Children's Home Foundation

Children's Home Foundation

The Children's Home Foundation was established in 1995 to build a permanent endowment for The Children's Home of Lubbock, a childcare ministry operating since 1954. Led by President Eric Creel and Board Chair Steve Betts — himself a Lubbock business owner — the board draws heavily on local commercial leadership, including Cory T. Newsom of South Plains Financial and Paul D. Stell of Stellar Development Company. The foundation's sole purpose is to convert donor gifts into durable capital that funds the Home's daily work with wounded children and families across West Texas. The foundation's portfolio reflects its Lubbock roots. Physical assets include farmland, residential properties, the Home's own campus at 4404 Idalou Road, and oil and gas mineral interests — classic West Texas holdings — alongside a securities investment portfolio. It accepts planned gifts that pay donors lifetime income, as well as outright donations, deploying capital to meet the Home's operational needs in perpetuity. Geographically, the foundation's activities remain concentrated in Texas, though its mineral interests extend into the broader Permian Basin energy economy. The board participates in the Texas Alliance of Child and Family Services and the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce, anchoring it within regional philanthropic and business networks. The foundation discloses no public AUM figure. Its team size is not published, though governance rests with a volunteer board of local executives and the Home's own CEO, Rudy Reyes, who sits as a board member. Adjacent structures include the Children's Home of Lubbock and Family Service Agency, the operating entity the foundation was built to support. No separate venture arm, investment club, or foundation spinout exists — it operates as a single-purpose endowment vehicle whose scale is entirely tied to the Home's budget. The foundation's structure is unusual among endowments: it exists solely to support a single, regionally focused operating charity rather than a diversified institution like a university or hospital. Its board is composed of business owners who direct in-kind and planned giving — farmland, royalties, real estate — into a portfolio that directly reflects the local economy. There is no internal investment staff; governance and fundraising are the board's primary functions, making this a model of embedded, community-funded permanence rather than outsourced asset management.