Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster caught up with Former Senator AJ Griffin, current CEO of the Potts Family Foundation,, to talk about the Potts Family Foundation and its recent gift to rural Oklahoma Communities. Potts Family Foundation was created in 1980 and is a private operating foundation begun by the Ray and Pat Potts family. Since Ray’s passing, Pat and her three sons and daughter continue philanthropic work in communities.
The mission of the Potts Family Foundation is two-fold: They are the largest funder of the Oklahoma Center for Non Profits, and Pat was its founder. “We are very concerned about non profit sustainability and making sure the non profit community across the state is healthy and vibrant,” Griffin said.
The other major area of focus is early childhood – the first five years of life. “Ray and Pat adopted one of their children, and as they raised her, they learned the importance of the years when she wasn’t part of their family. So, Pat has made it a personal mission to help families provide the very best early experience for their children.”
Research has shown that events that occur during a child’s prenatal period and up to the fifth year of life can permanently impact the development of the individual’s brain. “We do a lot of trauma training and trauma information work all across the state as a key component of our mission at Potts Family Foundation,” she added. “We also support innovation in early childhood programs through grants, training and support, technical assistance, and helping with collaborations.”
The Potts Family Foundation recently awarded eight rural Oklahoma communities a total of $4.5 million dollars to expand the state’s Family Resource Center Network to 23 counties serving about 30,000 children under the age of 5 and their families and they are open for business. The project, known as Know and Grow Oklahoma: Building Resilient Children, Families and Communities, is funded in part by a portion of the state’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and in partnership with the Oklahoma State Department of Health.
The Potts Family Foundation submitted the Know and Grow Oklahoma proposal to the Oklahoma Legislature to address recovery issues for the youngest of Oklahomans, specifically those born immediately before and during the pandemic, from 2019 to May 2023. Research shows that thousands of these children are experiencing developmental delays as a result of the very unique, often isolated period of time they were born into, however, the Family Resource Centers’ services will be available to all members of the communities they serve.
Family Resource Centers are a national model and must comply under a certain set of standards. Before the Potts Family Foundation’s inception, there were only three Family Resource Centers in the state – Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Norman. The Potts Family Foundation has since added eight more Family Resource Centers to the network – Woodward, Enid, Ponca City, Stillwater, Grove, Shawnee, Duncan, and Hugo.
“Those eight communities have 23 counties in their service areas,” Griffin said. “Roughly 50,000 Oklahoma children under the age of five reside in those 23 counties.”
Family Resource Centers are managed with a framework that strengthens families to help parents, caregivers and their children become more resilient. They rely on community representation and collaboration and are known by many different names nationwide, including Family Support Centers, Family Resource Hubs and Parent-Child Centers. They may be community, school or faith-based and offer activities and programs developed to be reflective and responsive to the specific needs, cultures and interests of the communities and the populations they serve.
The Potts Family Foundation assists the Family Resource Centers in navigating the labyrinth of federal funding, connects them with partners in other parts of the state to learn new ways to help, and equips them with what they need which, in many instances, is trained people.
“Another thing we are using this for is to identify gaps in the service model across rural Oklahoma,” she said. “We get into a lot of communities and learn that even access to prenatal care is a challenge. I can take that back to the capital and advocate for expansion of services to make sure that we can use the existing things to do a better job of supporting families.”
Each of the Family Resource Centers is different from the other. A couple are in association with a youth services agency, so they may have onsite mental health treatment, or services for children in DHS custody. Some are faith-based, and others are community coalitions that connect people who want to help.
“A Family Resource Center isn’t necessarily a single place,” Griffin commented. “Sometimes it is a hub of connected services. They all look different. That is one of the great things about this. I am a big believer, especially in rural Oklahoma, in building things that are assets-based. In some communities, when you have a great church building and a Dollar General Store, that’s where you start. Maybe the asset is a really active FCCLA chapter at the local high school, so you get them involved. We help communities use their assets and support the families that are living there.”
The Potts Family Foundation works closely with the Payne County organization, Our Daily Bread, which began as a food pantry. With the support of the community, the organization has grown to include wrap-around services making it a perfect model for a Family Resource Center.
“That front door of tangible need is a key component,” Griffin said. “If a family comes in the door, and they need food, diapers, formula, and likely struggling with other things such as access to job training, signing up for childcare subsidies, mental health treatment, help navigating the healthcare system, they will get what they need.”
She emphasized the importance of having children ready to learn when they start school, and they must be prepared long before they ever reach that age. “We have seen that if a child is established and grounded in their family in those first five years – we call that early relational health, but that’s a fancy word for being bonded in their families. In order to have tight bonds between parent and child, parents have to feel supported and cared for themselves. A parent who is struggling and worried about providing for their family is going to be less likely to be bonded and attached to their child. If a Family Resource Center can support mom and dad and relieve some of the stress, that is good for kids,” she said.
The Know and Grow concept stemmed from “Things that we know that help kids grow.” Griffin explained, “We believe in avoiding adverse experiences for kids and helping families build tight connections that will last for the child’s entire life through tangible support, and community-based understanding of the importance of the first five years.”
She described that there was a time when experts believed that if a child didn’t remember an incident, it wouldn’t affect them. New research has proven that to be untrue. “Trauma experienced, even by mom when she’s pregnant, impacts the development of the child’s brain. Working to alleviate trauma in the first five years of life is a wonderful investment of public dollars and it will pay dividends forever. That individual will grow up healthier, be more successful, will be less likely to go to jail or have a substance abuse disorder, and less likely to die of heart disease.
Since funds from the Potts Family Foundation and federal dollars have kicked of the new Family Resource Centers, how will the organizations continue to operate? “We started from the very beginning with sustainability plans in each of the communities. We will use our expertise to help them fundraise locally. The model lends itself to once you get rolling, it can just spin-off, so a lot of training – once you put that into an entity, it is permanent. We will do a lot of skills development in local communities, but we are also going to use our advocacy chops to go back to the state to say, ‘Here’s this investment we have made of these federal dollars, and here is the proven outcome.”
She said that families and communities outside of the 23 covered Oklahoma counties can still reach out to the Potts Family Foundation through their website pottsfamilyfoundation.org.
