We’re proud to share that Small Magic Foundation has earned a Gold Seal of Transparency on Candid, the world’s leading source of nonprofit information.

If you’re not familiar with Candid, here’s why this matters: Candid (formerly GuideStar) is where donors, funders, and grantmakers go to vet nonprofits before they give. A Gold Seal isn’t handed out automatically. It means we’ve gone above and beyond the basics, sharing detailed information about our mission, our programs, our goals, our strategies, and how we measure impact, all in one place, for anyone to see.

Let me just say it plainly: teenagers are struggling right now. Not in a “kids these days” way but in a measurable, documented, we-should-all-be-paying-attention way.

Anxiety. Disconnection. The feeling that the world is overwhelming and none of it is theirs to affect. That last part is the one that keeps me up at night. Because if a young person spends their most formative years believing that the problems around them are someone else’s job to fix, we don’t just lose their potential. We lose THEM. And eventually, we lose the community too.

When you are in the early stages of launching an organization, a lot of the work happens behind the scenes. It’s about building a strong foundation, drafting blueprints, and prepping the ground so we can show up for youth in a major way. It is rare and incredibly rewarding to have that foundational work recognized so early in our journey.

We are one of the fastest growing metros in the country. Real estate is booming. The tech corridor is expanding. The food scene gets written up in national publications. And yet the wealth gap here — between the Tampa Bay that gets celebrated and the Tampa Bay that gets overlooked — is not closing. It’s widening. The kids growing up in the shadow of that gap are watching opportunity accelerate away from them in real time, and they’re drawing the only logical conclusion available: this isn’t for me.