Templer Foundation: Organization

Mission Statement

We enable terminally ill and disabled children to live and to die with dignity. Our efforts, focused on children living in poverty in Michigan and in southern Africa, are to provide financial and practical support to these children and their families.

We are in the business of identifying the plight of children in poor urban areas, who are in need of medical assistance, or basic life necessities, and connecting them with people or organizations that are able to help.   Historically, the funding we have used to support our mission has been raised via fund raising events and through a network of private donors. Our fund raising scope has recently expanded to include corporate sponsors and state and federal sources as well.

Our work started in southern Africa more than 12 years ago in response to prosthetic needs for children maimed by land mines.   In 1999, when Paul Templer moved to Michigan, we started working in the Detroit area where we are currently headquartered.   Our charter has evolved and currently includes providing financial and pragmatic support for terminally ill children and their families living below the poverty line and help to some of Detroit’s homeless.   There are currently more than two hundred and fifty families living below the poverty line in Detroit with terminally ill children who need our help…and the list grows every week.   Additionally, as the economy contracts, the demand upon programs supporting the homeless is increasing.

Since 2005, the Templer Foundation has worked and established relationships with existing programs enabling us to significantly increase the scale and scope of our support.   A recent strategic decision has led us to expand our fundraising efforts to include social enterprise and applying for public and private funds through the grant application process.   Accessing these funding sources will dramatically increase our capacity to effectively support our target populations.

Our short to medium term strategy includes the building of a model – The Detroit Urban Farm Project – that is scalable to revenue and operational needs.  As capacity to operate expands we expect to grow the number of facilities and part-time and full-time employees according to that growth.   We will continue to leverage a growing population of volunteers, as well as developing partnerships with other non-profit and for-profit organizations in the Detroit area.   Marketing, financial, accounting and legal support is currently provided by our Board of Director volunteers – this will continue until such a time as the volume of work necessitates hiring professional services.