At age 19, Danny Mendoza faced a harsh reality: his nine-year-old cousin, Roger, was living out of a car with no stable shelter.
When Mendoza tried to become his cousin’s foster parent, he was told he was too young.
His family was also not in the position to help financially. Determined to make a difference, Mendoza channeled his frustration into a calling, founding a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping foster children navigate the system and find their way in life.
“I knew I had to do something,” Mendoza said during his acceptance speech during the Business Journal’s 10th annual Innovator of the Year Awards.
He was among five people honored during the Sept. 12 ceremony.
While Mendoza was working as a cashier at McDonald’s and a paralegal at a law firm, he created Brea-based Foster Love in 2008 to help foster youth navigate the system and find a path to pursue. For nearly two decades, the nonprofit organization has helped more than a million foster care children by offering them after-school programs, free bikes, birthday boxes and access to higher education scholarships.
“We want them to know what love feels like. We want them to know they can believe in themselves,” Mendoza, who graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 2010, told the Business Journal.
Humble Beginnings
Mendoza said he was a MySpace influencer when he was trying to help his cousin and working to launch the nonprofit, which, back then, was called Together We Rise.
“I just utilized that platform and tried to get people involved, and I had a really good response from my community,” Mendoza said of the social media network.
But what really helped Mendoza launch Together We Rise in earnest was a Barack Obama speech at Universal Studios.
“He said something that resonated with me. He said, ‘Everyone complains about stuff, but no one wants to do anything about it,’” Mendoza said. “It just stood out to me. It was so relatable with what I was going through.”
That fueled him. While attending college, he used the free time he had to build his nonprofit venture.
“I decided to look into helping my cousin and went onto Legal Zoom and started a nonprofit there,” Mendoza said. “Once we got approved, I sold my car to get office space.”
An Assist From a Friend
Mendoza might have started a nonprofit and secured office space, but the real challenges were just beginning.
When he was reaching out to foster care agencies to offer his help, none of them wanted to work with him, he said.
A friend’s mom who worked in the foster care system gave him his first shot.
“She allowed us to chat with her and pitch her what we were trying to do, and she accepted,” Mendoza said.
His idea: a soccer camp for foster youth. The camp would give foster youth free gear, teach them how to play the game and connect them with professional soccer players.
“We buy them everything, from cleats, to shorts, to balls, whatever they need,” Mendoza said.
“We had between 50 and 100 kids show up. The kids had a lot of fun, and in that process the kids told us they wanted bikes. So, we started a new program called Build-A-Bike.
It was trying to raise money from the community to buy bikes for the kids to have.”
It was a tough start, Mendoza said, but the success of the soccer camp, coupled with the growth of social media, meant his nonprofit started to gain traction–and funding.
“All these corporations were starting to run these charitable social media campaigns. Chase Bank was, like, if you’re a charity that likes this post, whatever charity that gets the most likes gets $25,000,” Mendoza said. “We ended up starting to compete in things like that. We ended up winning a lot of them.”
The organization that eventually changed its name to Foster Love ended up raising hundreds of thousands of dollars through the social media competitions, according to Mendoza.
“We used it to fund projects like the Build-A-Bike,” Mendoza said.
Other Foster Love programs include shopping sprees, birthday boxes and sibling reunifications, among others.
The nonprofit has since grown to rely primarily on self-funding, where Foster Love charges outside companies for team-building programs or events. The nonprofit reported $9.1 million in revenue in 2023.
Foster Love has grown to now support more than 150,000 foster youth annually, giving them access to scholarships and STEM programs. The organization also works with foster agencies, social workers and others, spreading awareness of Foster Love and its programs.
