Families Like Ours Named Non-Profit of the Year by the Seattle GSBA

Greater Seattle Business Association’s Business & Humanitarian Award Recipient

SEATTLE – February 1, 2009 — Families Like Ours (FLO) was named Non-Profit of the Year by the Greater Seattle Business Association (GSBA). An awards banquet is planned to honor the recipients on February 19, 2009 at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront.

“This is a wonderful honor for Families Like Ours,” said FLO’s Executive Director David Wing-Kovarik. “Being named non-profit of the year by an organization that serves over 1000 members in our local business community is a great tribute to the work we do for hundreds of families throughout our area and across the country.”

Families Like Ours is nationally known for reducing barriers within the adoption and foster care communities. Each year FLO supports thousands of individuals, families, children, caseworkers and placement agencies with education, training, and pre and post adoption programs to ensure the kids in the system find safe homes. In 2008, FLO expanded its adoption and foster care services and programs to provide Home Study and Placement Services with select local community partner placement agencies. These new services provide a robust offering from FLO for families wishing to foster or adopt children from the national foster care system.

Families Like Ours averages more than 1,000 daily web site visitors (professionals and families), conducts between 16 – 24 educational programs for families and professionals each year, and is contacted daily by caseworkers across the country for help with families and kids on their caseloads. “Our office phone and emails never stop,” explains Wing-Kovarik. “On an average day we can receive 10 inquires from families wanting to become foster or adoptive parents, more than 20 referrals each month for our helping hands network resources and agency referral, and more than 200 additional each year from events and educational trainings. That is in addition to the web site users that find what they need without needing direct contact with any of our team members.”

FLO’s impact is pronounced; their WA state P.R.I.D.E. trained families alone represent families for an average of 50 – 90 foster and adoptive youth each year. In 2004 FLO started work on what has become their SAFE program for GLBT&Q foster youth and families. FLO estimates that there are as many as 1,000 gay, lesbian, Trans, bi and questioning youth in the WA foster care system. Studies have indicated that there may be more than 240,000 GLBT&Q youth nationally in the foster care system.

As GSBA’s Non-Profit Award recipient, FLO will attend the GSBA’s Business & Humanitarian Awards Ceremony. This ceremony will be a night of pride and inspiration to honor those in the community who represent the best of the GSBA in combining business success and philanthropy. It will be a night of collective pride as we witness the economic strength of our businesses. It is an incredible evening that proudly showcases the accomplishments of the LGBT and Allied business and nonprofit community.

About Families Like Ours Founded in 2000, the mission of Families Like Ours, Inc. is to make change by reducing barriers within the adoption and foster care communities. Therefore, reducing the amount of time our children are waiting for a stable and safe forever family. Families Like Ours (FLO) is the premier national Adoption Exchange with a focus towards gay and lesbian adoptive families. We welcome the diversity of all pre and post adoptive-foster families so they can be permanent families for children in the US foster care system. For more information about FLO, visit www.familieslikeours.org

About the Greater Seattle Business Association The Greater Seattle Business Association (GSBA) has been the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) and Allied business and professional chamber of commerce since 1981. GSBA is the largest business chamber of its kind in the United States, and the second largest business chamber in Washington State. GSBA’s mission is to combine business development, social action and leadership to expand economic opportunities for the (LGBT) community and those who support equality for all. For more information about GSBA, visit www.thegsba.org