About us
A children's organization built to be checked
Raising Kata Orphans was founded in 2026. We help children who have lost a parent stay with the relatives who would raise them, rather than placing children in institutions.
Our mission
Every child grows up in a family, known by name.
We were incorporated as an Iowa nonprofit corporation in 2026, and our 501(c)(3) application is still pending with the IRS. Everything here is a plan rather than a record, and we would rather say that plainly than have you work it out later.
The reason we exist is a fact the sector was slow to accept: most children described as orphans have a living relative who would raise them. What stops it is rarely willingness. It is one more school fee, one more plate at dinner, one more uniform in a household that was already stretched. An institution costs several times more, and it takes the child away from the people who already know their name.
So our first program is the plainest one we could design. Find the relative. Ask what the gap is. Close it with a monthly stipend and school costs. Send someone to the house every month to see how the child is actually doing.
Our first-year goal is 25 children. That is small on purpose. Twenty-five households is a number one person can genuinely visit; two hundred is a number you report without knowing whether it is true.
A note on the word “orphan”
It is in our name, and it is not a word most of the children we support would use about themselves. The majority have a living parent or a relative raising them. We keep it because it is the name on our IRS registration and because donors search for it — but in our own writing we try to say what is actually true about a child instead.
How we work
Family first, institution last
Before a child enters one of our homes, a caseworker has to establish that no relative or foster family can take them with support. A residential place is what we do when everything better has failed.
The same adults, for years
Our house parents live in the homes permanently and do not rotate. Children who have lost a parent do not need more proof that adults are temporary.
No access to children
We do not run volunteer trips, we do not send donors photographs of individual children, and we do not use a child's face to raise money. A donation is never worth a child's privacy.
Say what does not exist yet
Two of the four programs on this site are not running, and are labelled that way. It is easy to list plans as though they were operations, and we are choosing not to.
Leadership and board
Our board is unpaid and meets quarterly. No director is paid by the organization, which is the main reason our overhead stays small. Governance policies are posted on the Transparency page.
Minh Hau
Executive Director
Unpaid
Pitor
Director
Unpaid
Davis
Director
Unpaid