Our new office will provide the Spence-Chapin Community with Space to Grow. Included is a large event space, dedicated nursery, sensory therapy room, and a placement room where families are created. There is so much space for each person we serve to grow. We invite you to help each child, woman, and family we serve have that space to grow by sponsoring a room in our new office. By naming a room are ensuring that it will provide everything needed to help each person thrive, and will serve as a beautiful and lasting recognition of your family’s dedication to the work of Spence-Chapin. You can also lend your support to all those we serve now, and will in the future, by having your name placed prominently on our Everlasting Wall, a special installation made up of all of those who are joining us to bring in a new era of Spence-Chapin, and who share in our vision for the world. In these next few pages, we showcase that wall, along with what those new rooms in our office space could mean to the individuals they will serve. With your support, they will do all of that and more.
The history of Spence-Chapin is punctuated by defining moments that propelled us forward, that moved us closer to our vision for the world. In 1909 Clara Spence opened her nursery in the attic of the Spence School on the Upper East Side, forever changing the course of her life and the futures of hundreds of babies and children. Dr. Chapin and his wife Alice did the same thing, began running a nursery, on the Upper West Side. In 1943, our two founders unified their shared mission and formed Spence-Chapin, which provided services out of a building comprised of a series of row houses on East 94th Street that were combined to become a spacious seven-story building with timeless charm. Sixty-four years later, Spence-Chapin opened a new office at 410 E 92nd Street in 2007, whose colorful carpet and open floorplan made it easy to call home. More than 1,500 families were formed at that location, and thousands more were served through our counseling, mentorship programming, community events, interim care, and more.
This year, we are ushering in another defining moment in our history, where a move to iconic Irving Place in Union Square comes alongside a period of growth for the organization, as we continue to launch new programs to support the adoption community, birth and expectant parents who are in need of our help, providing counseling for all who need it, expanding our Granny Program to new countries around the world, and bringing the Spence-Chapin Way to other parts of the United States, to help and support even more women, children, and families.
We invite everyone in the Spence-Chapin Community, past and present, to be part of this vision for the future. This new space represents Space to Grow, both physically—through a beautiful community event space, a nurturing nursery, specialized counseling rooms, and a placement room where a new generation of families will be brought together—as well as symbolically, as our team will do the work in this new space that will enable us to grow our reach and spread our services to those who need them. We look forward to growing together.
With Gratitude,
Kate
It’s where teen adoptees come to see their friends and Mentors, sometimes the only other adoptees they know. Where new parents come to swap notes on feeding schedules and wake times and end up making lifelong connections. Where birth mothers come to know they are not alone and to support one another through joys and challenges. It’s a space where everyone feels welcome, receives support, makes connections. It’s more than an event space, it’s a second home. We would love to name this meaningful space after your family, where each event we hold there will reflect your family’s contribution to the future generations of children, women, and families connected to adoption.
Our founders understood the critical importance of nurturing. Separately, Clara Spence on the one hand, and Dr. Henry and Alice Chapin on the other, created nurseries to provide love and affection to abandoned babies. Under their care, thousands of babies were able to thrive. While the work of Spence-Chapin looks different today, the importance of nurture, love, and care remains. When a baby comes into our care as birth parents work with our social workers to make a plan for the future, that child receives consistent love and affection from our Interim Care Providers, and medical care from our pediatricians. In our new office, babies will have a comforting, safe space where their doctor can meet them and where they can have visits with their birth parents or adoptive parents before placement. The nursery also houses our new boutique corner, lined with shelves filled with baby supplies, clothing, and toys, that birth parents can choose from, no matter if their decision is to parent or to make an adoption plan. By placing your name on this special space, you will be ensuring that it can provide the nurture, comfort, and care, that all nurseries should offer, and that our founders created for the children they cared for, so many years ago.
There is perhaps no room as special as the one in which a parent meets their child for the first time—a space that truly demarcates everything before from everything after. The Placement Room at Spence-Chapin is the room where families are brought together, formed, and where futures begin. Oftentimes, families will come back to our offices to show their child the Placement Room, the place where “we became a family.” By sponsoring this room, you are ensuring that a new generation of families have that special space to come back to, that room where it all began, to that place that made them a family.
We all need extra support from time to time, and that can look different for different people. Spence-Chapin strives to provide the tools to help every child, woman, and family thrive, and to meet their unique needs. Sensory Therapy is a type of specialized therapy that creates a comforting, safe space by providing a variety of sensory experiences that can help children communicate their feelings, self-regulate their behaviors, and enhance their motor and social skills. It can also be a tool to show parents how to best support their child’s development and growth, and to encourage bonding between families. Sponsorship of our Sensory Therapy Room in our new space will allow us to continue to improve its equipment, ensuring that we are providing the best possible tools for each family who seeks out our services to thrive.
A permanent installation in our new office space, the Everlasting Wall will serve as a beautiful and timeless tribute to our supporters. Featured prominently in our History Hallway that will include an Archival Wall installation and display cases showing artifacts of our 110+ year history, the Everlasting Wall, with its bright colors and eye-catching design, will be seen by all who come into our offices, by the children and families who visit for programs and events, and by all staff, to inspire them as they do the work to provide our services to all those who need them. Learn more about our different Everlasting Wall levels and become a permanent part of this new era of Spence-Chapin today!
Name a Room Sponsorship Opportunities
$100,000 Event Space Sponsorship
$75,000 Nursery or Placement Room Sponsorship
$50,000 Therapy Room Sponsorship
Everlasting Wall Name Plaque Opportunities
$50,000 Legacy
$25,000 Visionary
$10,000 Benefactor
$5,000 Sustainer
$2,500 Supporter
©2024 SPENCE-CHAPIN SERVICES TO FAMILIES AND CHILDREN A REGISTERED 501(C)(3) NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION.
