The Ella Grace Foundation

The Ella Grace Foundation was born out of heartbreak, hope, and an unshakable belief that no child or parent should face tragedy alone.

It began with Ella — a bright, beautiful little girl who lost her father in a devastating car accident when she was just two and a half years old. Overnight, her world — and her mother’s — changed forever.

Ella’s mother was a young woman with no financial support outside of child support. She had just begun cosmetology school, determined to build a better life for her and her daughter — a way out of the poverty that had shadowed her family for generations. But when the accident took Ella’s father, the child support ended instantly. In one moment, Ella lost her father, and her mother lost her only source of income.

Bills didn’t stop. Childcare was still needed. Life didn’t pause. Faced with impossible choices — quit school, abandon her dreams, and return to the same cycle of poverty she was fighting so hard to escape — Ella’s mother was left broken, scared, and out of options.

Poverty is a disease that spreads quietly across generations. It steals opportunity, hope, and self-worth. Breaking free requires help — a helping hand, a bridge, a moment of grace. For Ella’s family, that grace came from her grandparents.

They stepped in. They helped navigate the endless paperwork for death benefits, applied for CCS childcare subsidies, and provided financial support when government systems were too slow, too burdened, and too indifferent to help in time. It took weeks of coordination, long days of waiting, and countless calls — but they made it happen. Ella’s mother stayed in school. She kept going. And slowly, hope returned.

But that experience changed everything.

Because Ella’s grandparents realized — most families don’t have a safety net. Most don’t have someone who can step in to help when life collapses without warning. And when the safety net is gone, the consequences ripple for generations.

So, they created one.

The Birth of The Ella Grace Foundation

The Ella Grace Foundation was founded to honor Ella’s father, uplift her mother, and carry forward a mission of grace, resilience, and generational change.

The Foundation’s cornerstone is The Ella Grace Endowment, a self-funded commitment ensuring that help will always be available for families in crisis. The endowment is designed to keep the foundation operating in perpetuity — through good times and bad — so that even during economic downturns, assistance continues to reach those who need it most.