2025 Refreshed Mission and Values
Published on January 6, 2025
Family House’s Mission and Values for 2025 and Beyond!
As we start a New Year at Family House, we remain deeply committed to the care of our families, together with our community of volunteers and donors, just as we have since we opened our doors in 1981.
Part of that commitment is ensuring that Family House communicates its purpose and values in a clear and effective way – one that continually inspires us to take action and energizes others to engage in our compassionate mission. So, when we began our strategic planning process last year, the planning team carefully reviewed the mission statement to ensure that it upheld what we do day to day here at Family House. In December, the Board of Directors approved this updated mission statement:
Founded in 1981, Family House serves as a free home away from home for families with children undergoing treatment for cancer and other life-threatening illnesses by providing support, comfort and community.
The new statement is essentially the same mission that we’ve had since Dr. Art Ablin (1926-2017) brilliantly, compassionately founded Family House in 1981 with some important changes. Our update highlights the importance of our founding date and emphasizes our unwavering commitment to providing free housing to every family who enters our doors.
We also updated our definition of how we support our families. Our former mission statement expressed this as “by providing physical comfort and emotional support.” When we took a deeper look at how we are supporting families today, we decided that “by providing support, comfort and community” was a fuller, shorter and clearer way of expressing how we support the families who we are so passionately serving.
Through this process, we also updated our core values:
Compassion “Compassion is our core”
We believe that our compassion for families as they endure the most trying experience of their lives must drive everything we do.
Refuge “A place of comfort”
We believe that providing a safe, comfortable, dignified living environment enables our families to focus on their child’s medical care.
Family “Family of families”
We believe in providing an environment where our families naturally connect with each other to find hope, comfort and support.
Access “Addressing health equity”
We believe that the cost of having a place to stay should not be a factor in where parents find world class care for their child’s life-threatening illness.
Community “In this together”
We believe in providing opportunities for our staff, volunteers and supporters to profoundly impact the lives of our families.
While the essence of our values remains the same – compassion, family and community remain core values – we have updated the value of “sanctuary” for “refuge” – a word that speaks to being safe place, while being a healing environment.
We also redefined the value of “care” for “access,” enhancing our value of ensuring that every family stay is free, while leaning into Family House’s role in advancing health equity as families seek world-class care for their children.
In 2025, you will continue to see enhancements in how we reach out to you and the community – all to foster support for families, grounded in our amazing mission and core values. Thank you for being a part of us! If you have more questions or comments to share, please email us at info@familyhouseinc.org.
Family House San Francisco is an independent non-profit organization led by a professional staff and board of directors dedicated to providing residential services free of charge to qualifying families. We rely solely on the generous contributions of individuals, corporations, and foundations.