Nonprofit of the Year Finalist | Large: Good Samaritan Boys Ranch

Good Samaritan Boys Ranch makes a lifelong impact. The nonprofit is a multidecade service provider, often working with children from birth to adulthood.

“Every year, something like 20,000 kids age out of the foster care system,” says Casey Wray, president and CEO of Good Samaritan. “For us, we’ve been serving those kids for a long time. What we know is to do that well, you’ve got to make sure they’re equipped and set up for success.”

Good Samaritan helps set up foster kids and their families for success in a number of ways, including transitional living, stabilization services and specialized care.

With a roughly $14 million annual operating budget and 190 full- and part-time employees, Good Samaritan operates an accredited treatment facility in Brighton. There, up to 65 youth who have experienced trauma stemming from abuse or neglect receive treatment that includes family, group, equine and music therapies. At the Pleasant Hope School District, Good Samaritan provides school-based care, and the nonprofit’s aftercare programs work with kids after they leave residential treatment.

The nonprofit recently secured a $635,000 appropriation from the state budget for a planned resource center in Springfield. Located at 504 E. Norton Road, next to Good Samaritan’s Footsteps Transitional Living program, the $1.6 million project calls for a resource center for youth aging out of foster care. The 5,000-square-foot project is designed with office and warehouse space where those youth can access furniture, life skills training and relational support as they move out on their own.

“Providing support like this resource center is vital in breaking the cycle of trauma and instability faced by many former foster youth,” Wray says. “Our goal is to empower these individuals with the tools they need to thrive independently so they can avoid falling through the cracks.”

Wray understands the impact that Good Samaritan has on individuals in the foster care system.

“Foster care is traumatizing. Being taken out of your home is, in itself, traumatizing,” he says. “That’s where we start to intervene.”

The end goal, Wray says, would be for families to never separate in the first place.

“That’s the least traumatizing option,” he says.

Think back to a moment where you and your team felt the most pride
to do this work.
“We had one young mom who was able to get custody of her child. She aged out of foster care with her child, living with her in housing that was suitable to them. Not all teenage moms, unfortunately, get to keep their kids.” —Casey Wray