Search & Convert’s Founder Spotlight: Be the Change You Wish to See in Your Community
Cortney Jones of Change 1 Talks Community, Change, and Elevating the Voices of Youths in Foster Care
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” can be found on murals and Instagram bios across the globe, but it’s much rarer to find someone who is committed to living out that ideal.
Lucky for us, we have someone who is walking that walk right here in our community, doing work in Austin that will have an exponentially positive effect for generations to come.
Cortney Jones is a social worker, child welfare advocate, and the Executive Director and founder of Change 1, an Austin-based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing support services to youth who have experienced the child welfare system.
Change 1 specifically focuses on aiding young adults as they transition out of foster care, equipping them with the support and tools they need for the real world that they may not have access to once they emancipate from the system.
Change 1 is unique in that they prioritize staffing people who have lived experience in the foster system, which helps ensure that the advocacy and work they do is grounded in empathy and focused on the youth’s perspective. The importance of supporting youth in foster care from a place of common experience starts at the roots of the organization — with Jones herself.
Jones’ Roots
“I started this nonprofit because I have lived experience in foster care. I entered care at age eight and emancipated out of care at 18, and adulthood was hard to navigate. And so I wanted to start an organization to help kids not have to navigate adulthood by themselves,” Jones shares, explaining that as a youth in foster care she didn’t feel like her voice was heard or honored, and often adults who had no idea what she was going through made decisions for her without her input.
During her senior year of high school, Jones started to reflect on her experiences in foster care, and she decided she wanted to be the social worker that she did not have — an agent of the kind of change she wished to see in the child welfare system.
While she didn’t always feel like her voice was heard as a child, she found her voice in adulthood through advocacy, and wanted to encourage young people still in the system who were being ignored or marginalized to do the same. “When I started this journey, I just really wanted to help young people find their voice, to help them understand policies and procedures and how that impacts their life,” Jones explains.
But Jones faced many challenges as she began her professional journey, and these experiences helped her further hone in on her mission to aid youth in foster care foster youth in their transition into adulthood. While her negative experiences motivated her, Jones shares that she also had a positive role model in the system who inspired Change 1’s mission.
“My last case manager… didn’t give up on me when I really wanted to give up on myself. There are a lot of children in foster care, and she could have closed my case and been done with it when I ran away from care, but she decided to go the extra mile and to really support me and help me finish out high school strong and [transition] into adulthood as successful as [possible],” Jones shares.
She moved to Austin in 2010 to start a career as a Social Worker in the Department of Family and Protective Services. While working full-time, Jones obtained a Master’s degree in Social Work with an emphasis on Administrative Leadership from Texas State University-San Marcos.
In addition to advocating for children who were experiencing the child welfare system, Jones explains that these early professional experiences helped her learn about legislation and how policy is formed, which gave her a new perspective on what had happened to her while she was in care.
Jones was also a foster parent and an adoptive mother of two, which equipped her with yet another perspective of the system and further informed her work and advocacy.
A Passionate Advocate
All of these lived experiences within the child welfare system make Jones a true advocate for change. Being armed with such a robust understanding of the system and multi-faceted insights about everyone who participates in it makes Change 1’s work authentic, passionate, focused, and effective.
A big part of Jones’ work since beginning her career has been centered around educating the community, legislators, and youth in foster care about what all parties are experiencing from a strength-based perspective, working to debunk harmful myths about CPS and foster care.
“It’s very important that our organization continues this work alongside individuals with lived experience,” Jones says, emphasizing that the perspective that comes with having experienced something is the best tool to deliver the deep education that will change minds in our community and with it, change lives of youth in foster care.
“That’s why our organization is called Change 1 Mind, Change 1 Life. We believe that if you can change the mindsets of the community and how they perceive the foster care system, then we can increase our numbers of foster homes and adoptive homes. Also, if we can help young people shift their mindsets and how they see themselves, then we’re able to change their life that way as well.”
While Jones had the idea to found her own nonprofit addressing these needs in 2007, she began her entrepreneurial journey by getting these thoughts down on paper and educating herself about business and nonprofits. It wasn’t until 2014 that she was able to officially establish Change 1, and it wasn’t until 2017 that she received a 501c3 status from the IRS.
The Challenges of Running a Non-Profit
Entrepreneurs face many challenges, but those challenges take on a unique dimension for founders of nonprofit organizations, especially if they don’t have funding available. Jones had to figure out how to file her paperwork and develop her nonprofit while also working a full-time job. She emphasizes the importance of utilizing your community when you don’t have resources like capital — and not letting the roadblocks discourage or distract you.
“The beautiful thing about it is, I didn’t let [those challenges] stop me. I still did the work,” she shares, explaining that she reached out to her community for their advice and support, and her community showed up for her.
“Even though I didn’t have the [501c3] status, the community supported me… that was the most beautiful thing. I really attribute that to my passion, my character, my hard work, and that I haven’t given up. People see that you haven’t given up… that [I’m] still fighting the good fight.”
Thanks to Jones’ hard work, determination, and passion, our community is benefitting in big ways. Jones is passionate about elevating the voices of those with lived experience in the foster care system. She does this through Change 1 by providing public education, advocacy, training, and direct support services.
Currently, Change 1 provides training to youth and young adults impacted by the foster care system, teaching them how to utilize their voices to impact policies, procedures, and legislation in order to improve the child welfare system.
It was precisely Jones’ lived experiences that made her aware of the unique unmet needs that arise when youth in foster care exit the system. There are 400,000 children in foster care, and 125,000 of them emancipate when they turn 18 without being adopted. Once they leave the system, there are very few resources available for these young people to help them achieve long-term success as adults.
Change 1 also provides case management services to young people who have transitioned out of foster care and support services to young adults. This can mean helping youth find a place to stay during college holiday breaks or providing guidance to young mothers who don’t have family to lean on.
Whether it’s a place to stay, food to eat, mentorship, or teaching life skills like cooking and resume writing, Change 1 is stepping up to provide the support that young adults need as they build their lives.
Change 1 also hosts an annual Thanksgiving celebration every year for children in foster care. The holiday event is designed to celebrate the voices, talents, and insights of youth in foster care and helps to maintain a connection with them as they enter young adulthood.
This event can also help bridge gaps for children by connecting them with people who have similar lived experiences. “There is an over-representation of children of color in the foster care system,” Jones explains. “And they’re often placed in homes that don’t look like them, so sometimes they’re ripped from their culture and their traditions unintentionally.” Change 1’s Thanksgiving celebration is one example of how their support services help with these complex issues.
The Unique Challenges of Being a Black Entrepreneur
Beyond the challenges that Jones faced as an entrepreneur founding a nonprofit without any external funding, she also faced unique challenges associated with being a minority community leader. Jones shares that it’s difficult to compete with established organizations for resources such as grants, and entrepreneurs of color generally receive less support than white entrepreneurs.
This lack of support is reflected in staggering statistics around diversity in entrepreneurship which Jones shares, explaining, “White individuals are leading in entrepreneurship at 70.9% [of American entrepreneurs]. And then Latino entrepreneurs make up 14.3%, and Asian entrepreneurs make up 6.2%, and Black or African-American make up 6% of entrepreneurs.”
These numbers reveal the lack of support that people of color receive in entrepreneurial spaces, but the situation quickly becomes a catch-22: a company must have an established presence before they can take advantage of resources in the community, but there is a lack of resources available in order to establish that presence in the first place.
A Partnership for Change
This is exactly the kind of complicated situation that PJ Christie wants to ameliorate. The founder of Austin-based marketing agency Search & Convert, Christie invited Change 1 to join his Black Businesses Matter program, which provides pro bono services to Black-owned businesses in Austin. First building a website that highlights Change 1 values, then creating a full communications framework and strategic execution, Search & Convert helped Change 1 hone and improve their online presence.
In addition to working on her site, Search & Convert’s services always include an educational piece, with the goal of empowering their clients to optimize their online presence, even after Search & Convert finishes their scope of work.
Jones cites Search & Convert’s work as an invaluable part of her journey to scale Change 1, explaining that the resources that Christie and his team provided gave her clarity around how she should present her work online and also helped her present herself as an established organization so that she could take advantage of resources, such as a Google grants program for non-profits.
Jones reveals she did not have the staff, education, or resources to fill the gaps in her organization’s online presence. Christie explains, “Most of my clients are larger companies with more resources than Change 1 and the other Black-owned businesses we have supported. Through Black Businesses Matter, I wanted to make sure they had access to the kind of expertise that grows a sustainable online presence. Further, I’ve seen that sustainable businesses build stable communities, and we choose projects like Cortney’s based on their proposed impact in the lives of real people.”
As Change 1 gains more support, they have big things planned for the future. Their five-year goal is to build a one-stop drop-in center for youth in the community, both those who are currently experiencing the system and those who have recently transitioned out of the system.
Jones envisions the center to have a laundry facility, a food pantry, space to teach cooking and other life skills, a computer lab and job readiness resources, and to simply provide a safe space where young adults can be themselves, hang out, and find support and mentorship from people who have been through similar experiences. “We want it to feel like a home,” Jones explains. “We want it to feel like a safe haven… where young people can experience mentorship from people in the community… [so that young people can] understand what their strengths are and what they bring to the table.”
The Foundation’s Future
Jones explains that Change 1’s work is about building a community for people who have experienced the child welfare system, from making sure that existing resources reflect their needs to creating new spaces and systems for youth and young adults to flourish and become “contributing members of our society.” In this way, supporting Change 1 is an investment in our community, and there are many ways to help them in their important, life-changing work.
One big need that Jones shares is that Change 1 is looking for board members. “Currently, we’re a team of two and a half. I’m so thankful for our small team, but we need to build capacity so that we can continue to [serve] those large numbers in our community. So we want to find board members that have the time to roll up their sleeves and to help us with fundraising and help us with just building a sustainable capacity in our community,” Jones explains. Change 1 is also looking for volunteers with business skills such as marketing, event production, or consulting to aid in their development. If their mission inspires you, reach out on their website to discover what volunteer opportunities exist.
Fundraising is also a crucial need for Change 1 at this juncture. Change 1’s current grant will expire at the end of March, and they are looking for new opportunities and resources to help support them through the important advocacy that takes place in April, which is Child Abuse and Neglect Awareness Month, and May, which is Foster Care Education Month. Jones shares that in the past, restaurants have done fundraisers for the organization and people have sought to do fundraising through their employers as well.
If none of these opportunities fit, at the very least Change 1 can benefit from increased awareness. “Public awareness is the biggest [need],” Jones explains. “For people to spread the word that we have a non-profit led by somebody with lived experience working to improve the lives of children, youth, and families.”
Learn more about Change 1.
Learn more about Search & Convert.
