Our name

A challenge that many folks might not realize about founding an organization is coming up with a name. It’s both the most important thing and the least important thing. But as a (perhaps overly) purpose-driven soon-to-be 27-year-old, I set about spending far too much time finding the right moniker. After all,  every great cause, mission, or organization seems to have a  great name. 

Luckily, it didn’t take long to zero in on one. As part of the founding process, I wanted to be sure if Minnesota really needed another nonprofit organization by speaking with as many Fosters as I could. In each of the meetings, a common theme started to emerge. While I was worried about finding a name for our potential organization, Fosters shared a greater concern –that there wasn’t even a name to call our community. And without a name for us, we couldn’t really organize around this shared identity. 

Every other term was jargony,  technical, or was trying too hard to put a positive spin on the experience of being in care. However, a common word was Foster, and it was neutral. It just was. To me and almost every Foster I met with, Foster was the right term for our community. So I started using Foster, and to my surprise, people innately knew what I meant when I said I was a Foster. Our organization’s name was then derived when I thought about “what was it that we would be doing?” Advocacy. And Foster Advocates was what I settled on. Mostly, because it got straight to the point of our work. 

Foster Advocates isn’t just our name. It’s what we do. It serves two purposes. We foster advocates, and we advocate with Fosters. 

While I hoped the retelling of how we found our name was going to be more profound, it seems just right for how we approach the work. Our work might be complex, but what we do is extremely simple: We do what makes sense to Fosters. As experts in the system and their own lives, we know that the keys to fixing our child welfare system lie within the genius of every expert currently in the system and those who have survived it. So if you are wondering what the “fix” for our system is, it’s really simple: just listen to Fosters. 

In Infinite Hope and Solidarity,
Hoang