Bring 5 to 50 people — and a plan for month thirteen.

Tier 1 · One weekend

A service project — call it practice.

No training, no background checks, immediate usefulness: run a duffel-bag or diaper drive, pack welcome boxes for new placements, or spend a Saturday sorting donations. Think of it less as the mission and more as a rehearsal — your group learns to organize together before anyone asks for a year.

• Individual project ideas on the ways-to-help ladder (drives, meals, sorting days)
• Sort and stock at the Foster Care Support Foundation (Roswell)
• Find a donation-hungry org near your county in the directory

Before the drive ends, name the person who will lead tier 2. That single decision is what separates a ministry from a memory — see the fizzle problem below.

Tier 2 · One family, one year

Start a Care Community.

The best-known model for this in Georgia comes from Promise686, a Peachtree Corners nonprofit whose mission is "to mobilize church communities to care for vulnerable children." Verified Jul 2, 2026 · promise686.org

"A Care Community is a team of equipped volunteers from a church that offers spiritual, practical, and emotional support to foster, adoptive, biological, and kinship families." — promise686.org

In practice: a handful of people commit to one foster family, on a schedule — the kind of help Promise686 describes as babysitting, meals, family activities, and prayer. Each person gives a few hours a month; the family gets a community that shows up predictably instead of once. Verified Jul 2, 2026 · promise686.org

How a church starts one — Promise686's own three steps: Discover ("connect with a coach to discover the needs in your church and community"), Learn (their online courses, including a Care Community Clinic for the team implementing the model), then Launch with their coaching, software, and resources behind you. Verified Jul 2, 2026 · promise686.org/activate

• Connect with a Promise686 coach (their Activate page)
• About Promise686 and the model

Tier 3 · Ongoing

A ministry that lasts.

This tier needs a named leader and a line in the church budget — it's a program, not a project.

Family Advocacy Ministry (FAM). Promise686's core framework: a volunteer-led ministry inside your church, built so that "any church, in any community, can effectively intervene" for vulnerable children — with structure designed to prevent volunteer burnout. Promise686 supplies the technology, content, and coaching; your congregation supplies the people. A FAM can run multiple Care Communities, awareness work, and support for families already fostering in your pews. Verified Jul 2, 2026 · promise686.org

CarePortal. The platform behind the "answer real-time needs through your church" rung on our ways-to-help ladder. A caseworker or other child-serving professional vets a family's need and posts it; nearby churches get the alert and respond. Families don't post needs themselves. (How CarePortal works.) Georgia and Promise686 set up CarePortal together in 2016, and Promise686 is still the Georgia partner, so church onboarding runs through them. Verified Sep 23, 2026

A working example: Hope 1312 Collective (Brunswick). A coastal-Georgia ministry that shows what "lasting" looks like — monthly respite nights for foster and kinship families, a summer camp for ages 6–12, TBRI caregiver training, and CarePortal response. Reach them at (833) 446-7310. If you're near the coast, join theirs; anywhere else, it's a model worth copying. Verified Jul 2, 2026 · hope1312co.org