Sept. 25, 2024

This paid piece is sponsored by MarketBeat.

It’s just before 4 a.m. on a Saturday, and your phone rings. It’s a young, exhausted social worker saying she has a set of three siblings sitting in her office, age 3, 6 and 9. They were just removed from a dangerous situation and need an emergency placement ASAP. All they have are the clothes on their backs and nothing else. You have no idea how long they might be in your custody. 

Before you can feel confident in saying yes, a checklist of essentials starts to run through your mind: Where will they sleep? What will they wear? What kind of trauma might they have been through?  What special needs might they have? Where will they go to school or day care? Will they need to see a doctor, the dentist, a therapist and go to court dates? 

“When a child is coming into care through an emergency placement, it can be incredibly overwhelming,” said Holly Muilenburg, executive director of  The Foster Network. “Our organization is here to help fill some of those tangible needs, so foster parents can focus on the emotional needs of the children in their care.”

The Foster Network has welcome bags with essential hygiene items like toothbrushes, shampoo and undergarments, all designed to meet the immediate needs of these kinds of emergency placements. The Sioux Falls nonprofit organization also helps foster families find cribs, strollers, baby gear, diapers and more, and offers same-day visits for children just entering care to come and shop at The Closet to get a full week’s worth of clothing, a new pair of shoes and any toys or school supplies they might need. 

“When a child enters a new foster home, they come with nothing. Just the clothes on their body. The state offers a $150 stipend to licensed foster parents to help get them started, but as you can imagine, that doesn’t go very far,” said Holly Renken, a Sioux Falls foster mom and The Foster Network board member. 

It’s exactly the gap a group of foster parents aimed to fill when they started The Foster Network, originally East River Foster Parent Network, back in 2011. In its first year, the grassroots effort created a support group for foster families and helped provide clothing for just a few foster kids a month out of a storage unit.

As the organization grew into a 600-square-foot lease and then into a 2,000-square-foot lease in 2020, the number of children served also grew – up to 30 to 60 children served each month by the end of 2022. But in 2023 when The Foster Network moved into a nearly 8,000-square-foot lease near 14th Street and Cliff Avenue, the number of foster children and families coming through The Closet skyrocketed.

“In 2023, we started serving an average of nearly 100 children every month,” Muilenburg said. “At that point, I was still the only full-time staff member, but we were able to hire a second part-time staff member to help keep up with the growing demand.”

That’s when MarketBeat started sponsoring The Foster Network, helping the small and rapidly growing nonprofit plan for the future and learn to manage all the growth. 

“MarketBeat awarded our first $10,000 gift to The Foster Network in 2023 to help bring on a nonprofit consultant,” said Maureen Ohm, MarketBeat’s director of community relations. “Members of our staff had friends or acquaintances who were active foster parents and shared how essential The Foster Network’s services were to the dwindling number of families still providing care to children in need across the region.”

MarketBeat now has two staff members serving on The Foster Network’s board to help ensure the success of this local nonprofit and fill a growing need. The number of children entering foster care in South Dakota is rising at the same time the number of foster families is decreasing. Making it easier to say yes to a placement has become even more necessary and is one of the reasons behind the continued rapid growth in demand at The Foster Network.

“Now, so far in 2024, we are serving an average of nearly 200 children every month and have already had more than 2,000 visits to The Closet this year,” Muilenburg said. 

Along with regular visits to The Closet for new and returning children in foster care, that number also reflects the 497 children served at this year’s Foster Network back-to-school event, where every child received a backpack full of school supplies, new shoes, socks and underwear and a week’s worth of clothing from The Closet. 

“I just want to say wow! You are all amazing. I can’t begin to tell you how much the school supplies and clothes help us. We are able to do what we do because of your support,” Jody, a local foster mom, wrote in a letter to The Foster Network.

“I wish you could have seen the joy in our kids’ faces when I showed them their new backpacks. One of our kids thanked me four times for getting it for him. You made their day and mine.”

MarketBeat contributed $1,000 worth of new shoes for the back-to-school event, and the entire MarketBeat staff were among the 116 volunteers who helped serve that day.

“Helping kids pick out and try on their new shoes was an incredible experience,” Ohm said. “We got to see firsthand the impact these tangible items have on children in foster care. I helped one teenage boy who was unable to tie his shoes find a pair of name-brand, slip-on shoes in his size. Knowing he will be able to go to school with a little more dignity and confidence made this event meaningful and memorable as a volunteer.”

MarketBeat’s group volunteer experience and involvement of its Foster Network board members have had the local financial news company working to further spread the word about the rapidly growing organization. First, MarketBeat offered its tent at Levitt at the Falls to the nonprofit to set up an informational table on a number of occasions. Then this month, MarketBeat sponsored a Lunch & Learn event for the Sioux Falls business community to learn more about the incredible impact this little-known nonprofit is having across the region.

“The Foster Network is incredibly grateful for the opportunity to spread the word about our mission and reach out to more of the community to get involved with our work,” Muilenburg said. “We need hundreds of volunteer hours and continued financial support every month to continue meeting the needs of children who have been impacted by foster care.”

The Foster Network is now a support system the entire foster community around the region has come to rely on. MarketBeat is proud to help the nonprofit’s work, which is making it easier for foster parents to say yes to that 4 a.m. phone call. In the long run, the support and love the children on the other end of that call receive will help them one day be able to grow and thrive in our community.

If you would like to learn more about volunteering, donating items or supporting The Foster Network, visit here for more information.