The hosts also discuss the importance of supporting foster families and communities, the transformation of community engagement through innovative programs, and the future of nonprofits. They share additional leadership insights, the significance of National Foster Care Month, and ways individuals can get involved in supporting foster care initiatives. The discussion emphasizes the need to change perceptions about foster children, families, and social workers to foster a more empathetic and supportive environment.
TRANSCRIPT:
Brian (00:01.277)
Welcome to the Foster Friendly podcast. I’m your host, Brian Mavis, with my two idiosyncratic co-hosts, Courtney and Travis. Yes. Yeah, we’re gonna have, I know. This podcast has a little fringe benefit. You get to learn a new word every time. so, yeah, so you guys are idiosyncratic co-hosts. Glad to have you here.
Travis (00:10.03)
Hmm. No idea what that means.
Courtney (00:10.353)
That’s a big word.
Brian (00:31.862)
We have this episode, we’re recording it on April Fool’s Day, but we’re not going to do any jokes. But it’s going to be released, if you’re listening to it, if you’re right off the hot off the presses, it’s going to be released on the anniversary or birthday, what do you want to say, of AKB’s 10th anniversary or birthday?
I don’t know which one we are, anniversary or birthday. We got born and married on the same day. Child bride. And it’s the beginning of the National Foster Care Awareness Month. So fun episode. And we’re going to be focusing a little bit today on AKB and our 10 years. Yay.
Courtney (01:00.366)
Yeah.
Travis (01:00.664)
Hahaha
Courtney (01:23.867)
Yay!
Travis (01:24.718)
Thus the AKB trucker hats that had to come out.
Courtney (01:28.784)
Yeah.
Brian (01:28.881)
Yes, so if you’re not, if you’re just listening and not watching this on YouTube, Travis and I both have our AKB hats on and there’s two versions. One is old school AKB that Travis is wearing and then I have the newer version which they have two different logos. And so, yes, Travis should we just.
Courtney (01:44.805)
Very old school.
Brian (01:57.437)
keep going down this route of why we changed the logo. Okay, so AKB, we have had two logos during our years. In the first maybe what, seven or so years, we had the logo that you have, Travis. when we started AKB, and again, we’ll go back and talk about how there was no intention of starting a nonprofit.
Travis (01:59.31)
I think we should.
Courtney (01:59.365)
Yeah
Brian (02:28.393)
But when we did start the national version, America’s Kids Belong, which was born out of a state nonprofit, Adopt Colorado Kids, we thought, okay, let’s, you know, gotta have a logo, I guess. And so we did kind of a classic traditional logo with a heart and a child inside of it, kind of a silhouette. But if you look at it a certain way, if you look at it,
Courtney (02:55.793)
Restricted.
Travis (02:56.821)
in closer.
Brian (02:58.391)
Coming on closer, a lot of people thought we had a nonprofit about lactation because it looks like a child breastfeeding. There’s two. And there’s a baby is latching on.
Courtney (03:08.497)
And Travis, you’re sporting it.
Travis (03:12.062)
I am sporting it and yeah.
Courtney (03:17.049)
me.
Travis (03:19.406)
very confusing what our mission was or is then.
Brian (03:20.063)
It’s so…
Brian (03:26.062)
So, yeah, so we changed our logo to be a little bit less, you know, breastfeeding. And then we switched to what this logo is, which at first I didn’t get, I didn’t like when I first saw it, I was like, what is that mess? Because it’s for like, what do call it? Like call out, it’s speech bubbles.
Courtney (03:49.009)
call out.
Brian (03:52.957)
which was to illustrate that we help give kids a voice. We help share their voice. But within those four speech bubbles, in the negative there, is the image of a child. And that was also said, because a lot of times people feel like these kids are unseen, they’re invisible. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it. So I love our logo today. And so if you guys are just listening, go.
Online at americaskidsbelong.org and you can look and see our logo if that is not ringing a bell and you’ll see the four speech bubbles and then inside that speech bubble is the unseen child. Yeah, yeah, miss those old days of lactating logos.
Courtney (04:45.041)
Black Tating.
Travis (04:48.47)
Lactating logos! my god! We’re so off the rails, I don’t even know, I mean… But we’re gonna roll, because it’s…
Courtney (04:50.501)
Like… Yeah, I read them.
Brian (04:51.807)
It actually that logo illustrates so much of how we just when we were getting started, we were super scrappy and we were super action oriented and we just like would focus on like, you know, get the main things and then and we we were far from perfect. I mean, we would
act and then iterate because all the time we were like, let’s just try to figure out what the next thing is without getting the perfection. So there was a lot of ready fire aim movement in AKB back in those early days.
Courtney (05:42.841)
And now it’s perfected.
Brian (05:44.947)
Yeah, it feels, mean, compared to what it used to be, it feels like, man, this is one smooth machine going right now. it has very little to do with me. I mean, we hired a lot of people who have a tremendous skill set of refinement and perfecting things. And so very grateful for that.
Travis (05:45.386)
Well… Now it’s really fun!
Courtney (05:51.473)
Oil machine, yeah, I believe it.
Travis (06:14.796)
Okay, question off the, this is not recording the, are you going to use that as your story or do you want me to still ask the story thing or we move on to the next?
Brian (06:16.253)
Yes.
Brian (06:25.631)
Yeah, let’s do a little bit more content there and we can edit out something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right.
Travis (06:27.33)
Did you have it? Okay. I figured you had some more. just didn’t know. Cause we just kind of, okay. All right. Okay. So, all right. Well, there’s a little, interesting. I mean, it was extra. mean,
Brian (06:38.963)
Yeah, that was a little extra. I wasn’t even about the logo, but when we put on the hats and I saw your old version, I was like, yeah, I got to tell the story of the logo creation. Because it really illustrates so much of how we have changed over the years and how we operated.
Travis (06:46.09)
It… It… St-er-ed…
Travis (06:55.146)
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that was that was a yeah, yeah, for sure. So like that. Yeah, it was a bonus. So I want to hear me Courtney want to hear as the listeners, what what are any other funny stories or or something that people may not know about America’s Kids Belong, you know, looking back?
Brian (07:01.727)
A bonus.
Brian (07:14.429)
Man, there are a lot of them. And I think I’ll share an origin story. And there’s actually several origin stories, but my wife and I, had no, none, vision, intention of starting a nonprofit. This AKB was started out of a personal burden and conviction. And so we were foster parents.
And let’s see, starting in 2005, 20 years ago, we, let’s see, what’s it, our second placement, we had a baby that we got from the hospital, born exposed to drugs, medically fragile, took him in, caring for him.
really loved him, had him for nine months and were working hard with his parents to have him reunified. But nine months in, got a call from our caseworker that she said, hey, something horrible has happened. I need to meet with you. So she came over and I wasn’t home at this time. I was at work. And so she was meeting with just Julie. And she said, she explained what had happened. she, you know, conclusion was
He’s never going back to them. He’ll never be safe. And so then she asked Julie, would you be open to adopting him? And Julie’s just floored by this because we had put so much effort into reunification. So we loved this little boy, but Julie had all sorts of questions. So she’s like exploring like what would this mean? So then she, among her questions, she asked this question. She said,
She asked, what would happen to him if we said no? And our caseworker said something that just ended up changing our lives. She said, he’ll be fine. There’s a line right now for the babies. I just wish there was a line for all the other kids. And Julie was like, what other kids? And that’s when our caseworker said, there’s 800 kids in Colorado who need
Brian (09:41.019)
adopting but nobody wants them like Julie’s like, why not? Well, they’re not little babies. They might have special needs. Come with siblings, all those things. So I come home, Julie’s unpacking this with me and we continue to talk about it throughout the night. Eventually, you know, go to bed, lights out. I’m trying to go to sleep and she, you know, and the in the breaks the silence and the in the dark night, she says, I just can’t.
thinking about those 800 kids, this is an injustice and somebody needs to do something about it. And then I said, crap. And that’s our original mantra, crap. Because I knew somebody needs to do something about this meant us. And so it really was this like, like, it felt like that moment of like,
Courtney (10:23.601)
Okay.
Brian (10:39.155)
there in the middle of the night in the dark whispered somebody needs to do something and felt like this was the moment that kind of was saying, God was putting us on a new assignment. so, know, so throughout the years we saw, we were helping with kids in Colorado. We had a lot of success and they were going.
incredible stories, funny stories, God stories. But when it comes to AKB, eventually over five years later, we again, it’s really like over those like kind of 10 years of just working on this. But five years was we became an official nonprofit with Adopt Crowder Kids because we were required to we were
told that we were doing too much is just private individuals, citizens that we needed to start a nonprofit. We did that for five years. And then a little bit over 10 years ago, we were challenged to go beyond Colorado. And there’s some funny stories there. is that so we’re, Julie and I had been, we were flown out to Chicago and we’ve
meeting with this guy and some people and then we’re challenged like move go beyond Colorado. So we fly back home and Julie asked are you going to do this? And so I’m a pastor at the time Julie’s really been leading the Colorado initiative. I’ve been her number one helper. you know super connected through the churches that kind of stuff and kind of more of that.
upfront person while she was doing a lot of the behind the scenes kind of work. And, and she really felt in order to go national that we kind of have to, I would have to kind of step in more into the lead role. So we fly back home. It’s nighttime. We’ve been in Chicago for a couple of days. They’re really challenging us to go beyond Colorado. And she asked, so are you going to do this? Are you going to help lead this beyond Colorado? And I said, no, I’m not.
Brian (13:03.935)
She’s like, why not? She was just floored that I said no. And I said, well, getting kids into families is your thing. It’s not my thing. Oh man. so that night I got to sleep on the couch because of the answer. And I woke up the next morning to a text, I mean, texted in the morning. And it was from a person who had adopted a couple of kids inspired by our work.
Courtney (13:11.387)
Hmm.
Courtney (13:17.809)
Hehehehehe
Thank
Brian (13:34.651)
And that text said, Brian, I had a dream about you last night that you had died and we were trying to get into your funeral, but we couldn’t get in because it was full of kids that you had helped get into families. I was like, crap. that was my… So it was another mantra of like, I felt like that theme of like, no, God is after me on this. But that didn’t convince me. It still took months of…
Courtney (13:51.505)
you
Brian (14:04.563)
God doing some crazy things in my life to get my attention to say this was an assignment that he had for us. So then eventually we team up with colleagues, not with us, but Janet Kelly, had been the Secretary of State in Virginia. We come together, we’re working on how do we work both at the grass tops level and grass roots.
And then we count May 1st of 10 years ago, 2015 as our first official day, even though we’ve been kind of like help working together and things like that. This is our first official day. And the reason was because we were in Virginia. We had a CAFO Christian Alliance for Orphans Conference. And we had set up a meeting with the chief of staff of the governor’s office in Tennessee. The governor has them at that time.
So we were like, hey, it’s a long shot. See if we can get in while we’re here. So we ask and get an invite the next day, which is May 1st. And so literally, we end up going to a Kinko’s UPS store and creating business cards. for something wasn’t working right.
where they couldn’t get the business card to print front and back. So we ended up gluing two business cards together so we’d have a front and back. Yeah. And then we got like a folder that you would get for a fourth grade science project. And we printed out some stuff, put that in, presented glued business cards and folders as part of our presentation.
Courtney (15:42.801)
Classic.
Travis (15:45.549)
nice!
Travis (15:53.154)
Ha ha
Travis (16:03.15)
Mmm.
Brian (16:03.257)
And so we really held those back and met with, really focused on eye to eye contact. And then handed that at the end, trying to not derail everything. But that was kind of our first meeting. It’s not the first place we ended up working. We ended up working in Oklahoma, tremendous stuff there, but then eventually did go into Tennessee. And I would say
Again, that illustrates we were super action oriented, super bold. We were like, where should we start? Let’s start at the top. Let’s meet with the governor. And so a lot of it felt like we would really take big bold moves, a series of bold moves. And then that required us to really stretch and grow.
Even though we were young and small, we were scrappy and bold and God did amazing things.
Courtney (17:06.659)
I love it. And I’m just thinking the, the, oh crap. And the lactation, it’s like the baby years of AKB.
Brian (17:07.679)
Thanks.
Brian (17:12.119)
Yeah, lots of… Perfect. That is perfect. Yes, yes. yes. Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
Travis (17:12.334)
NNNN
Courtney (17:20.776)
So switch it over a bit, Brian. Okay, so we got the baby ears, we got the oh crap, the lactation. Now compare and contrast that to today. What’s the difference today?
Brian (17:29.757)
Yeah, so here we are 10 years later. We have like 50 staff and it’s. You know early on when it was just me and Julie, you know we hired somebody at Gal you guys know Lori Zocchi who? Very different than me and Julie, somebody who we love a lot, but man she like is a super smart, detailed perfectionist and.
Travis (17:48.654)
Hehehe.
Brian (17:59.407)
We just were really focused. Julie and I were very aware of our gaps. in fact, I love there’s that old original Rocky, you know, Rocky one. There was even not even a number because it was just Rocky. There’s a scene in there where Polly, Adrian’s brother, asked Rocky, how come you like my sister? And Rocky says, well, you know, she fills my gaps. He’s like, what? He’s like, you know.
I got gaps, she’s got gaps. We fill each other’s gaps. Well, Julie and I have the same gaps. And we’re like, man, we are strong in the same way and weak in the same way. So we said, let’s, we need to have a lot of people fill the gaps. And so we really just focused on, had put tremendous value on hiring.
Travis (18:37.39)
Ha ha ha.
Brian (18:59.167)
hiring people with a deep, deep character, high, high capacity, and then chemistry, and really kept learning that more and more, how important chemistry is, that you can have people with who are solid citizens who have a lot of talent, but you just don’t click as well. And that we had a few of those along the way.
but it really found people who have deep character, high capacity, and then that chemistry thing. so along the way, and I would say, again, so I was the lead, executive director, CEO, whatever you want to call it. And if I could brag about myself, and it’s ironic because I’m to brag about my humility.
Travis (19:36.504)
Hmm.
Travis (19:54.062)
Hmm
Brian (19:56.713)
came to a place where thought AKB would be better if I weren’t the leader. And we had a board member step in as CEO, and then the past couple of years, we’ve actually had like a three-person leadership team. So the two other people who kind of take that helm of shared overall responsibility, two other people, Phil and Annette, and I talked about how…
Nanette is the C of CEO, and it’s not the word that’s changed the letters from Chief Executive Officer to Connection, Engagement, and Operations. Nanette is the, I’m not Communications, not Connection, Communications. That’s Nanette. I’m the E, Engagement, and Phil is the Operations. And we, again, talking about, and this is true of you too, as well, people who are
What’s true of you and true of Phil and Annette and true of so many people on our staff are very emotionally healthy, emotionally mature. They’ve done hard things in their lives. They’ve done the hard work of getting to know themselves and just having that emotional maturity along with a very diverse skill set. AKB has
Maybe we’re still in, I mean, we’re definitely not baby years, we’re not toddler years, and maybe we’re in the teen years where, but we’re getting, we’re falling like, getting super coordinated in our teen years. We’ve gone through lots of growing pains and I do think the future is going to see incredible maturity results and if, again, if
Travis, know I shared this with the staff once, you really resonated with it. I said, when it’s all said and done, when I’m not a part of AKB, if I could look back and say, what do I want AKB to be known for? I want it to be known as being the most trusted organization in the space because we were trustworthy. We really worked hard on dignity, really worked hard on saying what we were gonna do and doing what we said.
Travis (22:26.84)
Yeah, still resonate a lot with that. It’s amazing. And I really think that part of the genesis of this podcast as well is this idea to reinforce your vision to say, at America’s Kids Belong, we want to be a trusted source of also just information and guests and a leading source of thought content around this. that’s what we’re trying to accomplish. And yeah, it’s exciting.
Brian (22:54.462)
Yeah.
Travis (22:56.57)
so if AKB is right now in the teen years, we have our learner’s permit or we were driving around here and we’ll see a little rebellion.
Brian (23:02.431)
We are driving. Yeah, we just got our license and we’re cruising Main Street a lot. And we’ve got a paste on tattoo on our arm looking tough. Yeah, but we can wash it off and clean it up if we.
Courtney (23:02.897)
Little rebellious.
Travis (23:15.17)
Hahaha
Travis (23:21.912)
Hey, we’re getting, might get some peers.
Courtney (23:22.727)
You
Yeah.
Travis (23:29.154)
The piercings are coming to, um, well, I, I want to respond to one thing too, is what you said is with chemistry and you know, kind of this thing. I’m a huge fan of the 1980 American, you know, hockey team being the Soviets, the miracle movie and Herb Brooks is, you know, genius as a coach. I’ve listened to a lot of that kind of stuff. You remember watching that? I was a year old, so don’t remember, but I’m sure.
Brian (23:32.648)
Ahem.
Brian (23:43.763)
Mmm.
Brian (23:50.576)
I think
huh. Yeah, yeah. I saw the Olympic hockey game. Do you believe in miracles?
Travis (23:58.19)
Yep. Do you believe, but there’s, there’s something where Herb who had this genius for sort of assembling a team and that was kind of the magic and he had them believe themselves. But I think he had a quote or a line that said, I’m not looking for the best players. I’m looking for the right players. And, um, you know, kind of your point of like, you know, the people you’ve assembled, mean, there’s talented people that, you know, maybe not on the team, but you’re or more talented, but there, and we have a ton of talent.
Courtney (24:00.625)
I
Travis (24:27.04)
on this team, but this idea of the right people.
Brian (24:27.357)
Yeah, Yes, and then the movie that was adapted for that, I think it’s called Miracle, Kurt Russell’s the coach and it’s a bunch of talented people, but they’re not they’re not clicking and they’re they have their like name in college on the back of their jersey when they’re practicing. And then the front is the USA. And at first, they’re just saying, you know, you know who you play for. And they’re like
Travis (24:36.227)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (24:56.935)
Boston College, Penn State, things like that. And then finally, he just puts them through the wringer and they finally get to the point, who do you play for? USA. And I’m a big believer, because we’re diverse. None of us meet. Unfortunately, it’s the thing I don’t like about AKB. And it’s necessary, not the words, the words on evil, but down, you know.
Travis (24:58.126)
That’s right.
Brian (25:25.203)
downside is we’re a decentralized, physically decentralized. We all work out of our own hometowns. We spread the whole country. And so we don’t get to see each other in person. So it can at times feel like, hey, I work for South Dakota and I work for Georgia. And it’s like, yes, but.
I really love the three Musketeers mantra, all for one, one for all. And we’ve got to be there for each other. If we don’t feel like one team, then we don’t have near the power. So for 10 years, we’ve worked hard on building unity. Unity is a huge value to me, personal value.
I’ve had that from way before AKB as far as like one of the things, one of the heartaches I have is that the church isn’t unified. So yeah.
Travis (26:27.64)
Well, you’ve already spoken to some of this already, but if you could kind of snapshot just some highlights of some of the biggest accomplishments that you see of AKB the last several years.
Brian (26:35.999)
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, thing that we’re best known for is our program called the I Belong Project, which is the video of the kids. And how that started was we, you know, way back when, 2006, 2007, something like that, the…
Colorado had the Colorado Heart Gallery. was the second heart gallery in the country. New Mexico had started it. Colorado got the second one. And it was okay. You know, it had 30 kids out of 800. And it was being hosted in some places that didn’t personally, I don’t think made much sense. They, know, state Capitol building or things like that. And it’s like, all right. So we asked to have it hosted in our church and it had, you know, like a good impact.
So then we asked if we could have a duplicate one that was dedicated to just churches. And then we were told, no, that can never happen. And then a year later, it happened. And so we were actually asked to run the whole thing, not just a duplicate. So we ended up getting three versions. I mean, they’re all identical, but we had such demand. then one was kind of going to still some of those.
secular places, but two were dedicated to churches and we’re just having tremendous impact and then We said let’s do videos and that was a game changer especially for the older kids because of their personalities could really come through So I just checked this morning and I don’t know about last month’s videos because we did do some videos but as of February of this year We have videoed three thousand six hundred and seven kids
We are by far the biggest. I no doubt, I believe we are the best. We have struck this incredibly hard balance between promoting the kid and protecting the kid and giving them dignity throughout the whole thing. Some of those video days are some of the kids favorite days. And then what we do when we work to share those videos have had tremendous results, getting over 60%.
Brian (28:56.741)
of those over 3,000 videos, getting those kids matched with adoptive families. And it’s just turned a lot of adults towards these kids and it’s opened up a lot of hearts and turned a lot of heads. And so that’s huge. And again, back to something I’ve shared among our team is when people think about vetting these kids,
It’s not easy. mean, it’s not like, hey, just get your camera on your phone and turn it on. You have to, there’s a lot of legalities that you’ve got to watch through. and so I’ve tell people our innovation was not technology, was not videos. Anybody could do that. Our innovation was trust. We got child welfare to trust us to with their most
Courtney (29:49.937)
Yeah.
Brian (29:55.699)
valuable resource is those kids. And so that’s why I want to be known as the most trustworthy organization because it was founded on trust and I want it to be capped off by trust. So I love that. And then another thing that’s just amazing is this foster friendly app and program and foster friendly communities. It’s this app.
It is the connective tissue between churches, businesses, other nonprofits, civic opportunities, know, like zoos and things, parks and the foster family. And as far as I know, not as, not as is there an app like this in the nonprofits and foster care nonprofit, there’s nothing like it in any nonprofit, whether it’s military or anything like that. And so it’s a
Travis (30:47.16)
Hmm.
Brian (30:52.167)
tremendous tool that elevates organizations that are already involved in this process and activates organizations like businesses mostly that aren’t engaged. And it puts all that into the fingertips. So we’ve got over a couple thousand businesses who have said, yep, I care about this issue. And maybe you didn’t even know about it. I just thought about homelessness or mental health or addiction or human trafficking. And now we know that.
that kids in foster care are upstream to those issues. So they’re like, yes, we want to support those families. So activating thousands of businesses, getting thousands and thousands and thousands of foster families and kinship families to be able to see all the support they have and then getting churches to do the really some of harder things. Cause we used to ask churches to just do anything. And now we’ve asked them to do the most essential things with.
becoming trauma-informed and having ongoing support ministries and teaching on this issue in responsible way. And so I’m really proud of that. And I think it has huge growth potential, even though we were already way ahead of everyone else. I think it’s going to multiply by a hundredfold and more.
Travis (32:09.848)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (32:11.237)
Definitely, yeah. It’s so fun to look back and see. mean, that’s, there’s a lot over 10 years, a lot of a college.
Brian (32:16.319)
Yeah. that’s, yeah. And then, you know, then haven’t mentioned another program that we’re really developing that’s more up the funnel called Fostering Front Doors, helping people with their own individual paths. And Courtney, you’re working a lot on that. So in a sense, mean, AKB could be three huge nonprofits with those just three signature programs. But we weren’t trying to become huge. We were just responding to what was the most important need.
Travis (32:17.838)
haha
Brian (32:44.871)
And we got to see, were excellent in recruiting, but then we started seeing that retention of these families that we recruited was really suffering. And so that’s where the foster friendly side came in of like, hey, let’s not just fill up this bucket that’s full of holes, let’s patch up the holes. And so it was just responding to what needed to happen.
Courtney (33:07.153)
Yeah, you just kind of spoke on it a little bit, Brian, but go a little more into, okay, we’re in our teenage years now, moving into our adult years. Where are we going? What goals do you have? What do you see coming in the future?
Brian (33:17.331)
Well, so talking about Foster Friendly, we started with that, with saying, how can we get businesses involved? And that was a great question because it helped us create, where we said, hey, businesses are usually asked when it comes to nonprofits, asked to do one of two things or two things. It was donate or close up shop and volunteer with us for a day. And we just asked, what would it take for
businesses to say, our vocation is part of the solution. And we’re like, hey, if you cut hair, that’s part of what foster kids and families could use. If you run a martial arts studio, if you run a zoo, if you run a car dealership, all those things. And so that was a big deal. And then adding churches and other nonprofits so that it could be easily found. That really came down to like, gosh, what would an ideal community look like? And so that was the question we’re really struggling with.
How could it create an ideal community, a real ecosystem change? And so one of the things, again, this is a bit inside baseball and philosophical when it comes to community transformation, but in the early days, we applied a model called Collective Impact. so that had to do with kind of the Collective Impact has more of a grass tops approach. And we have worked with governors and still definitely can, and we know how.
and doing these big campaigns. But we’ve transitioned to emphasizing more a different transformation model called Asset Based Community Development, ABCD for short. And it has more of a grassroots approach rather than a grass tops approach. And it doesn’t ask what’s missing, ask what do we have? What does the community have? What exists that just needs to be activated and elevated? And so we are…
with Foster Friendly, a ecosystem community transformation company. And we could also be called a media company through IBP. So we’re trying to create, over the next couple of years, 20 ideal communities that will represent a population base of over 2 million people. Of course, that’s the entire population, not just kids and families.
Brian (35:41.767)
And so, but it’s trying to have those 2 million people at least elevate and be aware of like, there’s this thing called foster care and there’s something that, you know, most people can do to help go upstream and focus on this kids. So that’s a huge one. The other one is, you know, running a non-profits, right? Like running two businesses. You’re one, you’re doing the work. but, but that work isn’t, are we having a sound problem?
All of sudden? No? Okay. I got a ringing in my ear saying it must be me and not technology. let’s see, where was I? Gosh, where was I? I really got thrown by that ringing in my ear.
Travis (36:14.766)
Hmm.
Courtney (36:30.065)
work based versus.
Brian (36:33.823)
Gosh, I am lost. Sorry about that. Big time editing needed here.
Travis (36:38.062)
I we could rewind and then, I mean, we could.
Courtney (36:42.193)
I know, that’d be nice.
Brian (36:45.215)
Let’s see, so I don’t know. I don’t know. Gosh, it’s going to get, I hope the editing doesn’t get too hard there.
Courtney (36:52.881)
Now you’re so it was the two things, the future one you already committed and then you were onto the second one and then technology.
Brian (36:58.833)
the other one. Yeah. okay. Yeah. So running a nonprofit is like running two businesses. It’s you have the work that you’re doing, but that work doesn’t generate revenue. mean, kids want families, but all these kids are broke, so they can’t pay us to, you know, to help them find families. So other people. So that’s the other part. We have to raise money. And so we have always prioritized the work over.
funding and have always gotten miracle at the seems like at the end of each year, miracle donations and which I’m always credit. I mean, deeply grateful for always open for to have that in the future, but we need to move when it comes to maturity and talking being scrappy, move from, survival mode, which I would say we’ve been in for 10 years to what I would call sustainable to thriving. We’d really love to have it where
Right now, money, I hate to say, is our limiting factor. We have got the team, we’ve got the right people, we’ve got the playbook, we’ve got the resources, we’ve got the technology. We just need the funding that is holding us back. So I would really love to see the future of AKB have one that is appropriately resourced so that it’s not money.
merely money that is preventing our limiting our impact.
Travis (38:27.106)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (38:30.734)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (38:34.451)
So that’s the reality of running a nonprofit that you didn’t intend to start. yeah.
Courtney (38:36.358)
Yeah.
Travis (38:37.762)
Yeah. Well, that’s really a great segue into kind of what I was going to ask you next. So we’re going to zoom a little bit outside of just the foster care space. Yep. And so I have a master’s degree in organizational leadership. So I geek out, love everything about just starting leadership, what makes good leaders, looking at historic leaders. There’s a great line that I feel like sums up. I’ve been with you for eight years at this place.
Brian (38:47.526)
Okay.
Brian (38:52.541)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (38:58.682)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (39:06.68)
when I look at you and your impact, both for me and those I feel like would be my colleagues around me, is this idea that good leaders get people to believe in them and great leaders get people to believe in themselves. And I see you doing that through the way that you love and pour into your staff, the way that you see them and the way that you help them be empowered to continue learning and growing and just so much encouragement. So I have seen that from you and I just…
Brian (39:18.281)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (39:35.586)
very grateful for that. What I want to ask you is, and this kind of is for you looking out at any leader across the country. You’ve learned a lot. You continue to grow. I know how much you continue to learn as a leader. What is your top advice if you could distill some stuff down to other nonprofit leaders in any space across the country?
Brian (39:59.993)
gosh, I think you helped set me up, Travis, because you didn’t misdirect me. You really did just nail it. I sincerely am in awe of people on my staff. Their talent, their character.
I mean, so many of the staff have stepped up to this with personal passion. so I would again, so that would say, actually, you just stumbled upon that word. You can have people with tremendous talent. You definitely want that capacity, deep character. Yes, you talk chemistry. But the one thing I didn’t mention earlier was passion. Gosh, it’s amazing what a person with passion can do.
And in fact, back when, go back to the original kind of origin story where we’re like, somebody needs to do something. Within weeks, it seems, or months, not even a couple months, the county that we live in, we discovered that they were looking to hire a recruiter. And so,
Julie somehow discovered that. So she got interviewed and they actually said, we just stopped interviewing yesterday, but we’ll interview you. So Julie does not have a social workers degree. She doesn’t have any college degree at all. so they already gone through the rounds of interviewing all people, people who are, you they got their social works degree and things like that. And they hired her. And so she comes back, she goes, I’m probably the, you know.
the least qualified, why’d you hire me? She goes, you’re the most passionate. And in a year, she got the 17 longest waiting kids placed into families here in this county. And so look for people who are deeply passionate. And then when it comes to funding, same advice, don’t look for the people who are the richest, look for the people who care the most. And so I would say,
Brian (42:16.242)
That’s something that Julie and I, again, I mean, if you look at some of the people that we hired on the staff, I could say the same. mean, we interviewed people who on paper, like this other person’s resume is way stronger than this other person. And we’re going to hire the other person because they’re way more passionate. And so you have people on our staff that a lot of people might have overlooked.
I’ll say in Kansas and South Dakota, things that, know, the people who were just humble, not loud, not upfront people type, that man, they cared and they are super brave. And so that would be my advice.
Travis (42:52.504)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (43:03.502)
you
Courtney (43:08.923)
Wow. Yeah.
Travis (43:09.11)
device. love it.
Courtney (43:13.655)
Okay, well, let’s chat a little bit about National Foster Care Month, because this is kicking off that month and all the AKB does, right? Like we’re rooted in this one issue of foster care, which is rooted in so many different things, but that’s really why we’re here, right? That’s why we all three, the passion that you’re speaking of these staff members, it’s a passion for kids that are in care that need love and stability, permanency, whatever it might be for their current situation. So as we kick off this month,
Brian (43:29.247)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (43:41.637)
Let’s just chat about that a bit. Let’s chat about what we’re going to be doing on this podcast and how other people can get involved.
Brian (43:50.909)
You want me to say something?
Courtney (43:51.537)
I want to
Travis (43:55.352)
Well, we can also re-record the segment if we need. If we’re out of order on who’s saying what, I mean, because you were going to share about the purpose and needs, right? And Brian could as well. I mean, we can all weigh in. You made a conversation. But then I just had stuff about the listeners getting involved, I guess. So do we want to just re-say that and have Brian say it from the script? how to? OK.
Courtney (44:19.345)
Sure, yeah, yeah.
Brian (44:20.349)
Wait, wait, wait, I don’t have the script, so I don’t know what to say.
Travis (44:22.616)
Okay.
Courtney (44:23.185)
Why don’t you switch it, like talk about the passionate people.
Brian (44:26.023)
You say it, you just, yeah, you take it.
Travis (44:29.41)
Well, the only problem is if she says it, she’s also answering, which I guess you could just do that. You could just, guess, say the question and then just, yeah, dive in.
Courtney (44:39.003)
Dive in.
Brian (44:39.017)
Yeah, don’t have, sorry.
Courtney (44:42.255)
Okay. So Brian, I love what you said about people with passion. And it just makes me think, you know, we’re diving into National Foster Care Month. And that really is the heartbeat behind AKB is people who are passionate about seeing kids placed in families, seeing kids thrive, be reunified, whatever’s best for their current situation to give them a voice, like our logo, like we spoke about the logo of giving kids a voice, those unseen kids a voice and helping them move forward. So.
Brian (44:50.943)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (44:57.716)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (45:11.183)
We’re diving into National Foster Care Month, and I’m just thinking about why, like why is there a National Foster Care Month? And I was thinking about that a little bit, you know, preparing for this. And I was like, you know, I watch commercials and you’ve got the commercials on the foster dogs and adopt dogs. And I can get in a big soapbox about this. But if we didn’t have this month, sadly, a lot of people would never really see the need. And so you might see.
Travis (45:25.166)
All right.
Courtney (45:36.973)
advertisements throughout this month. You might see more things on social media throughout this month, but really I even think about the statistics and statistics can, you some people really love statistics. Some people get turned off by statistics. I think what the statistics nationwide of roughly 370,000 kids in foster care, but then when I can dive like way deeper into like my little area in my County, when I can go before a church or before a business or before an individual and say, we have 11 foster homes, 11 foster homes in our County.
But the goal is 20. It puts it a lot more into reality for people to say, wow, there’s a need right here in my community. What does that look like? What does that mean for me? Maybe it is fostering, but it’s not always fostering. Right. So think having this month to be able to say, who are these organizations like AKB that are doing great thing? How could I get involved? But also, what does this mean for all the individuals across the board? Because we want these voices, these unseen kids voices to be heard and for people to know about them, that they are right here in our backyards.
Travis (46:37.763)
No.
Yeah,
Travis (46:44.514)
of their swans.
Courtney (46:47.421)
It’s such a shift.
Travis (46:47.586)
it is well, I think what happened in this one is like, which you, just said it awesome. So we’ll obviously keep that intact, but is like in the script, it was, this was a kind of a different episode where like we’re really interviewing you, Brian, this, which isn’t a lot of times it’s either equal or whatever. And then in this one, it was like, kind of you setting all this up. And then we switched it cause you didn’t see that part. So it kind of, it went, and that’s why I think we’re all like a little bit off because.
Brian (46:58.185)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (47:12.634)
Hahaha
Brian (47:16.296)
huh, huh, yeah. Speaking of chemistry, we have none.
Travis (47:17.048)
But it’s okay.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Courtney (47:20.591)
And we can just keep, we can cut this out altogether and just dive into like the ending and this is Foster, you know, our next few episodes are going to be this, you know, we don’t even have to. Yeah.
Brian (47:27.711)
Yeah, Change the order. Okay. Yeah, it was. Yeah.
Travis (47:32.578)
Well, I mean, what you just said was awesome. So I think I love that. So I feel like we can just all riff on, you know, ways to get involved. So if you want to, do you want to just pick it up from there and just say, ask me or yeah, after you said what you said or. Okay. We’re just making this up.
Courtney (47:44.879)
Me? Okay. Okay.
Sounds good.
Courtney (47:54.933)
Okay, so Travis, if somebody’s listening today and they’re like, hear I’m going to be seeing these numbers of this next month. I’m to be hearing about this a little bit more, but I’m not quite sure. I don’t know where to get started. I don’t know how to be involved. What can people do? Anybody and everybody.
Travis (48:09.166)
Yeah. Well, I, so one of the things is at America’s kids belong, I feel like we have a wealth of just information to help guide people in sort of bite-sized steps in inspiration and videos and all kinds of stuff. know Courtney, you’re going to talk a little bit more about stuff around foster con and things like that. But the, would say starting with, going to our website, America’s kids belong.org and there’s some different tabs at the top, but you’ll see, especially how can you help.
Brian (48:19.037)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (48:39.086)
And I love that tab because not only does it get, you know, there’s a couple of things on, you know, getting started with fostering potentially, um, and adoption from foster care in those cases. So we have, we can point you those directions. I think the big thing that we’re saying is that everybody can get involved. so most people are not going to be foster parents, most people, but that, but that also means that we all have a role and we have a huge way to influence actually not just foster
families, but the kids in their care. I think that’s kind of at the root of this. We’ve kind of talked about, and we’ll continue to talk about that when foster parents can provide the stability that the kids in their care need, on, know, their stories are in flux and changing and where they’ll eventually go. Maybe they’ll go back home. But in that time that they’re with the foster families, that when those parents can be supported and equipped,
Those kids stand a much better chance to sort of kind of get their bearings again, get their footing, you know, work on some of the healing that that’s needed to happen as they’ve lost so much and healing is going to continue to happen. But when we can support foster families to kind of stay in the game longer and be supported, that trickles right directly to kids. So we talk about, um, you know, whether, you know, whether an individual or you’re part of a faith community or a business community, have ways we’ll point you, if you go to that tab, how can you help?
and learn more about ways your community or business can get engaged with supporting foster families. And of course, like Brian mentioned earlier, donating to the mission is huge. That’s a direct way you are impacting kids in foster care. there’s not a hierarchy of what we’re saying is, I they all matter. Did you guys add anything else or?
Brian (50:16.499)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (50:22.217)
Yeah.
Brian (50:28.531)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (50:32.175)
No, I would just say if you’re looking like where I get started Travis gave you go to the website, go to that. Also fostercon.org we have in there webinars for everybody. There’s a webinar called Fostering Primer, it’s if you were just at all considering becoming a foster parent or like, what does that even really mean? That is the best place to start fostering primer on the foster con webinar or website fostercon.org. And then if you’re somebody that’s like,
Brian (50:56.777)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (50:58.245)
I have a heart for this. I’m hearing this. I’m seeing there’s a need. I’m seeing there’s a need to have, a community around foster family, but you don’t feel necessarily called or like your home is the best home, the right home at this point to be a foster home. There’s also a webinar called Helping Foster Families. And we dive into what foster families really need, practical things to support them, things to language to use and not to use. And again, just really dive into that. And I highly suggest anybody that is related to, close to, supported, supports a foster family.
that I feel like that is a webinar everybody needs to listen to. So it’s called Helping Foster Families again on fostercon.org.
Travis (51:35.724)
Awesome.
Courtney (51:39.119)
Yeah.
Travis (51:46.754)
Alright, who’s closing this thing out?
Brian (51:47.999)
I’m ready for the last question after years in this work.
Travis (51:57.055)
I missed that one.
Wow, okay, jeez, I just have to write this edit down.
Brian (52:03.912)
Hahaha!
Travis (52:06.126)
This is…
Courtney (52:06.625)
But Brian’s gonna love us!
Travis (52:10.03)
Okay. So what we’ll do then is, um, I’ll ask you this question. You give the answer and then you just take that from there to closing. You know what you want? I mean, right.
Brian (52:10.267)
Right?
Brian (52:19.294)
Okay.
Courtney (52:21.329)
Yeah, if you want to share Brian, like our upcoming episodes, you know, we’ve got Laura foster family helper foster parent partner, sorry, Peter. Okay.
Brian (52:28.459)
I think I’ll ask you that because I don’t know. Yeah, that’s off my head. You get ready. Okay.
Travis (52:33.358)
They’re perfect. All right. Okay. Where were we before this? We were talking about ways to get involved. All right. Brian, after years in this work, if you could change one thing about the foster care system, what would it be?
Brian (52:54.855)
Okay, in a word would be perception. And what I mean by that, both Nish professionally been doing this, but also personally foster parent, adoptive grandparent. There’s this proverb that says, or cliche, what do wanna call it? It says, you can’t see the forest for the trees, meaning you can’t see the big thing, because you focused on the individual things.
I think the problem is the opposite in foster care. People always think about the system and they don’t think about the individuals. They can’t see the trees for the forest. And I wish I could change the perception people have about three groups of people. One is the kids. These kids are often viewed, if they’re thought of or seen at all, again, they tend to be hidden and invisible in the communities and in the system.
If they’re viewed anyway, if there is a perception, that these kids are broken, they’re bad. And I want them to see that these kids are sad and they’re valuable. And I wish people would see them as sympathetic, empathetic kids and characters and not just broken and bad and irredeemable.
And so I, and that’s what so much about the I Have a Long project was all about was like, want people to actually see these kids, you know, not just think of numbers, but names, not just think of facts, but faces and not just, you know, statistics, but hear their stories. So that would be one. The second one would be the families, the foster families step up. mean, these are ordinary people.
who are doing something extraordinarily hard and it is not a job for them, it is their life. And so often they’re treated as, know, they’re referred to as resource families. And what do you use, what do you do with a resource? You use them, you use resources. I wish they were seen as partners and as, again, people who are doing something very hard, most of them out of the goodness of their heart, not because they’re trying to make a lousy extra.
Brian (55:16.793)
It’s definitely not worth it. It’s the worst paying job in the world if you want to do that. So I wish communities, social workers would see the foster families as profoundly important partners who are ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things and this is not a job for them. It’s their life. They’re living 24 hours a day. And then third would be the social workers. These are super dedicated
underappreciated professionals who are often viewed as bureaucrats and not as people who have super hard caseloads or working with a broken system. And they signed up for this because they have big hearts and they care. And so I wish the perception of the kids, the foster families and social workers would all be empathetic and positive. If we could change that.
uh, changed the perception from apathy to empathy and from suspicion to support and from, I don’t know, distance to dignity, then it, it would change everything.
Travis (56:33.538)
Well said.
Courtney (56:33.563)
Thank you, Brian, for sharing your wisdom today and taking us through the ages and stages of AKB from infant hood to toddler hood to where we are now as a teenager. And again, I just encourage our listeners, thanks for joining us today, but join us the rest of this month because we’ve got a great lineup. We have some big known names in the foster care world. We have Laura, foster parent partner, joining us.
Brian (56:42.399)
Yeah, lean mean teens.
Courtney (57:02.523)
for an episode in National Foster Care Month. And we’ve got Peter Mudabasi, who is also known as Foster Dad Flipper. And then we’re rounding out the month with Bethany Hall from a very like-minded organization, CHOSEN, that we really love. And she’s gonna share some great tips around foster care as well. So a great lineup for National Foster Care Month this month. So make sure you check it out. All the episodes coming up. Yeah.
Brian (57:08.745)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (57:25.073)
Awesome. Yeah. Great month. Thanks, Courtney and Travis.
Courtney (57:28.369)
See ya.
Travis (57:28.888)
Thank you guys, see ya!
Brian (57:30.685)
Bye.
