Support

  
 Mark E. Minyard, Esq.
 2012 President

Dear OCBF Friends:

As we all know, the mission of the Foundation is "To keep at-risk youth out of jail, in school, healthy and drug free through education, counseling and mentoring."  Clearly, the Foundation, through its programs, is making significant contributions to our community.  The OCBF staff is doing a fabulous job fulfilling our mission.  Our programs include the following:

•  SHORTSTOP®  (juvenile crime diversion);
•  Stop Short of Addiction  (substance abuse intervention);
•  Higher Education Mentoring Program  (college preparation)
•  Project SELF  (summer employment in law firms);
•  YTIP  (transitional counseling services for youth coming out of incarceration);
•  Chicas  (after school programming to promote positive youth development); and
•  Madres Unidas  (health education services).

As is true with most non-profit organizations, the Orange County Bar Foundation will face continuing challenges in the area of funding.  We can no longer rely on governmental grants to the same degree as we have in the past.  It will be necessary for us to find other sources of revenue to continue our work.  We need to generate more private donations.  Our plan is to do this with greater public awareness of our organization and our programs.  Even though we have existed for over 30 years, the OCBF is still a relatively quiet and low profile non-profit.  Most people don't know who we are and even those who do, often don't really know much about our programs.  It is common for people who do know of the Orange County Bar Foundation not to understand the real impact that we have on individuals in our community.

We hope that greater awareness will cause people like you to consider (1) making greater gifts, (2) directing grants to us, (3) consider naming us as a partial beneficiary to a life insurance policy and/or (4) consider the OCBF when doing estate planning.

As a part of our campaign to create greater awareness of our programs, we are inviting our friends to see our programs in action.  Our friends are invited to attend a session of SHORTSTOP or Stop Short of Addiction or to attend the graduation ceremony of Project SELF and/or the Higher Education Mentoring Program.  We believe that by witnessing these programs first hand, our friends will be further inspired to help us meet our funding needs.

The Foundation seeks to help people in our community who have had fewer advantages than many of us.  We believe a better understanding of our programs and their successes will result in people seeing the Bar Foundation in an entirely different light. We want you to consider making us your number one charity.

Sincerely,

Mark E. Minyard, Esq.
2012 President