Statements

Mission

Nashville Foster Love Closet and Resource Center aims to provide support, materials, and resources for families and children involved in the foster care system.

Background

Nashville Foster Love Closet was started by Kara Puckett and her husband, Justin Puckett, in the garage of their Antioch home in January of 2022. The closet started just as an idea to help provide clothing and toiletries for families receiving new placements. After a few months, it grew into helping families with all needs including clothing, toiletries, diapers, wipes, furniture, toys, homemade meals, and so much more. NFLC has also been able to host events for families and children including a Back to School Bash, Girls Day Out, and Christmas Shopping.

NFLC was growing so quickly that it was officially turned into a non-profit organization in September of 2022. With this new 501(c)(3) status, NFLC started receiving funding and was able to open a storage unit for items. NFLC hopes to continue growing and one day open an actual storefront for families to come and shop for needed items.

In 2022, NFLC served over 520 different children.

Impact

In 2022, NFLC was able to serve over 520 different children involved in the foster care system.
In 2022, NFLC was able to provide 193 children with $100 worth of Christmas gifts.
In 2022, NFLC had over 120 volunteers that logged 795 hours of service.

In 2023, NFLC hopes to expand awareness about our organization and resources available to foster families in the area, to recruit more donors and volunteers to support our organization, and to expand our network of resources for foster families. It is also our goal to work towards having enough funds to open our own physical space for families to come and shop for items.

Needs

NFLC's biggest needs are volunteers and funding.
We are hoping to receive enough funding to cover administrative costs (currently volunteer run), needed items for families that we do not have on hand, and for storage space.

CEO Statement

There is a great deal of misinformation regarding the foster care community. The biggest being that foster parents are paid copious amounts of money from the state. While foster parents do receive a small stipend, there are many families paying more out of pocket than what is covered with this stipend. Our organization exists to provide needs for these families so that they can say "yes" more often to placements without having to worry about the financial burden that accepting a new placement might bring.
Oftentimes, children care are removed from their homes and enter the foster care system with next to nothing.

Service Categories
Primary Category:	Human Services  - Foster Care
Secondary Category:	Human Services  - Children's and Youth Services
Tertiary Category:	Human Services  - Family Services

Areas Served

NFLC serves families concentrated but not limited in Middle Tennessee.

TN - Tennessee (Entire State)