What We Do
Evolution of Giving
After 20 years successfully building a career in the oil and gas industry, Sue Ann Arnall signed the Giving Pledge. With her 2015 letter, she set the intention to devote her time and resources to children with autism and foster children as well as eliminating the need for pet euthanasia due to overpopulation. The early days of the Arnall Family Foundation were dedicated to these causes and have evolved over time.
Under Sue Ann’s leadership, the Foundation evolved to approach our grantmaking with some key philosophies. First, we don’t want to duplicate what someone else is doing. We approach the problems we want to solve through collaboration and research and defer to the experts who are doing the work as much as possible. Secondly, we want the programs and organizations we fund to be sustainable without our funding. We take on the risk of creating or expanding a successful program, but we don’t fund the same programs or organizations indefinitely. Finally, we aim to create transformative change. When we set out to solve a problem and achieve our goal, we move on to tackle the next one.
These philosophies have led us in a different direction than where we started. We no longer fund programs exclusively for children with autism. After great success with our animal welfare program, including, The Right Horse initiative, the Watershed Animal Fund, and numerous other efforts, we have sunset our grantmaking in that focus area. Don’t worry, we still have some furry friends at the office.
Sue Ann Arnall looks at artwork made by kids at the Hope for the Future visitation center, with their Executive Director, Clotiel Howard.
The biggest impact on how we’ve evolved has resulted from our work in the child welfare space. As Foundation staff built relationships, researched, and learned about gaps in the system, we kept hearing about how many children in foster care had parents in jail or prison. We also learned that there has been a lot of work to support children in foster care, but hardly any support exists for youth who are aging out. Worse still, many of these children end up with some level of involvement in the criminal legal system.
Narrowing our focus from child welfare to youth welfare and justice allows us to zero in on the gaps in the juvenile justice system and for youth in the system who are often left with little guidance or options once they turn 18.
We also added criminal justice reform as a focus area. Recognizing that many people involved with the system are unable to escape the cycle of incarceration resulted in hiring staff dedicated to addressing some of these needs. This eventually led to the creation of Diversion Hub, which has created a central, physical hub of services and has contributed to a decreasing jail population in Oklahoma County. Diversion Hub also opened our eyes to the devastating impact a lack of housing and lack of mental health resources has had on our communities.
Mental and behavioral health issues are closely tied to criminal legal involvement because when there isn’t anywhere to put someone, they most often end up in jail. As we work to lower the jail population in Oklahoma County, expanding the mental health treatment options has become part of our criminal justice reform focus area.
The team at Diversion Hub is joined by Sue Ann Arnall for a photo at the ground breaking of their permanent home, the MAPS 4 Diversion Hub facility. The new facility is being built on land contributed by the Arnall Family Foundation.
Additionally, being unhoused is increasingly detrimental for people involved with the criminal legal system and families involved in the child welfare system and limits their ability to successfully navigate the system and succeed. Homelessness overlaps with both criminal justice reform and youth welfare and justice to such a degree that it became its own focus area.
Throughout our evolution, we have picked up on trends and patterns and inherited biases that prevent the strong and vibrant community we envision. This realization led to us creating the Oklahoma Black Justice Fund in 2020 and it has evolved into our Northeast Oklahoma City focus area. Historically, areas subject to redlining are the same areas subject to over-policing, blight, and a lack of resources and opportunities. Organizations in these communities know what they need best, and we follow their lead to provide equitable access to services, capital, and support.
Each of our focus areas have evolved based on where we see the need and where we believe that we can make an impact. Part of recognizing great privilege is recognizing what you can do where you are with what you have. We will continue to grow and learn and evolve, but for now this is what we can do with what we have where we are.
-Arnall Family Foundation