“What if the things we cherish most in life were the same things we carry with us toward death? Those moments that make us feel awake. Loved. Human. What if we could live our lives—fully—all the way to the end?” — BJ Miller 

This has been a year marked by another major milestone. Early on in 2018, we celebrated serving 30,000 Dreams and counting across the nation, touching innumerable more family members, friends and health care workers and creating memories that will last for years to come.

Around the same time, we unveiled our Dream Foundation plaque at our very own Dream Plaza in downtown Santa Barbara. Generously gifted to Dream Foundation by Michael Rosenfeld, the owner and developer of the Hotel Californian, the tranquil, tree-shaded Plaza contains around 1,100 stones in four sizes available to be purchased and engraved, which will help us give life to hundreds of Dreams in the coming years.

It was a year of a number of successful financial initiatives, beginning with the appointment of a full-time Director of Development, Anais Pellegrini.

We introduced a Named Fund Program and, taking a hiatus from our usual annual Gala, put the focus on Endless Summer Dream, our second signature event. This proved to be very successful as this volunteer-led event attracted an increased number of attendees from across the region as well as nationally, generating significant revenue to fulfill Dreams.

Additionally, expanded efforts by the New York Advisory Council resulted in new partnerships, successful New York-based fundraising events, and increased awareness on the East Coast.

Our existing corporate partnerships continued to play a crucial role in everything we do, and in this report you can read more about how they help us deliver all of our programs, making individual donations go further.

Throughout the whole year, our team of Dream Coordinators worked hard to deliver all of our programs and were able to serve over 2,400 Dreams in 2018.

We are extremely grateful to our nationwide community of corporate partners, individual supporters, health care providers, and volunteers. Each plays a vital role in enabling us to make final Dreams come true, send boxes of toys to the children of our Dream recipients and deliver bouquets, cards and chocolates to people in need of comfort and cheer from Goleta to Ventura.

In yet another year of milestones made possible by you, we are enormously grateful for everything that you do.

Warmest regards,

Kenny Slaught
Chair, Dream Foundation Board of Directors

Kisa Heyer
CEO, Dream Foundation