The Lost & Found Association

Lost&Found focuses on five key goals as part of its latest strategic planning efforts (Nov. 2019):

1) We will reach at least 30% of young adults 14-35 in communities where Lost&Found chapters are present through education, referrals, training, social media content, and events.

2) >90% of young adults engaging with Lost&Found programs will report a positive experience, and >60% will report increase resilience skills after participating in L&F training or skill development programs.

3) We will create a strong chapter system with clear goals for student leaders and a consistent feedback loop between chapter leaders, L&F staff, and community and campus stakeholders involved in addressing mental health needs of young adults in communities where chapters are present.

4) We will develop an understanding of an relationship with community-wide mental health infrastructure in communities where chapters are present to ensure resources are widely available and integrated to meet the needs of young adults.

5) We will contribute meaningfully to decline in suicide deaths among young adults ages 14-35 over the course of 5, 10, and 20 year increments in South Dakota, Minnesota, North Dakota and any other state where Lost&Found programs are present.

Getting help to young adults struggling with suicide ideation and its close cousin, depression, requires solutions that are approachable, destigmatizing, and designed to meet individual needs with scalable processes. Lost&Found was created in 2010 by a group of incoming University of South Dakota students passionate about this concept, seeing gaps in resources available in South Dakota and nationwide.

First and foremost, Lost&Found’s efforts to end suicide for young adults 14-35 centers around student organizations raising awareness of suicide’s impact on peers. Similar to the reasons why Greek organizations on college campuses continue to experience steady growth, Lost&Found chapters experience growth because chapter members regularly express a strong desire to make a difference in the lives of their peers. As a result, our established student chapters have developed a foundational network of local partnerships and sufficient working capacity to deliver awareness programming. Lost&Found recognizes that awareness alone does not meet the demands of the issues we seek to resolve, and that is why don't simply stop at words. True to our history as an organization, we "do more" to address suicide in our communities.

Unique to any mental health student organization around the country, Lost&Found will build partnerships with campus and community leaders to research local prevention needs, provide the financial and tactical support to implement solutions, and advise student leaders connecting peers with skill development and training and mental health resources. These efforts, led by a team of public health and student affairs professionals, focus on delivering regular needs assessments and a set of validated community resilience indicators to guide local decision-making.

Finally, and perhaps most important to increasing our impact, Lost&Found will seek to connect communities with validated training where leaders or organizations are seeking to improve mental health outcomes for young adults. These steps focus on the gap currently seen in the prevention sector: a resilience-oriented focus and tailoring resources to local needs.

Lost&Found was founded by students, for students, and its origins as a student organization advocating for reduced mental health stigma and suicide prevention programs remains at the core of its work today.

Leveraging its 10 years of experience delivering student mental health advocacy and education programs, Lost&Found brings a team of high-powered student affairs, public health, program evaluation, and communications and policy staff to help students continue Lost&Found's work and expand it to include new Evaluation Services and Training & Development programs.

Thanks to the support of newfound financial supporters and a wealth of partnerships spanning the suicide prevention and mental health services field, Lost&Found brings community-centered, systems-focused practices to its prevention efforts. Learning time and again the importance of creating programs that are rooted in the experience of those we serve -- young adults -- Lost&Found's capacity for understanding how to meet the mental health needs of young adults is evident in our long-term partnerships, ability to raise funds for community partners, and the satisfaction of the students and advisers we work with.

Lost&Found has grown rapidly between 2017 and 2020, increasing program impact from 500 students reached to over 5,000 anticipated reached in 2020 alone (and likely more). Funding has increased from $3K in annual budget to almost $300K in 2020, and staffing capacity has followed, growing from 0.5 FTE to 4.5 FTE in the same timeframe. Lost&Found's campus footprint has grown from 2 campuses to 5 and counting, with over 100 student leaders involved in day-to-day program development and management in eastern South Dakota.

Ultimately, our impact starts and finishes with young adults connecting with the resources they need to support their mental health needs. Each day, Lost&Found hears new stories from students across the state of South Dakota and around the country that inspire us to continue our work. No matter where these young adults land on the mental health spectrum, we know that Lost&Found makes a difference -- one life at a time.

In the age of COVID-19, Lost&Found's programs have moved to almost exclusively digital offerings, providing a variety of content over email, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. Since March 2020, Lost&Found has reached over 500K people of all ages on social media with its mental health programming, engaging thousands of young adults who may not have otherwise been reached on a college campus.

In short: Lost&Found has grown dramatically and among its easier-to-measure metrics, our team recognizes that impact is happening. As we continue our work over the next 3 years under our Resilience Program Framework, we expect more visibility into the ultimate impact our work has -- giving new perspective on how to address mental health conditions in our communities.