Foster-care veteran Sixto Cancel argues that people who have experienced the child-welfare system are the ones to make it better. Now some of America’s biggest philanthropists are betting that he’s right.
Think of Us, Cancel’s six-year-old nonprofit, announced Monday that it is receiving $47.5 million over five years through the Audacious Project, the collective that includes such high-profile grant makers and donors as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, MacKenzie Scott, and the Skoll Foundation.
Born as a tech group, Think of Us has expanded to become a research and design organization that aims to spur a reimagination of how the nation cares for young people in troubled homes. Central to any redesign, it argues, is a recognition that poverty leads to the neglect that drives foster placements.
There’s been clamor for overhaul and even abolition of the $33 billion child-welfare system for years, Cancel said, but new federal legislation creates an opportunity for states to make radical change. “We’re living in a most unique time right now.”
Rather than let officials default to old ways, Think of Us aims to work with the child-welfare experts and advocates to study how best to keep troubled families together, place children with family members, and support older adolescents about to come of legal age and leave foster care. It hopes to raise $100 million for the work.
Those impacted by the system need to help build something new, Cancel said. More than half of the organization’s staff is individuals who have been impacted by the child-welfare system in some way. Cancel began living in foster homes when he was 11 months old because of his mother’s drug addiction and poverty.
“The sector has done a good job of building advocates,” he said, “but we haven’t seen investments in those with lived experience becoming part of the solution.”
A key asset for Think of Us: a database of information about some 38,000 people who have experience in the child-welfare system as foster children, biological parents, or other relatives who have cared for family members. The organization believes that this data — gathered chiefly from its pandemic-related surveys and support work — can help drive testing and development of new child-welfare policies and practices.
Focus on Lived Experiences
Audacious is among several grant makers increasingly tapping the lived experiences of those affected by the social issues they are tackling. “Nothing about us without us” has been a slogan of the disability-rights movement for years, and when the Ford Foundation recently launched a fund targeting technology that discriminates against people with disabilities, nonprofit leaders and advocates who are disabled led selection of the first grantees.
Although Think of Us has backing from tech-focused philanthropy, the Audacious commitment is its first major support from donors that don’t traditionally give to foster-care issues. “The shift among nonprofits and funders towards valuing lived experience has been a journey — the result of generations of change makers calling on philanthropy and nonprofits to do better and, more recently, the frank conversations we’re all having,” said Anna Verghese, the group’s executive director, in an email. “Maybe it can be called a moment of reckoning — finally taking a closer look at the systems we’ve created and asking how we support the solutions that challenge the status quo and back the visionaries behind them.”
Others contributing to the $47.5 million total include the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, and other previous Think of Us backers. “This is a tremendous opportunity for Sixto and Think of Us to scale innovations that improve outcomes for young people,” said Sandra Gasca-Gonzalez, vice president of Casey’s Center for Systems Innovation, in a news release.
The grant amounts to jet fuel for a fast-growing organization. Contributions to Think of Us as recently as 2019 were only $331,000, according to tax filings. Cancel said its budget will likely grow from $6 million this year to as high as $15 million during the grant before dropping to $9 million.
Think of Us grew out of a video project that Cancel, 31, launched as a college student in which individuals who had experience in foster care told their stories. He founded the nonprofit to build a mobile app to coach young people aging out of the foster system in how to manage housing, employment, finances, and health care.
Cancel, CEO of Think of Us, is considered a rising star by many. His accolades include Aspen Ideas and Ashoka fellowships, and he has been named a White House Champion of Change.
The Think of Us grant is part of $1 billion in commitments announced by the Audacious Project. Other organizations receiving funds include: ReNew30, a renewable-energy group; Clean Slate Initiative, a criminal-justice group; and Upstream USA, which aims to increase equitable access to high-quality contraceptive care.
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