FPBC Mission & Vision Statements Get an Upgrade

Did you know that almost all organizations have a vision and mission statement? The vision statement is a declaration of what that organization is anticipating will or may come to be. The mission statement is an official statement that sets the goals, purpose, and work of that organization.

Over the years, these organizations will review their statements and possibly even revise the statements. These revisions usually clarify the vision and tell an even better story about the goals and purpose.

FPBC recently reviewed our vision & mission statements. After review, we decided it was time to upgrade both. Below are our new statements and a commentary on them.

Vision: Creating a community where every family has a home and a future of promise. FPBC sees Butler County as a community where every child and their family, that is experiencing homelessness, will have the opportunity to have a place to call home and a future that is promising.

Mission: To empower families, who are experiencing homelessness, to build a sustainable foundation of independence through a continuum of support services. Here at FPBC, we are providing our families with more than just shelter and meals. We are working with each family to regain their independence, with a unique family-based approach of support that includes financial literacy, good tenancy, workforce skills, and childhood development, and those supports will continue after graduation from the shelter. By building this sustainable foundation, families can then move forward to a future that is promising. Our host volunteers are an integral part of this mission too.

FPBC is always looking for new and fresh ideas to serve our families and to help them become independent. Our new vision/mission statements help to strengthen our work goals and clearly state what we believe can be achieved in Butler County.

2022 Mid-Year Review

We have much to celebrate here at Family Promise of Butler County!

• At the beginning of 2022, we started serving families in our new Day Center. It is so much homier, and the location is great.

• We are at the halfway point of 2022 and the world has opened back up from the pandemic, which means we are back to utilizing our rotational model. There have been some hiccups along the way, but the host congregations have been just amazing in their flexibility. We are still in need of at least 2 more host congregations for the 2023 calendar year.

• In the 1st half of 2022, we have served 29 families (29 adults and 57 children) in the shelter. Of these 29 families, 82% were able to successfully leave the program and move into a home of their own.

• We also continued to provide prevention programming to families that helped to eliminate households from entering the homeless system. Collectively, through our partnership with Support to Encourage Low-Income Families (SELF), and our TANF-funded program, Housing Now Housing Families, we assisted 173 households. All the households assisted received case management services as well as direct financial assistance. We will continue our prevention programming as it has proven to be a cost-effective mechanism to reduce the amount of homelessness experienced by households.

• On June 11th we held our annual Dot/Dash 5K here in Hamilton. If you did not participate, you truly missed out on a great time! It is always so inspiring to see so many individuals come out to run/walk to raise both funds and awareness of our mission. Please consider participating next year!

Things to watch for in the upcoming months: bi-monthly newsletters, daily Facebook posts, family stories, and the ever-popular Keeping the Promise Gala in October. We hope you will continue to support us, as we work to ensure “that every child has a home”.

We Are Halfway There!

We are halfway through 2021 and what a wild ride it has been. We started the year still in the throes of a global pandemic and we are just now starting to open back up. We still have a way to go but, wow, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Here at Family Promise of Butler County (FPBC), we continued to serve families through the entire pandemic. Since Jan. 1st we have served 17 families, including 22 adults and 14 children, in shelter (churches and hotels). All the families received support services from our staff, and our congregations continued to provide meals and extra essentials as needed. Through our diversion/prevention programming, we served a total of 40 families, which included 151 children and 74 adults. These are families that likely would have become homeless if it were not for the assistance we were able to provide them. FPBC also partnered with SELF to process applications for rental assistance for those who were impacted by COVID. We have stayed quite busy and will continue to serve families experiencing homelessness.

In other news, we have begun a refresh here at the Day Center. We had some amazing volunteers paint many of our interior spaces. We are in the process of making 2 new offices in a large, under-utilized space, and will be upgrading the furniture throughout, in order to provide a more "homey" environment for our families. We are also investigating the possibility of using an apartment shelter model that will help us until all of our host congregations are able to house families again, as well as allowing us to serve more families in the future. Finally, we held our 3rd Annual Dot Dash 5K in June. What a fun event with approximately 200 participants! Please plan on joining us next year!

As we close out the first half of 2021, I look back and see a lot of grit and determination to not only maintain our services but to start new programs and continue envisioning a future where we can serve more families, both in and out of shelter.

We are so fortunate to have dedicated staff, board members, host congregations, and of course our amazing coordinators and volunteers.

Thank you for being part of a great mission,

Linda Smith

Linda Smith, ExecutiveDirector