John Austin Cheley Foundation

We aim to make high-impact residential summer camp experiences accessible to those who otherwise could not afford them. As a result of these experiences, we aim to empower the youth we serve through personal growth and development of critical 21st-century skills necessary to become thriving, contributing members of society. Measured outcomes of attending high-quality residential summer camps are proven to increase a child's access to formalized education, and to develop critical emotional intelligence, thereby opening the path which will allow them to reach their full potential and thrive as members of the community.

Low-income students typically have limited access to summer enrichment opportunities which is known to result in them falling behind academically in the early part of the school year. JACF provides these motivated and deserving young people with the opportunity to reduce the impact of this phenomenon known as “summer slide" by sending them to a multi-week summer camp experience where they continue to learn and grow. This enables them to return to school in the fall with the ability to perform to their true potential. By removing the financial barriers to high-quality summer enrichment, we are able to immediately influence their academic success, as well as foster highly relevant personal skills that have the potential to alter their life's trajectory.

Research indicates that summer camps play an important role in the development of young people. Results show that the positive supportive environments that camps create provide young people with the opportunity to grow socially, develop important life skills (including critical workforce-relates skills), and experience nature, all in a fun, hands-on setting.

Our strategic approach is to develop meaningful partnerships with committed organizations to come together and support underserved youth across the United States. We leverage the power of high-quality residential summer camps and mission-aligned youth mentoring organizations to promote the success of the kids we serve.

We work to remove the barriers to a high impact, long-term summer camp experience, proven to advance low-income youth toward a thriving future. We do this by fully funding campers for the full lifespan of their summer camp experience, thus ensuring that the greatest youth development outcomes can be achieved, and access to this life-changing experience can be achieved.

By bringing together this active network of partners we can pool our resources to provide the kinds of life-changing experiences that we know our camps can provide, and do so year after year, where we know the greatest growth is achieved. And we can do so in a way that allows us to significantly broaden our reach.

We have steadily grown our organizational capabilities since 1989 to the point where we are currently awarding approximately 100 camperships each year. This has been achieved in large part by a dedicated core of individual supporters who help us achieve our annual funding goals. In addition, growing our endowment allows us to supplement our annual funding capabilities. An adjustment of our funding model will provide a strong platform for significant growth in the future. This will see us bring the collective power of our partnerships to bear much more effectively in the future, thereby allowing us to spread our financial resources much further, broadening the overall impact we can achieve. At the same time, we will reposition our brand to attract much greater funding from a broader support base.

To this point, we have issued thousands of Campership Awards to economically disadvantaged young people all across the U.S. The value of these Campership Awards is in excess of $4.5million. We have established partnerships with 9 accredited high-quality residential summer camps from across the country, and numerous youth mentoring organizations committed to providing the support and programming to the young people we serve that is complementary to the growth and development they achieve during their consecutive summers at camp.

Over the next few years, we aim to broaden our reach to support in excess of 250 campers each year by expanding our partnerships and positioning our organization to attract increased support, more than tripling our historical reach.