A very generous donor, who prefers to remain anonymous, has given ACEs Connection a $50,000 matching grant! If ACEs Connection’s members contribute $50,000 between now and the end of this year, our donor will match it with $50,000.
"Changing the world — our culture of how we deal with people —is a huge task and takes a very large village, “ the anonymous donor says of the challenge grant. “ACEs Connection is a superb and effective leader of our village."
This is our first concerted effort to invite members to support ACEs Connection financially, and we are excited and hopeful that you will make a tax-deductible donation.
For six years, we were so very fortunate to have remarkable support — financial as well as stalwart encouragement for our work — from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Over the next three years, we are transitioning from a combination of funding from several different foundations to a self-sustaining cooperative. By the end of that transition, we intend to derive most of our support from the ACEs Connection Cooperative of Communities. To have an additional $100,000 would give us a significant boost toward that goal.
ACEs Connections’ other funders include The California Endowment, Blue Shield of California Foundation, Genentech, the Lisa Stone Pritzker Family Foundation, the George Sarlo Foundation, and the Cambia Health Foundation.
Thanks to the generosity of our funders, we’ve been able to make ACEs Connection — with its vast storehouse of resources about ACEs science, the community sites, data tracking, reports and news— freely available for eight years. I want to continue doing so.
I hope you can find it in your hearts to contribute. This support would help the organization amplify and accelerate this healing journey to replace policies, laws and practices based on blame, shame and punishment with understanding, nurturing and healing.
We know from the work of pioneers in the ACEs science movement that we can solve our most intractable problems in all our sectors. Here are several examples of how the work is changing lives:
- Patients and physicians can successfully manage addiction to opioids and other substances so that 100% of patients are no longer addicted and can hold down jobs.
- Plymouth County, MA has an opioid death prevention program that combines law enforcement, rehab centers, and hospitals in a joint cross-sector program that has resulted in a 26% drop in opioid deaths v. an 84% increase in deaths in surrounding counties.
- Batterer intervention programs have integrated ACEs science reduce recidivism from 30–60% to just 1%.
- Safe Babies Courts show that one year after participating 99% of the children suffer no further abuse.
- Thousands of schools – including schools in Antioch, CA, Suisun City, CA, San Francisco, CA, Spokane, WA, San Diego, CA, and Walla Walla, WA — have integrated trauma-informed practices so that suspensions and expulsions have dropped or been eliminated, while grades and graduation rates increase.
- A stunning project in Atlanta, GA, provides a community and economic model that successfully combines for-profit trauma-informed low-income housing; health clinics that improve services for families; after-school programs in the housing project; and local gardens for families to grow their own food. Landlords make more money, kids become healthier and do better in school, schools become more successful, residents are more empowered and self-reliant, and communities become more resilient and stable.
We have the opportunity to build on momentum to continue to report on data-driven successes, to add tools and guidelines requested by communities across the U.S., and to provide guidance to communities making substantial progress in integrating practices based on ACEs science in organizations, institutions, and systems.
Front and center is our desire to understand and address the deeply ingrained problems of racism and inequity — especially economic inequity — and work with others to tailor solutions that reflect our communities’ unique strengths, needs, and challenges.
I invite you to make a one-time or monthly donation by using the online giving option by using this donation button to make your gift. Remember, if you give before December 31, your donation will be matched. The donation is tax-deductible.
For questions about the campaign, donations, making a challenge grant of your own, please contact Carey Sipp, Southeast U.S. community facilitator, at csipp@acesconnection.com.
If you'd like to write a few paragraphs about “Why I Support ACEs Connection”, we'd love to post it here on the main blog of ACEs Connection. Your essay will be identified as part of the campaign.
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