Think of Us is an advocacy group focused on the foster care system that advocates keeping children in foster care in settings close to their families and for the provision of resources to financially struggling families to prevent children from entering the foster system. 1 Think of Us partners with government agencies, lawmakers, providers, advocates, and foundations to support “kinship care” and similar family-unification-based systems. 2
It also seeks to expand benefits programs to young people who age out of the foster care system. 3 Think of Us claims to use research and technological development to eliminate systemic inequities and integrate youth-centered approaches into decision-making that supports youth and their families. 4
Activities
Think of Us’s LifeSet platform claims to provide resources for young people transitioning out of foster care. 5 The group’s “Unpacking the Data” report identifies disparities in foster care outcomes and proposed actionable solutions such as the advocating for the Protecting America’s Children by Strengthening Families Act. 6
Funding
As of 2023, Think of Us secured a five-year grant totaling $47.5 million from the Audacious Project, a social-impact funding initiative by the TED Talks nonprofit. 7
Think of Us also is aligned with the Annie E. Casey Foundation on kinship-first approaches that prioritize placing foster children with relatives first, and advocates for increased benefits programs for older youth, including those who had aged out of foster care. 8
Advocacy
Think of Us supported the Protecting America’s Children by Strengthening Families Act proposed in 2024. The proposed bill would seek to reauthorize and reform Title IV-B programs while increasing investment in families by permanently allocating an additional $75 million annually to the MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program. The group claimed this would help enhance family preservation and reunification while assisting adoption promotion efforts. 9
Think of Us partnered with Foster America, New America, and Bloom Works on the Child Welfare Playbook project, which advocates for kinship placements in the foster care system, among other policies. The Child Welfare Playbook was supported by the A.L. Mailman Family Foundation, the Aviv Foundation, the Ballmer Group, the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Greenbridge Family Foundation, New America’s New Practice Lab, Schmidt Futures, the Stand Together Trust, and the North Forty Group. 10
All-time grants received statistics from Candid dataset:
Total Grant Value:$34,963,483
Number of Grants:134
Number of Funders:51
Selection of highest value grants received from the last seven years:
Amount
Year
Funder
Subject
$3,000,500
2023
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Inc
To support targeted strategies to meaningfully engage individuals with lived experience as part of the DDF prevention initiative to create a prevention-oriented family well-being system
to support the Center for Lived Experience, a national research center integrating insights, data, and leadership of people with lived experience to redesign the child welfare system
To support establishment of a Prevention-Focused Learning Collaborative for 16 jurisdictions led by the Child Welfare Transformation Initiative, a sponsored project of Think of Us
Support to the Family Well-Being Strategy Group in the planning and implementation of the SOUL Family Permanency Option within designated demonstration sites
$480,000
2021
StartSmall LLC
Think of Us (TOU) operates as the R+D lab for child welfare, taking on strategic – and opportunistic – projects with the goal of causing “good trouble” and, ultimately, driving concrete, structural changes in policy, practice, resource flows, power dynamics, relationships and mental models. Their ultimate goal is to promote social and racial equity by integrating Lived Experience at every level, ensuring everyone touched by the system has the conditions they need to Heal, Develop and Thrive. This grant will support TOU’s work across the ecosystem of current and former foster youth, child welfare workers and policymakers to Spark, Support and Drive to systematically center lived experience.
Think of Us is a systems change non-profit that focuses on leveraging technology to upgrade the foster care system and its programs for better life outcomes for its youth. Our support will fund their emergency Direct Relief Fund and to launch a Virtual Foster Care Housing Assistance Support Center.This investment will enable Think of Us to deploy urgently needed resources to older foster youth in danger of falling further through the cracks of an ailing child welfare system due to coronavirus (COVID-19)
