Partners & Supporters

Our partners play a vital role in advancing Foster Success’s mission. By helping guide where their support can make the greatest impact, they strengthen our localized approach in communities while also fueling national efforts that expand opportunities for young people with lived experience in foster care.

Corporate Partner

Goelzer Investment Management is a newly established corporate partner, bringing a rich history of supporting nonprofit organizations and a deep commitment to advancing missions.

A comprehensive wealth management firm, Goelzer offers fee-based investment advice and high-level client services rooted in values of trust, integrity, respect, thoughtfulness, and commitment.

These shared values create a powerful foundation for our partnership. Goelzer understands that enriching the lives of young people requires investing in their unique needs and supporting their goals.

“We have to arm young people with the tools and resources they need so they can become our next community of leaders. Foster Success is doing that work to empower them to be our future,” said Rebecca W. Jacklin, CFP®, Goelzer Managing Director, Institutional Advisory Services.

By supporting events like our signature Breaking Down Barriers, Goelzer helps provide reliable adult support, stability, and greater community awareness of the challenges young people face. “Goelzer finds the most success when we can lean into opportunities to provide time, talent, and treasure to build a mutually beneficial relationship,” said Rebecca.

Together, we’re creating more pathways for young people to step into adulthood confidently.

In-kind Partner

What Casey Ballard offers is a keepsake many take for granted: a photograph that tells a story, marks a milestone, or simply says you were here and you matter.

Casey’s interest in photography is generational. Her grandfather was a photographer for the Army and the local news. Casey’s mother also had a camera in hand throughout her life, and now Casey is continuing the legacy of preserving stories through the lens. She started out doing photos for family and friends—birthdays, engagements, senior portraits. From there, her photography business took off.

While attending a kid’s birthday party, she met Chief Development & Communications Officer, Travis Tester, through a mutual friend. The two stayed in touch, and when Foster Success needed photos taken, Travis thought of Casey. Her first time taking photos for Foster Success was during Breaking Down Barriers, an annual event that is actively led by young people during National Foster Care Month each May.

The event compelled Casey and resonated with her passion for social work. She had obtained a degree in social work and entered the workforce with a job at an emergency youth shelter where she worked with at-risk youth, helping them navigate one of the most uncertain times of their lives. She eventually earned her Master’s in Business where she discovered Human Resources, a path that would allow her to still center people in her everyday work.

As she saw the ways Foster Success not only supported but empowered young people, the decision to make her services an in-kind donation came swiftly and certainly.

“Having been there in social work and taken care of those young people, I know a lot of the challenges that come with it,” Casey said.

Her favorite moments photographing for Foster Success are the unposed, in-between moments. At a donor event last fall, she had an impromptu photoshoot with Foster Success participants Praise and Rowan.

“I usually have to tell people how to pose, but with them they’re like ‘I got this,’” she said, laughing. “I think it’s just fun to get to know them.”

But Casey knows there’s another side to the reality of supporting older foster youth.

“There’s real work attached and challenges. There are real struggles going on,” she said. “Think about what you were doing as a youth and magnify it by 10x if your adult supporters weren’t there.”

Often, young people with lived experience in foster care do not have photos from their childhood. Photos either get lost or damaged from frequent moves, or, as is more often, they never had any in the first place. Many of them don’t have a visual record of where they’ve been or how far they’ve come. That’s what makes Casey’s work more than photography, it’s memories they can reflect back on and take with them. Photos that say they are here, seen, and that they matter.