Jackie Caster Cuts Fat from Charity Giving
By Libby Motika, Senior Editor
Palisadian Post
March 15, 2001

Having a cup of coffee with Jacqueline Caster can be more than a eye-opener, it's an electrical charge. Her powers of persuasion combined with her ability to focus on a goal and develop a logical strategy resulted in her establishing a new foundation last year that raised over $200,000 in six months.
                 
A former regional planner with a bent for numbers and forecasts, Caster started the Everychild Foundation last July. But that's not what makes her idea different. The difference comes in the simple approach, which includes a committed corps of women who donate $5,000 a year toward one large grant to fund a single project.
               
By talking to a few of her Highlands neighbors, Caster, 44, discovered that her simple approach appealed to other women. Her experience on several boards led her to the conclusion that too many non-profit organizations knock themselves out putting on fundraisers that take a lot of time and money with proportionally small returns.
           
"All these organizations are planning events that might cost $150,000 only to yield $30,000. Some organizations pay companies to put on their auction, but if enough people don't bid and don't buy, you still have to pay for fixed costs such as rentals and the band. I was tired of all this. I started this foundation on the premise that I wanted the money we raised to go where it was supposed to go, not on a lot of overhead." 
              
Caster invited some women to a breakfast, pitched her idea, and to her surprise discovered that they were eager to help.
    
Her goal is to cap membership at just over 200 women, a number she determined was the maximum she could handle herself, working out of her house. She enlisted neighbors Debra Colbert as treasurer and Cynthia Alexander as secretary and formed an advisory board including Palisadians Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, Cantor, Chayim Frenkel and attorney Shirley Price.

Jacqueline Caster, founder of the Everychild Foundation

Caster's approach to fundraising is unique, according to Marcia Antopol, whose consulting firm, Foundation Consulting, focuses on women and childrens' issues, and who is advising Everychild. 
     
"I've been working in the field for 18 years and this is the first time I have seen such a clean, organized approach," she says. "In the world of fundraising, there has been conversation on how to successfully approach intelligent women. No one has figured out how to do it. But Jackie did. In this organization, everybody gives the same amount of money and everyone gets to vote, so you don't have a hierarchy in terms of time or money."

Although the foundation hasn't reached the 200 mark, they nevertheless decided to make an initial $265,000 grant this year that was awarded last Saturday at a luncheon at Spago. Fifty-three women signed up in the last six months, women from the Westside and the Valley; working women and full-time mothers. The money will underwrite a mobile dental clinic that will travel year-round among 30 LAUSD elementary schools in the highest poverty areas. 
     
                
Throughout the year, she intends to offer salons with guest speakers on specific children's issues. There will be a rotating grant-making subcommittee that will work with grant specialist Antopol in screening grants and give every member an opportunity to research projects. Once a year the entire group will meet to hear grant proposals and vote.
          
"The idea is to pick one 'dream project' that is just on the verge of getting launched," Caster says. "We don't want to give a lot of small grants, nor do we want to fund something that has other funding sources. The Everychild Foundation focuses on projects where we can have maximum impact within a short time frame. We also favor programs that encourage us to act locally and think globally - where funding a pilot project in the Los Angeles area can provide a springboard for widespread use."
       
Examples of possible projects in the future include: a pioneer project providing widespread access to current technology for blind children and a bridge project for children who are discharged from the foster care system when they reach 18. "I can imagine that we would rotate areas of importance each year, focusing on disease one year, foster care the next and child abuse the next," says Caster.

The Everychild mobile unit contains three fully equipped dental chairs and examination equipment.

The mobile dental clinic will serve second and third graders from 30 elementary schools which were selected on the basis of the percentage of children who receive free or reduced lunch.

Caster quotes recent statistics that document a neglected epidemic of untreated oral diseases among children in California, who are suffering more on average from dental problems than children in other states.
      
"Complications of inadequate dental care include malnutrition, poor concentration in school, sleeplessness and if left untreated, heart disease and failure to thrive," Caster says, quoting from the U.S. Surgeon General's report "Oral Health in America." 

LAUSD nurses at each school will prescreen the children needing dental care. QueensCare, the non-profit foundation directing the program, will staff the clinic. Ongoing resources to operate, repair and equip the clinic will be provided by the QueensCare Charitable Division and the Los Angeles Health Care Alliance. 
         
Caster enjoys her new commitment, an improvement over her grueling work schedule which involved too much travel. For the past decade, she headed her own consulting firm, performing economic feasibility studies for large scale projects such as Sony's Metreon in San Francisco. But with the arrival of children, she changed her focus. Caster and her husband Andrew have two children, Bryce, 9, and Jocelyn 7, both students at Carlthorp.
        
"While they're in school, I have seven hours to spend on Everychild," says Caster, "but when they are home, I'm all theirs." For more information, contact 573-2153.

The mobile van will travel among 30 LAUSD elementary  schools in underserved areas, and offer free dental examinations  to second and third graders.