Business Spotlight: Finding the Need and Filling It

From a pilot transitional program to new construction projects, Good Samaritan Boys Ranch continues to grow in its 65th year of operation, making key expansions to current programs and adding new services.

The nonprofit, which began as an orphanage, now serves youth in foster care through myriad services, including in-home prevention, residential therapeutic care, education, and recreation and transitional housing. Since its founding in 1959, Good Samaritan has served more than 3,500 youth with more than 300 served last year.

Clinical Program Director Angie Siceluff has worked at Good Samaritan for 40 years. She remembers sitting around a campfire with the youth and knowing she’d found her calling all those years ago. At the time, the organization consisted of one dorm and office building. She’s watched it grow into a multifaceted organization.

“We’ve always had this philosophy of where is the need and how do we help fill it?” she says. “We add a program not because we think it’s great to have the program but because we’ve learned that’s what’s needed.”

CEO Casey Wray was hired at Good Samaritan 23 years ago as a newly graduated therapist supervised by Siceluff. He says a term often used at Good Samaritan is “looking out over the edges,” describing how they look ahead to meet pertinent needs. Prevention has become a systemwide focus for foster care, Wray says. This approach breaks the cycle of trauma by addressing the reasons why children go into foster care, viewing trauma and healing in a community-based cyclical model. In the next fiscal year, Good Samaritan intends to launch the pilot prevention program Fostering Stability for youth transitioning out of foster care at age 21. Within two years of that transition, Wray says 50% of these young people are involved in the legal system, incarcerated or unhoused due to a lack of resources.

“One thing can lead to another and you become a statistic,” he says. “We felt like we could set them up with more stability and provide financial resources for them as a safety net while they learn what it’s like to be on their own.”

Community Development Director Jayme Raynor says the program includes monthly financial deposits, ongoing communication and check-ins for emotional and practical support during the first two years of aging out. Although the program was denied state funding this fiscal year, Wray says they aren’t slowing down and will pursue fundraising to begin the program and reapproach the state with data to demonstrate its efficacy.

Like new program development, construction projects also are ongoing at Good Samaritan. The Stanley & Elaine Ball Foundation Stable at the Brighton Residential Treatment Facility reopened to offer equine therapy, and there are master site plans for an updated dorm, new donation center, Laura’s Home expansion and new school on the main campus. Construction is scheduled to begin on the donation center in the next few months with bids being finalized for the approximately $1.5 million project that will include offices for the transitional apartment staff. The Laura’s Home expansion is slated to begin in 18-24 months at approximately $1.8 million-1.9 million. The new school will added in three to four years, and the updated dorm will replace the current dorm in about five to six years, both with undetermined budgets.

“Nonprofits sometimes focus from a deficit mindset, and so, for me, that sometimes means that we underestimate and underbuild, and we build for what we need right now and, the minute we move in, we’ve outgrown it,” Wray says. “I think the trick for us is that, as we’re imagining the school and Laura Home expansion is to not be opulent – we’re not building the Taj Mahal – but to make sure we’re building something that is sufficient for our needs now and for the immediate future.”

To further its growth, the nonprofit also hired Samuel Bennett as its new chief operations officer on April 15 after Matthew Moncado was promoted to vice president of programs. Bennett became involved with Good Samaritan as a board member, and his passion stems from being a parent who fostered and adopted children. Bennett worked at SRC Holdings Corp. for nearly 11 years in accounting. At Good Samaritan, he anticipates streamlining documentation systems and linking donor management software with accounting software. He also brings experience in employee wellness to Good Samaritan’s new personnel committee.

“I’m excited to help build the system that will support the organization as it starts to spread out wide and give more types of care to Good Samaritan and Missouri,” he says.

Currently, 93% of Good Samaritan’s funding comes from state contracts with the remainder from fundraising. Good Samaritan’s annual budget is just under $14 million. Wray says the fear of economic downturn has reduced individual and corporate sponsorships, creating reliance on state contracts. The nonprofit bolstered its development team in recent years, led by Raynor, to increase community involvement. Wray also indicated a goal to build an endowment fund in the $35 million-$40 million range before he retires. 

“We have a mission that’s important, that [donors] care about,” Raynor says. “Our legacy speaks for itself: 65 years of quality services – truly life changing for the youth and families that we serve.”

Siceluff believes that mission lives in the nonprofit’s legacy of creating lasting, intergenerational change for the children and families they serve.

“We want them to leave here knowing that they are OK, knowing that they can succeed, and that they have the tools to succeed,” she says. “Our legacy I hope is that the kids leave here and are able to live a life that is productive for them.