FaithBridge Foster Care, Inc. is a Georgia-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2007 whose mission is to mobilize, organize, and equip local churches to solve their community’s foster care crisis.
The Vice President, Youth Opportunities initiative will oversee the creation, program design, building out, and day-to-day leadership of a new division/initiative within FaithBridge that will encourage and equip youth who are aging-out of the foster care system to complete career training, find gainful employment and become successful members of their community.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION
Over the past 15 years, FaithBridge has successfully served nearly 2,000 unique children in their foster homes and helped prepare more than 725 foster children for adoption.. Today, they are the largest and most trusted Georgia-based and Christ-centered licensed Child Placing Agency in the state, and are a preferred source of placement from the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS).
In 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 the organization was recognized as a certified best workplace by Best Christian Workplaces; and in 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) named FaithBridge as a model foster care agency because of their work in restoring families so foster children may be reunited with healthier birth families.
Under the oversight of a strategically-oriented, five-member Board of Directors, FaithBridge is led day-to-day by President & CEO, Bob Bruder-Mattson—who has been at the helm for six years—and his Executive Team. There are 46 FTEs budgeted in 2023 along with two part-time employees and 15-20 independent contractors at any given time for home studies, child life histories, and training. Just over half the FTEs are in the office where a hybrid workplace model is used, while the remaining FTEs, part-time and independent contractors all work remotely. Their offices are located in Alpharetta, Georgia, just north of Atlanta, on the beautiful campus of Jackson Healthcare, a $1.4 billion company led by founder and FaithBridge board chair, Rick Jackson.
The organization’s current annual budget is $8.5 million. Revenue streams include earned revenue from state contracts ($6.5 million) and donated revenue from individuals, foundations, churches, corporations, and gifts-in-kind donations of $2 million.
HOW THEY ACCOMPLISH THEIR MISSION
FaithBridge currently fulfills its mission through four strategic program offerings:
Foster Care Homes—FaithBridge recruits, trains, licenses and supports foster care families in local churches so that they are prepared to provide community-based, short- and long-term traditional, medically-fragile, and therapeutic care for foster children in need.
Foster Care Adoption—The organization recruits, trains, licenses and supports families who want to adopt waiting children from foster care. They work to help identify adoptive families for waiting foster children.
Adoption Child Life History—The staff team prepares child life history reports on all foster children waiting for adoption, which are then presented to potential adoptive parents. These reports encompass all known history about both the child and the birth family and are required before a child can be placed in a pre-adoptive home.
FaithBridgeU—The recently-launched FaithBridgeU, LLC is a learning management platform designed to provide both on-demand and live Christ-centered and clinically-relevant trainings to support foster parents’ continuing education requirements and success.
THE NEW FAITHBRIDGE YOUTH OPPORTUNITIES INITIATIVE
In June 2022, the Georgia State Legislature passed an innovative and ground-breaking bill called The Fostering Success Act (HB 424), an income tax credit that will allow individuals, married couples and corporations to donate annually to support unadopted youth aging-out of foster care (typically at age 18). Essentially, this means that these “donors” can give to help youth aging-out of foster care from the Georgia state income taxes they would typically owe, having no real financial impact on the donor.
Funding for this new initiative will come through revenues from a new organization called Fostering Success Act that is charged with both gathering funds and engaging aging-out youth. Funding could reach $2–4 million in Year One, which is in addition to a $529,000 HUD contract that began in December 2022 and a State of Georgia contract for an Independent Living Program that started this past August.
FaithBridge Youth Opportunities will help Georgia’s foster youth prepare for and achieve their dreams for the future. On a broader level, this program could serve as a national model for helping youth successfully transition from foster care to independence. Its purpose is to equip foster youth to complete career training that leads to gainful employment and a lifetime of success.
In plain language, FaithBridge Youth Opportunities’ goal is to:
Give foster youth hope and a positive vision for their future,
Open their eyes to what is possible and expose them to new ways of thinking and opportunities for personal growth,
Help them identify their God-given gifts, abilities and passions,
Connect youth with training and jobs that align with their interests, skills and passions, and
Equip former foster youth to successfully transition from foster care to adulthood.
This program is being created to help serve the approximately 300-350 Georgia youth who exit the foster care system annually when they turn 18 as well as youth ages 19-25 who have already exited the foster care system and were not adopted or reunited with family.
ABOUT THE ROLE
This is a unique opportunity to be on the ground floor of an innovative approach to help aging-out foster youth break a decades-old cycle and achieve success in life. A leadership background in child welfare, foster care, social work or ministries focused on underserved youth is critical. The ideal candidate needs to have experience designing and leading programs, a proven ability to build and lead a team, and a history of P&L responsibilities. Therefore, they will:
Have shown excellence in building relationships, with a winning personality that has others wanting to follow them and/or be part of what they are doing,
Be able to cast vision and build commitment to achieve goals and objectives that others did not think were possible,
Have a “fire in the belly” to achieve outcomes but know how to get things done with excellence in the right way and in right timing,
Understand how to build and run successful operations, including delving into the details when necessary, but empowering the team to achieve success without micromanaging, and
Be a self-starter that thinks outside the box to create winning solutions that are customer-centric.