Our Mission

Class and teacher gatherd around laptop
Vision

Kids’ Chance believes that we can make a significant difference in the lives of all children affected by a workplace injury by helping them pursue and achieve their educational goals.

Mission

Kids’ Chance of America was established for the purpose of creating, assisting, and supporting Kids’ Chance organizations throughout the United States and other similar programs that provide  educational opportunities and scholarships for the children of workers seriously injured or killed on the job.

Kids’ Chance Believes

  • Children are society’s most valuable resource.
  • We have an obligation to give children the tools they need to succeed in life.
  • Access to higher education ensures that children have the necessary skills to be successful in the workplace.
  • Investing in our children’s future provides them the opportunity to make a difference in their own and other people’s lives.

About Us

What happens when a child loses a parent to a work related fatality? What happens when a family’s income drops drastically because mom or dad can’t return to a well paying job, or when the family income is affected by a long period of disability? Kids’ Chance of America wants to make it possible for more students to attend college.

The Need

In 2012, there were 4,383 fatal occupational injuries. There are no records of how many children were affected, but 2,872 of these fatalities were workers between the ages of 20 and 55 – the prime years of parenthood, when children will be most affected by the loss of a parent and the parent’s income. [1] In 2011, in that same age cohort, more than 190,000 had injuries requiring more than 30 days of lost-time. [2]

Children of these workers can no longer count on the income of the injured or killed parent. Accompanying the grief of loss, or the need to deal with an injured parent, is the increased likelihood that they cannot afford a college education.

Across the United States, thirty three Kids’ Chance organizations help these children. They defray the cost of a college education through scholarships to children whose parent has been injured or killed in the line of work. Each individual statewide Kids’ Chance organization operates independently, obtaining funds for scholarships and evaluating scholarship applications.

What We Do

Kids’ Chance is a 501(c)(3) organization that was created for the purpose of creating, assisting and supporting Kids’ Chance organizations throughout the United States and other similar programs that provide educational opportunities and scholarships for the children of workers seriously injured or killed on the job. We believe that by investing in our children’s future, we can provide them with the tools and opportunity to be successful in the workplace, so that they can make a difference in their own and other people’s lives.

Our supporters are a unique coalition of groups within the workers’ compensation system, including labor, plaintiff and defense attorneys, judiciary, insurance industry, medical providers, vendors and other supportive businesses, which have come together to meet our collective goals as follows:

  • Promoting the establishment of Kids’ Chance organizations in all states that as of yet do not have existing programs by providing organizational and monetary start-up assistance.
  • Soliciting financial support and in-kind donations at the national level and distributing these funds to member organizations for scholarship use and program development.
  • Increasing public awareness of Kids’ Chance and its member organizations by providing information to foundations and corporate-giving programs and conducting research and gathering information to further this purpose.
  • Guiding member organizations on best practices in how to operate a non-profit organization.
  • Providing training, educational programs and other support to member Kids’ Chance organizations.

[1] US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, August 22, 2013
[2] US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, November 8, 2012