our goal was to get mothers the tools they need — such as clothing, diapers, high chairs and strollers — to provide for their children. It took most of our first decade, though, to fully recognize that our culture, policy and social service providers were treating fathers as secondary, non-essential actors in the well-being of these children. After years of pairing our donations with social services primarily providing for mothers, our fatherhood initiative started in 2010 with our first donations made to fatherhood-specific programs. We expanded our operations to Los Angeles this same year.
Research has yielded strong evidence that father absence has persistent negative effects on children’s social-emotional development. Similarly, enabling a father to be involved in his child’s development can bring moderate to high cognitive function gains to the child. Through our work with grantee partners, we aim to address some of the barriers to father engagement, giving non-custodial and low-income dads better tools to become active fathers and supportive co-parents.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
1. Addressing the needs of non-custodial fathers
Since beginning to serve fatherhood programs in 2010, Good+Foundation has donated more than 1.5 million items — such as cribs, diapers and strollers — to more than 35,000 fathers and their families. Our incentive model pairs these items with progress through transformative services around continuing education, healthy relationships, mental health, responsible parenting, workforce training and more. We also support events fostering strengthened bonds within families, such as Shop with Pops, in which we provide The Children’s Place gift cards to fathers who have completed our grantee partners’ curriculum. These dads bring their families to the store to purchase new clothing, which reinforces to the father that he can be a provider. It also gives him valuable time with his child and builds trust with the mother. Good+ is providing for the immediate material needs of fathers while helping them gain the tools to empower themselves and their families.
2. Building capacity for existing partners to include fathers
Traditional gender norms often condition men to avoid seeking the help that they need, and social services have long cemented this notion by neglecting fathers in their programming. This was especially true among our LA partners, where only 24 percent of the non-fatherhood focused programs were actually tracking father engagement in 2018, despite purporting to help families in need. After a re-application process, Good+ began facilitating webinars and quarterly partner meetings to provide ongoing professional development and collaboration around best practices and successes as we seek to better address our three focus areas: Engaging Fathers, Supporting Mothers and Early Childhood Education. By 2019, the number of LA partners tracking father engagement reached 100 percent, and it has remained at this level since.
3. Implementing and advocating for reform to systems marginalizing fathers
Good+ has expanded professional development beyond our grantee partner network. In 2019, we began partnering with the LA County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) to train all incoming social workers twice monthly on addressing implicit biases and engaging fathers in a positive way. We have also become active in the policy arena through our continued partnership with Ascend at the Aspen Institute to address outdated child support laws. Current legislation creates barriers within families rather than tearing them down, so Good+ and Ascend created a toolkit for comprehensive child support reform at the state level. The toolkit includes educational issue-focused white papers and provides case stories about states that have successfully reformed their laws and how they did so.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
With warehouses in New York City and Los Angeles – the two largest cities in the United States and home to more than 2 million people living below the poverty line – and around 75 partners nationwide, Good+Foundation has the capacity and connections to be a national leader combating inequality and implicit bias against dads.
Alan-Michael Graves, Ed.D. leads our work to create father-friendly environments, develop strategies for broader father-inclusive policy change, implement training programs and provide technical assistance and incentivized donations to help partners serve fathers more effectively. He is an established and well-respected leader in this space.
Current child support policies disproportionately punish poor fathers and fathers of color by restricting access to their children and making it more difficult to work; our work aims to change that. Good+ and Ascend at the Aspen Institute have partnered to drive comprehensive child support reform at the state level with the creation of educational issue-focused white papers on topics like alternatives to civil contempt and jail, driver’s license suspension exemptions, co-parenting support and fatherhood. These papers also draft legislation for lawmakers at the state level. A Good+ working group assembled to create a child support policy environment that promotes father engagement has identified broad consensus from national leaders for such reforms.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Good+ entered 2020 equipped with experience in swiftly responding to crises nationwide, from the Great Recession to the 2018 California wildfires. Having built an organization prepared to react to the real-time needs of under-resourced families, we were able to nimbly respond to these unique circumstances and events. Our financial responsibility and stability allowed us to do this, as we entered the crisis with 5.5 months of operating expenses in our investment fund set aside. We have earned eight consecutive 4-star ratings on Charity Navigator as well as a GuideStar Platinum Seal of Transparency and accreditation by the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance for our efficiency of operations.
Last year, 92 percent of all expenses went directly back toward Good+ programs. We distributed more than $11 million in essential family products to 123 programs, including 4,592,006 diapers; 1,320,968 bath, health and hygiene items; 130,387 personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies; 108,147 wipes; 85,197 food and formula items; and 65,768 backpacks and school supplies. We also distributed 5,186 critical gear items (breast pumps, car seats, cribs, feeding seats, front carriers, playpens, safety gates and strollers), meeting 98.7 percent of requests.
To provide additional assistance during a time when product deliveries and distributions proved especially challenging, Good+ moved quickly to establish our Emergency Microgrants program. Through this initiative, we have disbursed $265,000 in financial grants to our partners to help clients pay for rent, groceries, medicine and more.
Recognizing that our work is not complete unless we address the issues making our donations necessary, we launched the Good+Foundation Training Academy in 2020 to equip frontline workers with the tools they need to better support fathers, mothers, caregivers and children. This includes training for every new social worker within the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. Through the Academy, we trained 3,997 individuals in 2020 on topics such as father inclusion and paternal relative engagement meant to address implicit biases in social services so that ultimately, children are better served and have stronger developmental outcomes.
Good+ has also been active in the policy arena through our ongoing partnership with Ascend at the Aspen Institute to reform the outdated child support system, a program that impacts one of every five American children. Current legislation creates barriers within families rather than bringing families together, so Good+ and Ascend are creating a toolkit for comprehensive child support reform at the state level. Doing so will help fathers to be more effective co-parents to mothers who are also suffering from the system’s ill effects. Ultimately, our goal is to put children at the center of the child support debate so that this government program provides families with support they need to thrive.
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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Who are the people you serve with your mission?
Good+Foundation partners with organizations that work with families with children ages 0-18 as well as current and expecting parents living at or below 150% of the federal poverty level ($38,625 per year for a family of four). The families we reach experience myriad struggles evidenced by the fact that 95% live on low incomes and 82% below the poverty line; 52% have transportation challenges; 52% are unemployed; 48% experience inadequate/unstable housing; 48% face food insecurity; and 19% are homeless or in shelter. In addition, 36% are involved in the child welfare system; 24% face child support challenges; 22% have been incarcerated or criminal justice system-involved; 17% suffer from chronic mental illness; 16% report substance abuse issues; and 11% have children with special needs.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
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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What significant change resulted from feedback?
During the pandemic, many of our program partners voiced concerns over the inability of the families that they serve to maintain basic life essentials. Good+ addressed this important issue by deploying targeted microgrants to our network to help parents who are struggling to afford groceries, medicine, child-care and rent. Our Good+ Emergency Microgrants program distributed $265,000 to our partners in 2020, assisting more than 5,000 people facing food shortages, housing instability, and loss of employment. We plan to disburse another round of grants in the Fall of 2021.
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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 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 find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection
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.
Good+Foundation
Board of directorsas of 11/29/2022
Mrs. Jessica Seinfeld
Founder and Board Chair, Good+Foundation
Term: 2001 -
Michael Tiedemann
CEO, Tiedemann Investment Group
Jennifer Franklin
Counsel, Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett
Michael Nissan
Partner, Weil, Gotschal & Manges LLP
Jen Garcia Allen
Executive Editor, Whalerock Enterprises and Board Member, Allen Family Foundation
Veronica Swanson Beard
Co-Founder, Veronica Beard and Board Member, Tsunami Foundation
Danielle Devine
VP, Enterprise Strategy and Communication, Johnson & Johnson
Stacey Bendet Eisner
Founder & CEO, alice + olivia
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Actress + Partner, FoodStirs
Mary Kitchen
TV Reporter and Board Member, Orszag Family Foundation
Jennifer Koen
VP of Marketing, Viyet.com
Kara Moore
Managing Director of Global Philanthropy and Engagement, Bloomberg LP
Bara Tisch
Philanthropist
Connie Verducci
SVP, Bank of America
Ali Wentworth
Writer and Entertainer
Emmanuel Aidoo
Head of Digital Asset Markets, Credit Suisse Americas
Jason Williams
Senior Vice President of Global Inclusion Strategy, ViacomCBS
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 ? Yes -
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? Yes
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
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
Equity strategies
Last updated: 11/29/2022GuideStar 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 review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- 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 disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.