Why We Were Hard to Find

We have done this work for ten years without a website, without a newsletter, and without asking anyone to look. Not because we were hiding, but because the work never needed an audience. A young person aging out of foster care does not need us to have a homepage. They need someone to show up.

Ten years of not being findable

So we showed up. In encampments, at shelters, in transit centers, in the parking lots and underpasses where people end up when there is nowhere else to go. Most of the young people we have helped did not find us through a referral list. Someone went out and found them.

That kind of work does not generate press releases. It generates gas receipts, phone numbers that still answer at two in the morning, and a lot of driving. For a decade that was enough.

What changed

An artist named Troy Buck. Troy is a custom airbrush painter and the owner of Fix Auto Avondale.

He made an original piece called Power of Prayer: a portrait of Jesus crowned with thorns, two feet by four, painted entirely in the automotive paint he sprays on cars, with scripture and prayers layered into the face itself. You have to get close to find them.

Then he did something nobody asked him to do. He put it up for auction and directed half the proceeds to us.

Why that meant building this

Generosity like that carries an obligation. When someone gives publicly on your behalf, the people who might bid deserve to know who they are giving to. They deserve to look us up, read what we actually do, see our EIN, and decide for themselves whether we are worth it.

A charity that asks to be trusted and cannot be checked is asking for something it has not earned. So here we are. Ten years in, finally visible.

What does not change

Nobody here takes a salary. We have no building and no overhead. Our records are open to anyone who asks, and the numbers on this site link to the agencies that published them rather than to us. The only difference is that now you can find us.