Our Approach

At the HopeStar Foundation, we catalyze our work through four strategic approaches and four long-term priorities. See snapshots of our strategies in action below, and see our latest Giving Reports for more information.

Strategic approaches

focus on Whole child

We take a comprehensive approach to investing in health, education, and support for families to ensure young children have the best chances for prosperity and well-being.

Build Healthy Systems

We establish, support, and help scale sustainable initiatives to create innovative partnerships and build capacity within and between systems to better serve all children and families.

Keep Equity at the Center

We analyze our work and ideas through an equity lens that requires a continual process of learning, disaggregating data, and questioning historical policies that create barriers for underserved communities and under-resourced populations.

Promote Strong Statewide Voice

We collaborate with organizations to advocate for whole child development and whole family success through convening, capacity building, and programs where health and education intersect.

Long-Term Priorities

Systems Change

Take a whole child approach to build healthy families from the start: Increasing access to quality maternal health and child development opportunities that build early relational health to meet the social, emotional, mental, and physical needs of children and their families.

Foster connection

Advance an interconnected, efficient, and trauma-informed culture within and between government, judicial, health, nonprofit, and academic systems: Creating whole systems that embed policies and practices that prevent and address adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) to better support children and families.

Create Lasting Change

Build intergenerational cycles of prosperity and opportunity: Work with government, private, nonprofit, and community to advocate and scale innovations that build economic mobility for all.

Uphold Jewish values

We instill our Jewish identity in the work we do through education and community building, as well as practicing Tikkun Olam (repairing the world), a Jewish value.

Strategies In Action: Case Studies

Planting seeds in our systems: Embedding trauma-informed education into community college courses

Embedding trauma-informed practices and policies in our systems ensure that anyone interacting with children and families understands what adverse experiences look like, how to ensure families’ needs are addressed, and ultimately stop the re-traumatization cycle – while obtaining the tools to care for themselves in the process. One way to do this is for community college administrators and professors to weave trauma-informed approaches and modules into courses for early childhood providers. The HopeStar Foundation awarded a grant to the Center for Child & Family Health & Stanley College in 2020 to support the development and mapping of trauma-informed content into existing community college course curriculums, as well as implement continued trauma-informed training.

Nurture NC Initiative

The HopeStar Foundation's signature initiative, Nurture NC, is a statewide collaborative dedicated to improving maternal and infant health outcomes. We do this by addressing systemic drivers of maternal morbidity and mortality, and reducing health disparities that current, siloed programs cannot solve alone. The HopeStar Foundation, in partnership with stakeholders and philanthropy, has invested in this collective impact model for long-term sustainability ensuring no mother or child is left behind by a fragmented system. To learn more about Nurture NC, visit www.nurturencnow.org