Statements
Mission
Family Reconciliation Center (formerly Reconciliation, Inc.) is a nonprofit hospitality house located in Nashville, TN. We provide free overnight rooms to anyone visiting an incarcerated loved one. Families of the incarcerated are forgotten victims of crime. Family Reconciliation seeks to remove the most common economic barriers to visitation so that families can focus on the more critical task ahead of them with their incarcerated loved one: reconciliation and healing. Our vision is to reconcile husband to wife, parent to child, sister to brother, offender to community.
Background
Family Reconciliation Center was established in 1984 as a 501(c)3 agency by the Rev. Mary Catherine ('Kaki') Friskics-Warren. While visiting an inmate at a Tennessee prison, she realized the most effective and long-lasting way to ensure that prisoners remained loved and cared for throughout incarceration was by serving their families. Her insight served as the launching pad for identifying families of the incarcerated as forgotten victims of crime, who-though innocent of wrongdoing-are often blamed and ostracized by friends and the community.
Kaki helped establish free lodging for families visiting from out of town to visit their loved ones in Nashville-area prisons. The agency has received numerous awards and recognition, including the 2019 Women Impact Nashville Award for Small Nonprofits. Funding for services is derived from foundation gifts and awards, congregational and individual giving, and annual fundraising campaigns.
Impact
2020-2021 Impact Statement
Family Reconciliation is the only organization in Tennessee providing free lodging specifically for inmates' loved ones. We experienced dramatic growth in visitors at the beginning of 2020, then had to close our doors during the COVID pandemic, when prisons halted visitation for more than a year.
However, we used that time well to make improvements to the house, including shoring up the foundation, getting a new roof, and painting all of the rooms, thanks to a generous grant from Impact Nashville. Board member Mike Hudson, a retired contractor, did a stellar job of overseeing work on the house. Eagle Scout Nissa Berle and her team from Crew 87 oversaw drainage improvements that will go a long way toward protecting the house in the future. We are deeply grateful to all of them. The house is in better shape than ever.
We also used that time to reach out to our regular visitors to let them know we were thinking about them and looking forward to their being able to come back. We called the families and sent holiday cards, enlisting the support of children at Christ Church Cathedral and Congregation Micah.
As of May 2021, we are welcoming back visitors and fully expect to eventually be as busy as we were before COVID. In 2019, we booked 245 guest reservations totaling 571 room nights. In the first quarter of 2020, before things shut down, our bookings were up 64% over the same period a year earlier. We are thrilled to be welcoming our families back and reaching out to new families, giving them a comfortable, loving environment to stay in when they come for prison visitation.
Needs
Donating: Recurring donors keep our organization afloat. If you would like to become a recurring monthly donor, visit https://familyreconciliationcenter.org/.
Volunteering: Family Reconciliation looks like a home, with 6 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, common spaces, and a fenced-in yard. Volunteer needs mirror a residential setting, like making dinner for the guests every Saturday night at our community dinners, doing laundry, making beds, cleaning bathrooms and flipping rooms after guests leave, landscaping, etc.. These volunteer roles help us provide a clean, welcoming space for clients. Those interested in volunteering can visit https://familyreconciliationcenter.org/volunteer.
Breakfast pastries drop-off for guests: Guests often leave very early in the morning for visitation and rarely have time to eat.
In-kind donations. Our Amazon Wish List can be viewed at http://bit.ly/frcwish.
CEO Statement
Family Reconciliation runs on a non-executive model. We do not have any paid staff, and therefore do not have an executive director. Instead, the organization is run by live-in volunteers, known as House Managers. Our current House Manager is Stef Murphy.
House Managers' Statement:
Family Reconciliation Center embodies radical hospitality. The families who stay at the Guest House are not extraordinary; on the contrary, they are as ordinary as anyone else. What separates them, however, is the isolation, loneliness, and heartache that comes with having a mom serving a life sentence, a brother on death row, or a mentally ill grandson in solitary confinement. Often, clients report that Family Reconciliation's Guest House is one of the few places in their lives where they feel like they can be themselves, find support, and build friendships with others who understand what they're going through and offer relationship without judgment.
As Nashville's hotel rates continue to skyrocket across the city, the need for a place like Family Reconciliation is becoming that much more critical. For all of the complexity and diversity of our client base, FRC fosters a gentle, joyous, and loving community of people, people who otherwise wouldn't know each other without the Guest House. We've watched life-long friendships start and grow within our walls, and it never ceases to amaze us how far guests will go to help and support each other, even those they've just met.
Serving as the House Managers for Family Reconciliation is truly an honor and a privilege. Were there a community like this on every corner of every city, the world would be better for it.
Board Chair Statement
The Family Reconciliation Center serves as a lifeline between families and their loved ones in prison. We provide a loving, supportive community run entirely by volunteers. Everything about visiting the prisons is difficult; as our former house manager Anna Masi always says, we want to be the one thing that isn't difficult for families. Our guests are welcomed to a clean, tidy house with fresh linens, coffee and snacks, a pleasant yard and porches, and a well-loved Saturday night dinner, when we can share stories and be in fellowship.
There are numerous studies showing that having contact with family while incarcerated reduces the rate of recidivism. The majority of women and men in prison are parents of children under the age of 18; family visitation allows parents to keep a connection with those children. It is often stated that when a parent is incarcerated, the children also "do the time." Children who have parents in prison are more likely to have difficulty in school, and engage in substance abuse, delinquency, and gang-related activities -- and are 80% more likely to be incarcerated themselves. Our goal is to connect those children with their parents by providing a safe, convenient place to stay when they visit the prisons.
We also connect grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and dear friends to their loved ones in prison. Some of their loved ones are serving life sentences, others suffer from mental illness, and all long for a connection with their families. The majority of people who are incarcerated are eventually paroled. We want to help them re-enter the outside world by keeping them connected with the people who love them.
Service Categories |
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| Primary Category: | Human Services - Family Services |
| Secondary Category: | Crime & Legal - Related - Inmate Support |
| Tertiary Category: | Housing, Shelter - Temporary Housing |
Areas Served
Family Reconciliation Center is located in Davidson County, but we provide overnight rooms to anyone visiting an incarcerated loved one. The majority of our clients drive in from other areas of Tennessee, but a sizable number travel from out of state or other countries. In 2019 alone, our guests came from 17 states, with the majority visiting Middle Tennessee prisons/facilities, but many also visiting East and West Tennessee facilities.
| National |
| International |
| TN |
| TN - Davidson |
