Casey DeSantis Announces Fund to Streamline Charity Donations to Floridians in Need: ‘It’s Not Going to a Bureaucracy’

July 15, 2022 Updated 10:47 A.M. ET

TAMPA (FLV) – First Lady Casey DeSantis announced the creation of “Hope Florida Fund” to allow the private sector to donate directly to groups helping families in need without the money going to bureaucracy. 

“It’s literally funds that they can donate that are going to things that are tangible, like beds,” DeSantis said. 

Florida’s initiative, “Hope Florida,” connects families and single parents with a care navigator to connect them with organizations through the care portal. As of June, the program had helped more than 30,000 Floridians to help them become economically self-sufficient.

“One of the things that I have talked with folks about who have some disposable income at their fingertips, they’re not always sure where to direct it, because they want to make sure that they’re allocating those funds to folks who are doing good things,” DeSantis said. 

“It’s not going to a bureaucracy. It’s not going to commissions.”

The First Lady also announced the expansion of the initiative “Hope Florida.” She said the care portal would expand to foster and adoptive families. 

“So if there is a foster or adoptive family that needs something, bunk beds, what have you, that now is going to fall on the care and hope navigators to be able to help meet those needs with the assistance of the care portal,” DeSantis said. 

Casey DeSantis also announced that the $61 million dollars invested into the state’s fatherhood initiative to provide mentors for kids will now be available to care navigators. 

She spoke on Florida’s budget which includes $35 million to support foster and adoptive families or single moms in the state with a one-time payment of $450.