Who we are

Our mission

To help children define their strengths, improve their self-esteem, and build a sense of hope for the future.

That sentence is the whole of it. We are not a large organisation and we do not run programs of our own. We exist to pay for specific opportunities that a child in Delaware would otherwise miss, and to do it fast enough to matter.

The fund grew out of a straightforward observation. Delaware’s state agencies and community programs are built to make sure a child at risk is safe, housed, fed, treated, and in school. Those systems do difficult work well. But they are not designed to pay for a season of basketball, and when a child’s family is in crisis, nobody else is going to.

So a young person who is already dealing with more than their share also becomes the one who cannot go on the class trip, cannot join the team, cannot go to prom. The gap is small in money and large in what it costs a child.

Our story

The 21st Century Fund for Delaware's Children was established in 2005 as a partnership between people working inside Delaware’s child services system and private donors who wanted their giving to reach a child directly rather than fund overhead.

The model has not changed since. An adult who already knows the child — a caseworker, a social worker, a teacher, a program director — tells us what the child needs and what it costs. We review the request and, wherever we can, pay the provider directly: the league, the school, the music teacher, the camp.

Paying the provider rather than reimbursing a family is deliberate. It removes the need for anyone to front money they do not have, and it keeps the arrangement quiet. A child should be able to show up for practice without being marked out as the one whose fees were covered.

How we work

We are deliberately narrow. We fund experiences, not operating costs. We say yes to a specific thing with a specific price and a specific date, because that is the kind of request we can act on quickly and verify honestly.

Three commitments shape every decision:

Who we serve

Children and young people up to age 21 who are receiving services from a Delaware state agency or community program.

That includes children in foster care, children receiving services through Delaware’s Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families, and young people connected to community programs across New Castle County, Kent County, Sussex County. We do not have a separate application route for families acting on their own behalf, because the referral relationship is what lets us confirm a child’s circumstances quickly and respectfully.

If you are a parent or carer and you think the fund could help, write to us and we will point you toward the agency or program best placed to make the request.

What we do not fund, and why

We do not pay rent, utility bills, medical costs, or debts. Those needs are real and often more urgent than anything we fund, but Delaware has organisations built for them that will do it far better than we could. Trying to be a general hardship fund would make us slower at the one thing we are good at.

We also do not make grants to organisations for their running costs, and we do not fund programs in the abstract. Every grant is attached to a named child and a specific opportunity with a price and a date. That constraint is what lets a small volunteer-run fund make decisions in days rather than months.

Finally, we do not ask the children we help to perform gratitude. We do not request photographs, quotes, or testimonials in exchange for a grant, and we do not publish any child’s name or picture. A young person who needed help paying for cleats does not owe anyone a story about it.

Governance and how we are run

The fund is governed by a volunteer board of directors. It has no paid fundraising staff, and correspondence is handled directly by the people who make the grant decisions — which is why a request sent to us is read by someone who can act on it.

Accountability and transparency

We think an organisation asking for trust should make it easy to check who it is. Our full registration details:

As a 501(c)(3) public charity, the fund files an annual IRS Form 990, which is a public document. If you would like a copy of our most recent filing, or you have a question about how the fund is run, email mary@21childrensfund.org and we will send it to you.

Donations to the fund are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. We are not able to give tax advice; please speak to your own adviser about your circumstances.