A Smile for Kids

Through all the facets of our program, we aim to:

• Impact high school graduation rate in Oregon positively from its current 79%, one family at a time.
• Increase awareness around bullying and how all types of bullying lower the victim's contributions to our communities.
• Improve the family's overall health by introducing the kids to health services and professionals who can help them focus on healthy habits
• Grow participation in Oregon's community service organizations from kids who may not otherwise have been exposed to volunteerism.

By uncovering their strength and using it for good we hope to help create resilient, empowered kids who feel connected to the world and who will stand up for other bullied kids. It's never the victim's fault that they get bullied; we just aim to help remove a few barriers that may make life more difficult than it has to be for middle- and high school kids.

By building connections to social service networks in Oregon (schools, DHS, churches, after school programs and other family services), we encourage all professionals who are part of an under-resourced kid's life to refer them to us.

On the back end, we fund our program in a few different ways. We seek grant funding through health and community-service oriented organization and from funds all around Oregon. This includes corporate giving and leverage through other non-profit organizations.

We find individual sponsors who wish to help the kids by sponsoring the entire orthodontic process for that child and in return, we encourage sponsors and the child to communicate with each other. This has added a high level of accountability to the program and given the recipient a stronger sense that there are people out there who care about them. For some of our kids, this is the only place they get to feel that connectedness.

We are launching individual giving campaigns to encourage work, family and school groups to crowdfund or peer2peer fund when one person wants to help but can't afford a full set of braces for a kid who desperately needs them.

Finally, we work closely with all our orthodontic partners to ensure that the in-kind donation of their time and materials makes a difference in their community. Without their help, we would be hard-pressed to make our program happen.

Through the last 10 years, our Program Director, Michael has been developing the program to bring the most value to all stakeholders. This is accomplished through constant contact with orthodontists, social services professionals, families of the kids and sponsors. By keeping everyone in the loop when it comes to the treatment process and progress with school, health, and volunteering, we maintain a close-knit network of caring individuals who are all looking to help the kid feel successful. In addition, Michael takes great care to pre-screen kids for our three main factors; a strong aesthetic need, lack of resources and suffering from severe self-esteem issues. This, in turn, has given our organization a high level of credibility with the orthodontists who agree to take on the treatment at a financial loss to their practice.

Executive Director, Christian, comes to A Smile for Kids with a strong background in Learning & Development, marketing, and sales in the private sector, as well as time working for the State of Oregon. This has provided a unique insight into marketing and fundraising on one side and working with government agencies on the other. Building a self-sustaining and growth strategy after a recent re-organization has made A Smile for Kids more agile and better able to adapt to market forces governing our fundraising efforts.

In addition, our Board of Directors has been selected for expertise in orthodontics, fundraising, board governance, and community involvement. As such, we have a critically thinking board who is personally invested in making our program impact kids in Oregon in the most meaningful way.

Since "A Smile for Kids" was founded in 2004, our organization has gone through several development stages. Because we have filled a gap between public support for orthodontic services and lack of resources for each affected family, our program has grown tremendously.

As an example, in 2010 we worked with 20 orthodontists and funded treatment for 14 kids. We had an operating budget of $70,000. We now work with 64 orthodontists, have facilitated treatment of 50 kids this year so far and looking to grow our scope to treat 60 kids next year with a budget of $400,000. This now means that our 94% graduation rate and community service hours affect more communities than ever before.

We are looking into the future to grow our scope to cover more rural communities in Oregon where orthodontic services are often missing. We will also continue to grow funding streams in Oregon in order to serve more suffering kids in communities where we are already operating.

As a follow up to requests from our sponsors out-of-state we will also look at funding options for our program is states where orthodontic services are not covered by public health systems.