Just the Facts – For Donors
Mission: Within 24 hours, the Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation helps with urgent expenses to allow single parents to stay at their child’s bedside during catastrophic illness.
History: 417 days after her son’s school nurse called to report that he complained of double vision, Valerie Sobel lost her beloved Andre, 19, to an inoperable brain tumor. A year to the day after Andre’s death, Sobel’s grief-stricken husband took his own life.
As Sobel sought to make sense of her tragedy she realized that to have had a loving partner and financial resources during Andre’s illness was a privilege, not a right. She saw that too many single parents caring for catastrophically ill children lurched from crisis to crisis and remained unseen. Sobel crafted the ASRL mission to respond to their need for financial support so that they could remain with their child during treatment. The first request for assistance, by a hospital social worker on behalf of a teen leukemia patient living with her grandmother in a trailer, was filled in 2000.
Sobel provided the one-time seed funds to launch the foundation; today a 501©3 public charity. As ASRL took root in California and expanded nationally, over 600 donors have provided financial support to ASRL while ASRL’s endowment covers administrative costs.
Goals:
- Prevent foreclosure, eviction, utility disconnection, car repossession during medical crisis
- Provide urgent financial assistance within 24 hours of request for food, housing, utilities, transportation
- Reach families nationwide
In just ten years ASRL has achieved:
- $4 million of program assistance to 11,300 family members
- Presence at 50 pediatric hospitals in 24 states
- 57% of funds to housing to prevent foreclosure and eviction
- Reach into diverse underserved communities
- Featured in People, Reader’s Digest, LA Times, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Town & Country, The Tyra Banks Show, Montel Williams and NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
- Major funding from: Genentech Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, UPS Foundation, Diller von-Furstenberg Foundation
Click here for our IRS determination letter.
Click here to see how our dollars are allocated.
How Our Family Assistance is Directed
Donors and Partners
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