ARTS & CULTURE
Organization Name: Arts and Design Society (ADSO)
Project Title: Historic Art Building Revitalization
Founded in 1956, ADSO will celebrate its 70th birthday next year! For nearly seven decades, our historic art center has opened its doors to countless students, artists, and visitors each year, offering weekly classes, workshops, camps, luncheons, art shows, and more. But time and heavy use have taken their toll. The building that has long served as a creative home for our community now needs attention, and this grant will help us preserve and renew it for future generations. In addition to the extensive programming g offered at our facility, ADSO also takes great pride in arts outreach by partnering with organizations such as the Autism Center, hosting the Pyramid Art Show, work with Head Start, the Traumatic Brain Injury Center, Boys and Girls Club, Children in Crisis, and the Center for Lifelong Learning to bring art instruction to underserved and special-needs populations. Volunteers also brighten our entire community by painting public murals, display artwork at City Hall and libraries, and host and judge youth art shows in partnership with schools. For over 60 years, we have remained self-sufficient financially through class fees, modest membership dues, art sales commissions and exhibition fees. ADSO has never received a major grant. It thrives on the time, talent and treasure of an all-volunteer board, an active membership, and just one part-time paid employee. At the heart of these efforts is our dedicated, low-cost facility located near downtown Fort Walton Beach in the city’s historic former City Hall building. This bustling, spacious (yet time-worn) 6,192 sqft facility includes a public art gallery, paint studio, clay studio, kiln room with spray booth, and a spacious outdoor courtyard. Through a partnership with the City of FWB, ADSO has secured a lease through 2040 at a modest rate of only $325/month, an extraordinary value that allows us to direct resources toward programs and service. However, we are fully responsible for all interior and exterior maintenance of our cherished historic home, preserving it as an art hub and landmark for the community. While our historic home is a remarkable foundation, time and constant use have taken their toll. Persistent maintenance issues drain volunteer hours and strain finances, and outdated spaces restrict our ability to grow and inspire. Even with consistently growing membership and applications for other resources, ADSO could not solely achieve what this grant will accomplish. This grant will resolve long-standing issues instead of wasting resources on temporary fixes. Planned improvements span almost every part of our facility: Inside, we will renovate the main classroom with drywall, cabinetry, new flooring, and up-to-code art display large windows; replace the aging HVAC system; add a filtration unit for clay and silica dust; and refresh the paint studio with a secure door with side lights, remodeled bathroom, new lighting, storage, and lockers. Outside, we will pave the unsafe, crumbling parking area, repair and replace the front architecture while preserving its historic charm, upgrade base molding in the art gallery, and install a 12x20 pergola for community gatherings and fundraisers. In addition, we will strengthen outreach through a new website, expanded social media, and targeted marketing initiatives. These upgrades are wide-spread with huge impact that will transform our historic building into a vibrant and modern art hub supporting larger classes, new workshops, digital art programs, and expanded exhibitions. Enhanced outdoor areas will welcome new sculpture gardens, plein air groups, and community gatherings. On any given day at ADSO, you might see new budding artists submitting work to an exhibition for the first time, a classroom of children discovering a new medium, a senior finding creative connection with others, or a veteran busy at the pottery wheel. Art heals, connects, and reminds us of our shared humanity, strengthening both individuals and the community as a whole. We are so deeply grateful to Impact 100 for your mission to strengthen our community through collective giving. ADSO shares that vision and with this grant, we can restore our historic home and invest in the artistic future of our community.
EDUCATION
Organization Name: Westonwood Ranch
Project Title: A Recipe for Independence: Help Fund Our Teaching Kitchen
At Westonwood Ranch, we believe that independence begins with opportunity. Our mission is to empower individuals with intellectual and developmental differences to discover their purpose, build life skills, and live with dignity and confidence. Through hands-on, structured learning experiences, we create a place where abilities are celebrated, not overlooked.
Imagine someone with immense potential, eager, thoughtful, motivated, yet still unable to live independently or secure a job. With only about a quarter of working-age people with disabilities employed, and roughly 80% of adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities still living with family caregivers, the need is urgent. At Westonwood Ranch, we stand in the gaps to answer this call. Inside the walls of our new teaching kitchen, we will provide a safe space where these young adults can build real life-skills while experiencing joy, purpose, and community.
As the mother of a child with developmental differences with an uncertain future, ask me what I want for my son, and the answer is simple: “I just want to know he can care for himself after I am gone.” Our Teaching Kitchen is about answering that hope. It’s about helping a mom see her young adult confidently following a recipe, navigating hot surfaces safely as he prepares a healthy meal and realizing that his independence is within reach. That moment, often filled with tears and pride, is what this project makes possible. They are not just cooking; they are tasting independence!
Your support will enable us to fully equip this space with ovens, cooktops, fire suppression commercial hood, refrigeration, freezers, dishwasher, stainless steel worktables and serving counters, and more. You can help us transform an empty room into a space filled with possibilities. This gift would allow us to train over 100 youth and young adults with developmental disabilities each year in culinary arts, food safety, and nutrition, while also teaching responsibility, teamwork, and confidence. It will also become part of a space where we no longer have to run 5 separate lunch shifts- it will allow us to prepare food together and become a hub for microenterprise opportunities, where our participants can package farm grown produce from our greenhouse and baked goods, turning learning into livelihood.
When you help us build this kitchen, you’re helping more than a project. You are helping a promise come to life. You’re giving young people the chance to learn, mothers the peace of knowing that their child can, and a community the joy of watching it unfold. Someday soon, that young man who once stood quietly at the back of the room, overlooked and underestimated, will stand boldly in this kitchen, apron on, leading his peers. He’ll glance at the oven timer, wipe his hands, and smile, because someone believed in him.
Let that someone be you.
ENVIRONMENT, RECREATION & PRESERVATION
Organization Name: Healing Hoof Steps
Project Title: Expanding Access to Alternative Mental Health Services with Horses
At Healing Hoof Steps (HHS), our mission is to transform the mental, physical, and emotional well-being of individuals and families through the healing power of horses. We serve participants ages five and up, including at-risk youth, veterans, and individuals with physical or developmental disabilities—helping each person build confidence, connection, and resilience. Healing Hoof Steps stands alone as the only facility, within a 500mile radius, offering both HIPAA-compliant mental health counseling and adaptive riding in one location. This unique integration allows us to address trauma and personal growth from multiple dimensions—mind, body, and spirit. Our PATH International Adaptive Riding Program helps participants improve strength, balance, and self-esteem from the saddle, while our EAGALA-clinical counseling program partners licensed therapists with horses in non-riding sessions that foster healing in a peaceful, outdoor setting. Together, these programs create powerful moments of breakthrough, where individuals discover not just recovery—but renewed purpose and hope.
HHS is expanding its facilities to meet the growing demand for equine-assisted mental health & adaptive riding services. In 2023, we faced a waiting list of more than 90 individuals seeking support. Thanks to 2023–2024 funding from the State of Florida and Okaloosa County, that number has been reduced to 56; however, the need for access to our programs remains high as calls for new service requests are received daily for both programs.
This grant will allow us to complete essential construction projects that are critical to operating at full capacity. These include the final stages of our Equine Operations and Multi-Purpose Building—plumbing, concrete work, framing, electrical installation, and finishings—as well as the installation of lighting inside our covered arena and a full electrical setup to maintain consistent service hours throughout the year. We will be completing the Adaptive Riding Barn Extension, which will provide classroom space and more lesson-preparation areas, enabling more riders and volunteers to participate and engage with the horses before and after sessions.
In addition to the current 150+ individuals served weekly, completion of these improvements will increase our service capacity by at least 25%, allowing us to serve approximately 40 additional individuals each week. By completing these projects, HHS will nearly eliminate client waitlists & ensure uninterrupted year round programming which will sustain our organization for many years to come.
At HHS, the gentle power of horses opens doors that traditional methods often cannot. Through our equine assisted services, we help individuals build emotional resilience, foster personal growth, and achieve lasting improvements in mental well-being. The horizontal impact of improved mental, physical and emotional well-being created at HHS has a ripple effect from the individual to family to community to the surrounding region.
By expanding our capacity & removing barriers to access, HHS can deepen its measurable impact on our community’s mental health. Our goal is ambitious — to lower Okaloosa & Walton County’s mental health statistics below state averages, break cycles of abuse and codependency, and reduce the stigma surrounding mental health care. Impact 100 can help make it real. With your support, we can strengthen families, uplift communities, and empower individuals to lead healthier, more fulfilling lives — one hoof step at a time.
FAMILY
Organization Name: The Pearl Project
Project Title: Pathways to Pearls: Therapeutic Support for Children and Families
Mission: Like pearls, many children's stories begin in hard places. Just as it takes time for a grain of sand to transform inside an oyster, it can take years of being surrounded by loving relationships for these children to heal. Often, this path is not easy, and it can be difficult for foster and adoptive families to see the beauty in their hard work. We offer hope and practical help to these families through trauma-informed educational opportunities, family events, camps, retreats, and support groups. Our desire is that through healthy connections, vulnerable children will feel safe, know they have a voice, and ultimately discover that just like pearls, they are precious no matter what they have been through.
Our project will be split into two parts:
1. HALO Program: The HALO (Healing Attachment Loving Outreach) program is an intensive 10-week program for foster and adoptive families. Caregivers will meet together weekly in Trauma Education Classes (TEC). They will learn about the impact of trauma and, most importantly, learn ways they can respond to help their children heal. While adults are meeting, kids will be meeting together in Kids’ Club with one-on-one buddies to learn regulation and social/emotional skills through play in a fun, camp-like environment. Throughout these 10 weeks, the family will also participate in individual family counseling sessions.
Our team is uniquely qualified to lead this program with mental health backgrounds, extensive training in Trust-Based Relational Intervention, and lived experience as foster and adoptive parents, and we will be getting specialized training to run this program. The HALO Program originated in Oklahoma, and we will be the first HALO program in the state of Florida!
2. Other Therapeutic Services: Our additional therapeutic services will enable us to serve more children and families, including those from biological families. We will offer one-on-one counseling and coaching, as well as therapeutic groups. Our staff is trained in other attachment-based, trauma-informed interventions as well, including Circle of Security Parenting, Child-Parent Psychotherapy, Making Sense of Your Worth program, and more. The Impact 100 grant will help us with the large up-front costs of consultation, training, set up and implementation of the new HALO program and will help us execute and refine our other therapeutic services. In the two-year period, our HALO program will serve up to 12 families, and other therapeutic programs will serve up to 64 additional individuals, helping us reach up to 100 individuals or more. We intend to sustain the program through grant funding, private and business donations, and, eventually, taking insurance for counseling.
Impact: Our goal with this program is to improve child outcomes and give families hope. By
empowering caregivers with trauma-informed training and support and working together with the entire family, we are working toward improving the whole family system. In one pre-post study of a similar program, results demonstrated significant improvements in children's psychological functioning and parent stress following training and implementation of TBRI (Howard et al., 2015). As individual families experience deep healing and transformation, we believe the effect will ripple throughout the wider community. Communities thrive when the foundational unit of society- the family- is thriving! We hope you will help us to bring life-changing healing to vulnerable children and families in our community!
HEALTH & WELLNESS
Organization Name: Elder Services
Project Title: Meals on Wheels
My name is Kim Fraley, and I am the Executive Director of Elder Services of Okaloosa County. I have been involved in Elder Care for over 45 years. Our mission is to keep our vulnerable adults healthy and safe in the preferred setting of their homes. One way that we accomplish this is through our locally funded Meals on Wheels program which provides a hot, nutritious meal for its recipients five days a week.
The elderly population is the fastest growing demographic in the United States. 10,000 people a day join the ranks of this group. By the year 2030 it is predicted that there will be more individuals aged 65+ than all those 18 to 64 years.
The demand for resources is overwhelming, and it is increasing daily. Our program is funded by the Emerald Coast United Way and local donations and contributions. We receive no funds from federal or state entities. Our project will purchase a specifically designed vehicle to increase our delivery radius. The truck is built with heating and cooling compartments to maintain the proper temperature of the food as we travel to more remote areas of the county. The grant will fund the purchase, as well as the wrap which will bring further attention to this critical program.
We will be able to expand into Destin, Mary Esther and north county communities. Many disregard the elderly because it is hard to envision that there are adults in our community who cannot afford the simple necessities of life. They struggle between living expenses, medical bills, and food. It has been our experience that most will forgo food to remain in their homes. The funding for aging programs is inadequate to address the increase in need.
In older adults, loneliness and social isolation are associated with a much higher risk of premature death. Older adults have some of the highest suicide rates, a risk that is exacerbated by social isolation and lack of support.
Please imagine for a moment, a life that is filled with daily trials which we would otherwise take for granted such as, driving, bathing, cooking, or paying your bills. Imagine how your life would be if you could not drive to the doctors, pharmacy or grocery store. You live alone without a formal support system. You have mobility problems and can’t access the complicated public transportation system. You begin to forget little things or to take your medication. You become depressed and suffer from high anxiety. You have developed chronic illnesses such as diabetes. These are our clients! They are out there, alone, confused and in need of our help!
Over the last 54 years we have assisted hundreds of thousands of individuals. We ask for your support to address this crisis that is associated with aging for the low-to-moderate income elderly. They need our compassion. They need our support.