Raise the Future
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Mission Statement
Our vision is that every young person goes through life knowing they have a caring adult by their side. Our mission is to connect youth waiting in foster care with the adults who become stable forces in their lives, and to support those relationships so that they last for a lifetime.
About This Cause
Since our founding in 1983, Raise the Future has designed and implemented evidence-based, wraparound services that reduce the amount of time youth in foster care live without a permanent family. Our programs increase the likelihood of forming and sustaining positive connections that help to transform their futures. Headquartered in Colorado, Raise the Future, formerly The Adoption Exchange, offices operate in Missouri, Utah, New Mexico, and Nevada. Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming are also participating member states, and Raise the Future's Education Center has established a national presence. More than 102,000 children in the United States are waiting for adoptive parents to release them from the uncertain future of living in foster care (AFCARS 2014). Raise the Future serves waiting children, current and prospective adoptive families, and child welfare professionals. The children we serve are survivors of traumatic abuse, neglect, and abandonment. Many face barriers because they are school-aged, members of sibling groups who don’t want to be separated, are coping with physical disabilities and struggling with emotional challenges as the result of their painful pasts. They are our nation's waiting children. And what they all want, more than anything, is a family to love them. Since 1983, we have connected nearly 8,000 waiting children with permanent adoptive homes. Raise the Future connected over 230 children with permanent families last year, giving them a place to finally call home. Waiting for a permanent home is not only hard on children; it is also expensive to the community. Experts estimate that the annual cost of foster care in the U.S. to be approximately $40,000 per year per child and even when adoption assistance is factored in, the state saves approximately $28,000 per year per child when a child in foster care is adopted. Not only is adoption a better outcome for the children, but it also reduces child welfare costs to the state. National statistics reveal that 50 percent of youth who emancipate from foster care at age 18 will drop out of high school compared with only 13 percent of the general population who fail to graduate. Twenty percent will be homeless within two years (The Pew Commission 2009).