By Pervez Saleem:

Video: YouTube

Danielle Gletow: One Simple Wish

She Quit Her Job To Help Foster Kids, And It Changed Her Life

As foster parents, Danielle Gletow and her husband, Joe, saw first-hand the challenges the children in the system face on a daily basis. These children didn’t just need the love and stability of a forever home, many of them also needed the basic comforts that most of us take for granted.

And it’s those simple needs of the nearly 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system that Gletow’s organization, One Simple Wish, is trying to meet. The nonprofit allows people to make “a direct difference in the lives of foster children and vulnerable families” through small, online donations that fulfill the “wishes” of these kids, which range from toys to school supplies.

“After we had fostered for a year, it was evident that there were gaps in the system,” Gletow says. “We’d have children who were brought to us, many times with what the [social worker] could grab from the home. We thought, these are kids entering a very serious time in their life, and they’re not fully prepared.”

Soon after she and her husband welcomed 3-day-old Mia (who they later adopted) into their home, Gletow discovered she was pregnant, so the couple decided they would close their home to fostering. In turn, Gletow decided to open the country’s eyes to plights of foster kids. “That’s when I decided to do a business plan for One Simple Wish, to connect these people who wanted to help the kids without having to go through the foster care system,” she says. “The idea was to tell people the stories of the children and not the statistics.

Because the statistics are overwhelming and often make it seem like there is no way to make a difference. We wanted people to feel like even if they only had $25, they knew the money was doing something.”

A marketer by profession, Gletow spent her days at an agency and her nights working on her idea-while juggling a new baby and a pregnancy. She incorporated One Simple Wish in 2008, when her youngest was 2 months old and her oldest 10 months old.

But even though she had the passion and drive, Gletow faced myriad hurdles in trying to make her idea a reality. One of her earliest challenges was navigating the local nonprofit community. “A lot of these agencies didn’t take me seriously in the beginning. They wouldn’t talk to me, or they’d say things like ‘I don’t really see how you’re going to get people to give you money that way.’ “

The other challenge was getting exposure for her nascent nonprofit-the Gletows had invested their savings in launching One Simple Wish and had no budget for advertising. “It’s a catch-22. You have to do something to get noticed to get funding, but in order to do something you need more funding.”

Gletow did get noticed, and the foundation started to catch on virally. “The idea that you could help an individual and that there was this one-to-one personal connection between the donors and the kids, that caught on quickly,” she says. “Suddenly, we didn’t know the people who were granting the wishes. That’s when the media caught on.”

In September 2012, a New Jersey reporter wrote a story on Gletow and One Simple Wish for the Christian Science Monitor’s “Difference Maker” section. NBC Nightly News saw it and contacted her, asking if they could feature her story on Brian Williams’ “Making a Difference” segment. A few months later, Gletow was nominated as a CNN “Hero,” and in October 2013 she learned she had made it to the top 10. The media spotlight, she says, changed everything.

“After we aired on NBC, we did $225,000 in just the few weeks after, which was twice the total of what we brought in the year before,” she says. “The site crashed. We were answering 200 emails an hour. You could see people were embracing this program.”

The attention also forced Gletow to re-think her organization structure. Prior to her NBC coverage, she was the only full-time employee, supported by a part-time program coordinator. So they added more staff and re-configured the website to better handle the traffic. “The national media spotlight changed the dynamic. We’re reaching more kids.

We’re reaching more agencies,” she says. “When agencies see we were on CNN and NBC, and it adds credibility to our work. I’m finding a lot of those organizations who wouldn’t talk to us before are really interested in talking to us now.”

Gletow works around the clock to ensure that the children in and who’ve aged out of foster care feel support the way her daughters do. “I started this because I’m a mom, and I saw kids without a mom, and I wanted to help. I wanted to show them that someone out there cares,” she says. “It is personal. This isn’t a business. This isn’t a job or work. This is my mission in life.”
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Danielle Gletow

Business Name: One Simple Wish, a program that grants wishes to foster children

Business Location: Trenton, New Jersey, United States

Website www.onesimplewish.org

Reason for starting

In 2006, my husband Joe and I became foster parents. After a year of fostering and after the placement of our now adopted daughter, we vowed to create a way for more people to support children at such a confusing and vulnerable time in their lives. We knew that if more people knew how to help and what the children needed, they would definitely get involved. Children in foster care are so often forgotten in our society and we wanted to create a way for their voices to be heard and for them to believe that despite hardships and obstacles in life, wishes do come true.

How do you define success?

I wake up every day and I am excited to get going. To me, that is the ultimate definition of success. When you love what you do and you can’t wait to do it every single day, that is an amazing feeling. No amount of money or fame or recognition will ever beat that.

Biggest Success

So far I think our biggest media success has been getting the attention of NBC Nightly News and being featured on their program But I truly believe that the biggest success was making it past the one year mark during a during economy when starting a charity was a huge risk.

What is your top challenge and how have you addressed it?

Our biggest challenge right now is finding the right people to hire to ensure the continued growth of the company. Nonprofit jobs don’t pay as well as for profits and we’re also still a fairly new organization at just four years old so we struggle to find people who want to put in the time, energy and passion for a small salary. But we’re getting there!

Who is your most important role model?

As strange as it may sound, I don’t really have one. I admire many people in my life for different reasons but I wouldn’t call any one of them a role model. I admire my mother’s kindness and willingness to help anyone. I admire my father’s charisma and ability to command a room. I admire my husband’s stability and calm manner of handling difficult circumstances. I admire my children’s imaginations. I admire my best friend’s sense of style and grace. I take a little bit from everyone.