Centered in successful communities, are successful families, whose structures vary greatly. By providing families with access to resources that help them move from dependence to independence, our nonprofit organizations help Allen County residents thrive.

We support organizations that provide programs and initiatives focused on early childhood, youth, and family development. Resources that are crucial to this model include education, employment, childcare, healthcare, housing, transportation, support systems, and more. But access alone doesn’t do the work—it presents opportunity. With help from our nonprofits, citizens must take the initiative to help themselves.

“[Communities have] a responsibility to see that in giving aid they are helping individuals to help themselves, that they are helping people to be independent, rather than dependent.”

– Helene Foellinger

In a strong family unit with access to these kinds of resources, young children can achieve their developmental milestones. Youth and parents/guardians engage in behaviors that promote positive social, emotional, and academic development. These opportunities are crucial to facilitating a successful transition to adulthood. Then, these adults are more likely to be independent; breaking them from a cycle that puts them—and the families they grow—in-crisis.  

Our co-founders, Esther and Helene Foellinger, were more than philanthropists. First, they were a family. They believed family extended beyond the walls of their own home, though. They embraced the entire community as their extended family, and recognized the opportunities their own family seized to create success were not available to everyone in the community.

“A community in a very real sense is an abstraction—a community is you and I. Since the community is you and I, it is a fallacy to believe that individuals can get out of a community something over and beyond what they have put into it.”

– Helene Foellinger

Since its founding in 1958, Foellinger Foundation has invested more than $250M in Allen County nonprofits that serve those with the greatest economic need and least opportunity. Together, we’re helping create a community where every person has the opportunity to thrive.