Dr Susan A McConnell Of Let It Be Us: 5 Things You Need To Create A Successful & Effective Nonprofit That Leaves A Lasting Legacy
…I didn’t build Let It Be Us to be a personal project or to just fill a gap. I built it to redefine how recruitment and placement within foster care and adoption is done. By staying mission-focused, leadership-driven, financially stable, stakeholder and community-driven, and innovative and adaptable, Let It Be Us is creating a model that can be replicated, expanded and sustained long into the future. And long after I am gone…
For someone who wants to set aside money to establish a Philanthropic Foundation or Fund, what does it take to make sure your resources are being impactful and truly effective? In this interview series, called “How To Create Philanthropy That Leaves a Lasting Legacy” we are visiting with founders and leaders of Philanthropic Foundations, Charitable Organizations, and Non-Profit Organizations, to talk about the steps they took to create sustainable success.
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Susan A. McConnell.
Dr. Susan A. McConnell is the founder and Executive Director of Let It Be Us, an Illinois-based child welfare agency dedicated to improving foster care and adoption systems. With over 30 years of experience in open adoption and child welfare, she has developed groundbreaking programs to place children in need of homes and recruit foster and adoptive parents across Illinois. A social entrepreneur and nonprofit leader, Dr. McConnell also serves as Chair of the Permanency Committee for the Illinois Statewide Foster Care Advisory Council and has pioneered initiatives like the Heart Gallery of Illinois and the Open Home Navigator platform.
Thank you for making time to visit with us about a ‘top of mind’ topic. Our readers would like to get to know you a bit better. Can you please tell us about one or two life experiences that most shaped who you are today?
My best friend with whom I grew up, Anne, arrived in her mother’s arms as an infant through adoption. Her mother waited for her in an airport and as Anne’s mother told me many times, “as she was carried toward me I fell in love with the back of her head.” For my entire childhood I had a front row seat to the love that Anne’s family had for her. I grew up one of many siblings, nothing special; not nearly as special as Anne. Because I was Anne’s best friend, I reaped the benefits of her wonderful parents who had waited what surely were lifetimes for her. Anne’s mother made orange juice in the blender, and her father took us on his tug boat on the St. Lawrence River, because he was the Captain. Her father sat at the ski shack for hours upon hours while we skied, until we were done, so he could take us home. And it was Anne’s mother who took me driving when I had my learner’s permit. It was the commitment that Anne’s parents made to her, and to me, that taught me what real love could feel like, even if you weren’t born to someone.
When I was 27, I graduated from DePaul University with an MBA and I was tired. I had been working full time as a new Human Resources Director of a small law firm in Chicago, and was attending graduate school full-time because I needed to finish my MBA fast. As I walked across the stage to accept my diploma, I was 8 months pregnant. All I knew was that I had to finish school, because once that baby was born, I wasn’t going to want to take an accounting or an economics class. My pregnancy was perfect, my job was perfect, I graduated with perfect grades. Yes, it was all hard work, but I loved hard work. Life was great. And when it was time for the baby to arrive, I assumed more greatness would follow. Except what happened next didn’t follow the script. Maternal death is a real thing in real life, and on the night that I delivered my baby, he and I escaped with our lives within inches. When I awoke in intensive care, to my shaken husband, and my torn up body, and my beautiful baby boy wrapped up in his bassinet, the doctor stood by me and quietly told me I wouldn’t have any more children. And I quietly told her back, that’s not so. Because I immediately thought of Anne. And then of Anne’s mother, falling in love with the back of her head.
In the next ten years my husband and I would go on to adopt three more children; two sons and and, lastly, a daughter. Finding each one was a monumental achievement, in that there was no clear cut path to adoption in the late 80’s and early 90’s. That is, unless you were prepared to pay $40,000 at the time to lawyers who operated with, in my opinion, poor ethics, which was not acceptable to us. It was during this time, in personal research and through support groups, that I would learn that there was a vast population of parents wanting to adopt not only babies, but children of all races, of all ages, with special needs, and sibling groups. This would be important in the future, when I would ultimately start a nonprofit to bridge the gap between this population of waiting parents and the equally vast population of waiting children.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? We would love to hear a few stories or examples.
Speed is a pattern within me and is one that I prefer to duplicate in the team I place around me. I don’t overthink, overplan, or wait for the perfect moment. My son, who is an entrepreneur, had me read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries when he was in business school, and it is one of the best gifts he has ever given to me. It solidified the way I had always approached things. During my doctoral studies, my cohort devoured The Lean Impact by Ann Mei Chang and Eric Ries, which applied the same innovations to social good. Both methodologies align with mine by emphasizing rapid iteration, data-driven decision-making, and avoiding analysis paralysis. This is the way I work and the way I live. So while other teams are debating, researching, or hesitating, at Let It Be Us we are already learning, adjusting, and making progress. This is one of the most authentic definitions of my leadership style.
Tenacity and Urgency have been character traits that have marked my success. Not all experiments succeed. But matters of the heart deserve their due. I had seen so many children available for adoption, languishing, and the adults around them were complacent. There was no urgency about them. I visited a group home once that was filled with children with special needs, children of all ages. I found myself in a big bedroom with 4 little girls and 3 of them were crawling all over me, wanting to play with me, except for one who stayed alone because she was in a wheelchair. One of the little girls who was hugging onto my back like a backpack kept calling me Mama with a question mark at the end as if to say, “Can I call you Mama?” I was there because the little girl in the wheelchair was in need of an adoptive home. I asked about all of the other children, but no one knew. It’s not that they weren’t caring for these children, but to not know the answer? This is where I, again, saw the complacency and lack of urgency. When I started Let It Be Us I felt that urgency, and to this day the urgency has not subsided. I believe it is this urgency that drives me today. I had a consultant once warn me that I will burn out. I’ll never forget looking at him and wondering what he meant. It sounded so much like that foreign thing they call work/life balance. This is not work for me. This is a higher calling. And my light is too bright to ever, ever burn out.
Overcoming challenges has been a character trait that has marked my success. Every visionary leader encounters resistance — whether from external forces, internal skepticism, or unforeseen challenges. I grew up amidst incredible challenges, so this is my absolute comfort zone. Put me in it, and I’m an Olympian. My vision for Let It Be Us has been tested over and over, and I have defended it to the highest mountain, as I will until the day I die. Because I believe, as I always have, that adoption is the highest impact gift you can give to a vulnerable child. Because once a child is adopted, you don’t have to worry about her anymore.
What’s the most interesting discovery you’ve made since you started leading your organization?
One of the most interesting discoveries I’ve made since starting Let It Be Us is how the right connections and opportunities can completely change the trajectory of a child’s life. I’ve seen firsthand that recruitment isn’t just about finding families — it’s about inspiring people to see themselves as the answer to a child’s needs. Whether it’s a foster parent who never thought they were qualified, or an adoptive family who takes a chance on a child on the autistic spectrum, the power of intentional recruitment, storytelling, and advocacy has proven that there are families out there for every child — we just have to find them. And we can find them. What I love is that after 10 years of doing this the platform that we have built makes it easier and easier — exponentially easier — to find homes for the most challenging to place children.
Can you please tell our readers more about how you or your organization intends to make a significant social impact?
Let It Be Us intends to make a transformational social impact by revolutionizing the recruitment and placement within Illinois foster care and adoption, by ensuring that every child in the foster care system has the opportunity for stability, belonging, and a permanent home. Through data-driven strategies, innovative technology, and targeted outreach, we identify and engage families who may not have previously considered fostering or adoption. Once licensed, we use the same data-driven strategies, innovative technology, and targeted outreach to place children with specific needs within homes that meet those needs via highly sophisticated matching tools.
Our impact is driven by:
- Recruitment Innovation — Using strategic marketing, professional networking, and tailored recruitment efforts to connect children with the right families.
- Equity and Inclusion — Actively seeking families that reflect the diverse needs of children in care, including Spanish-speaking, Black, LGBTQ+, and neurodiverse families.
- Education and Support — Providing prospective parents with the knowledge, resources, and training necessary to navigate the foster care and adoption process with confidence.
- System Collaboration — Working with child welfare agencies, courts, and policymakers to remove barriers to permanency and improve outcomes for children.
Our Theory of Change is that by expanding the pool of qualified foster and adoptive families, preventing children from aging out of the system, and addressing disparities in placement, Let It Be Us is creating lasting social change for the most vulnerable children in Illinois.
What makes you feel passionate about this cause more than any other?
My passion for adoption from foster care is driven by the profound belief that every child deserves the stability, love, and belonging of a permanent family, and that no child should grow up without one simply because they were born into difficult circumstances. What sets this passion apart from anything else is my deep understanding that adoption is not just about finding homes for children, but about transforming lives — both for the child and the family that welcomes them.
I’ve seen firsthand how the right match can change a child’s trajectory, offering them opportunities, support, and a sense of identity that they might not have otherwise had. My passion comes from knowing that behind every statistic is a real child waiting, hoping, and deserving of a future filled with love and security — and that through recruitment, advocacy, technology, and innovative solutions, I can help make that future a reality.
Without naming names, could you share a story about an individual who benefitted from your initiatives?
I met Ellen many years ago when she wanted to become a foster parent and her goal was to adopt. Ellen is Native American and while she preferred to adopt a child of her heritage, she was open. Ellen came to one of our live recruitment events and she was full of questions, not unlike a lot of people who attend our events. I liked Ellen and felt close to her right away. Maybe it was because of her kindness. Or because she had a smile as wide as a child’s imagination on Christmas morning. Ellen was determined and she worked diligently to obtain her foster care license.
Late one afternoon I received a call from a DCFS investigator who simply didn’t have any licensed foster homes to take placement of a newborn baby girl who had been born in a Chicago hospital. Her family wasn’t able to care for her. I called Ellen, who said yes before I could finish asking, and as daylight turned to dark the baby was delivered to her house. Ellen called her baby girl Missy and throughout the years I watched MIssy grow up from afar. I’ve watched her enjoy a life of stability, of continual care from a mother who adores her, and of consistent medical care. To know Missy is to know a pocket-sized burst of sunshine with eyes that sparkle like a thousand fireflies on a summer night. Every word she speaks is laced with the magic of pure, unfiltered joy. You will know precisely what I mean when you watch this video of Ellen and Missy here: https://youtu.be/x8xJszPmG9c?si=uSC4hlckhq-sOmt0
We all want to help and to live a life of purpose. What are three actions anyone could take to help address the root cause of the problem you’re trying to solve?
Three actions an individual could take to become involved in making a difference in child welfare are:
#1 Get involved with Let It Be Us. We are a welcoming community of advocates who never stop moving forward. Whether it’s to attend our annual Adoption Symposium, join our Leadership Council, attend our biannual Ladies Leadership Luncheon, or attend our annual ‘Be Mine’ fundraiser, Let It Be Us leads the way by creating meaningful and empowering opportunities to belong. Reach out to any board member or our executive director, or attend one of these events. Our ‘Be Mine’ fundraiser has been deemed one of the most exciting and successful fundraisers in all of Chicagoland. Our Ladies Leadership Luncheon is an opportunity to hear from and speak with Illinois State Senators who are passionate about foster care and adoption. Our Adoption Symposium is for passionate leaders connected with children on all levels who want to increase adoption opportunities within the State of Illinois.
#2 Become a foster or adoptive parent. Yes, you will be profoundly changing a child’s life and making the world a better place, but you will be enriching your own life many times over. The journey of raising a child — watching them grow, supporting their dreams, guiding them through life — brings immense joy and strengthens the human capacity for deep, meaningful relationships. Parenting through adoption broadens one’s empathy, builds resilience, and challenges individuals to embrace diversity, navigate complex emotions, and develop a deeper understanding of love, family, and what it means to truly show up for someone else.
#3 Become a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA). A CASA is a trained volunteer who advocates for the best interest for a child in the foster care system, ensuring their needs and rights are represented in court and throughout the child welfare process. It’s an extremely rewarding and enriching volunteer role within child welfare, and there are never enough CASA’s. Each CASA is assigned to a child, sometimes two, and you visit them in their home, study their case, and represent them in court. Studies show that children with a CASA are more likely to find permanent homes, receive necessary services, and perform better in school compared to those without one.
Based on your experience, what are the “5 Things You Need To Create A Successful & Effective Nonprofit That Leaves A Lasting Legacy?” Please share a story or example for each.
In my experience, the “5 Things You Need to Create a Successful & Effective Nonprofit That Leaves a Lasting Legacy” Are:
#1 A Clear, Compelling Mission with Measurable Impact
A nonprofit must have a focused, well-defined mission that solves a real, pressing problem and success must come from setting measurable goals that consistently track impact to ensure your work creates tangible, lasting change. Let It Be Us is laser-focused on transforming foster care recruitment and placement in Illinois. Rather than just advocating for children, the organization actively works to identify and engage families, provide innovative solutions, and break down barriers to permanency.
An example of this would be receiving 10–15 referrals of families for each child listed in the Adoption Listing Service, or recruitment of 25 new adoptive families per month to parent waiting children, or to reduce the number of children aging out of foster care without permanency through providing them with adoptive families.
When Isla was born drug-exposed, she was left in the hospital, without family able to care for her. She may have been placed in the next available foster home that could care for her, which, for those children who do not return home, often starts a child on the trajectory of changing foster homes regularly. The cost of lack of permanency is the loss of consistent parental care and medical care, and leads to a lack of consistent education.
Let It Be Us placed Isla with a single parent, Maria, who was waiting for a baby, and who was open to concurrent planning. This meant she would support reunification or adopt. Maria cared for Isla through the trials and tribulations that drug-exposed babies experience, took her to consistent daycare while she worked, visited a consistent pediatrician, and kept visits between Isla and her birthmother. When the time came, four years later, Maria adopted Isla. Isla is now 6. She has never left Maria’s side. She has had continuity of medical care, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. She attends her neighborhood school, she has friends, and she has grown up with a cat. Isla is a happy, thriving little girl.
#2 Strong, Values with Driven Leadership
A nonprofit’s success starts with leadership. All must be passionate, strategic and resilient. Leaders must embody integrity, adaptability and a deep commitment to the mission, ensuring the nonprofit remains sustainable through challenges. The leadership team at Let It Be Us is deeply committed to child welfare, bringing a solutions-focused, data-driven approach to the recruitment of foster and adoptive families.
- Our Key Leadership Strengths are
- Expertise in adoption recruitment: As an executive director, I sit on multiple committees giving me access to stakeholders and leaders in child welfare. The staff we hire have combined decades of experience in child welfare.
- Lived experience engagement: We elevate the voices of foster and adoptive parents, ensuring that recruitment and placement programs are relevant and effective.
- Resilience and innovation: We pivot quickly when problems arise and we adopt and adapt to new innovation regularly. This takes strong, and brave, leadership.
As an executive director, I strategically identified committees to join so that I could have access to big thinkers and doers accomplishing purposeful work in Illinois child welfare. I am on the Illinois Statewide Foster Care Advisory Council where I am the Chair of the Permanency Committee, I am on the Illinois Statewide Adoption Advisory Committee, and I am on the committee for Voice for Adoption, a national committee that advises on policy and legislation affecting adoption nationally. All of these committees have allowed me to develop relationships with individuals that have helped me further my career and further the important work of Let It Be Us.
#3 Diversified and Sustainable Funding Streams
The long-term success of a nonprofit depends on the strength and stability of multiple funding streams — family foundations, grants, corporate partners, earned revenue, fundraisers, and grassroots donations. The relationship with each of these funding sources must be personal, and on the appropriate level, with demonstrated impact through data and storytelling that ensures continued investment. A strong nonprofit moves beyond the one-time donation and builds commitment and loyalty.
As a founder and executive director, I have built meaningful relationships with heads of family foundations who are driven to invest in the welfare of children in foster care, including those awaiting adoption. These relationships aren’t about money, these relationships are about the impact that we can create together. They are about the impact that we could not create without each other. These relationships are so strong that these individuals will remain close friends long after I retire, although I will never retire. Note that they never retire either.
At Let It Be Us we have established one large and successful fundraiser simply and impactfully named ‘Be Mine.’ Held annually in the Spring, ‘Be Mine’ is a gala for 250 individuals. It is kept small on purpose, so that we celebrate our impact with those donors who invest the most and expect the most. The committee is the most creative team I have ever witnessed. To be in one of their weekly meetings is marketing and event planning nirvanah. As a leader, I give them full rein, and I am there to support them and cheer them on, because they are and have become virtuosos in one of the most successful fundraising events in Illinois history.
If there is one consistent theme throughout the financial success at Let It Be Us, it has been the fact that we have embraced “relational fundraising,” focusing on long-term, meaningful connections. This has been a much more rewarding experience for our donors and it has been a much more rewarding experience for our fundraising team, as it has been for me.
4. Stakeholder and Community Engagement and Collaboration
At Let It Be Us we do not work alone. The word collaborative is built into our mission statement … Providing collaborative, innovative solutions of effective recruitment and placement within Illinois foster care and adoption.
I am a passionate about strategic partnerships and through the platform of Let It Be Us we have built alignments with:
#1 Stakeholders and Child Welfare Agencies: Let It Be Us works with every Child Welfare Agency, every DCFS office, and every CASA office in the State of Illinois. This allows us many advantages, including streamlining recruitment and referrals, which benefit waiting children the most.
#2 Special Needs and Identified / Cultural Organizations: Let It Be Us works with the Chicago Hearing Society (CHS) to recruit parents for children who are deaf and hard of hearing, we work with Little City to locate foster and adoptive parents for children with special needs who are waiting, and we work with The Center on Halsted to recruit foster and adoptive parents from the LGBTQAI+ community.
#3 Foster and Adoptive Parents: We have recruited licensed parents and created an original, proprietary and expansive database of licensed homes. We believe we are the only agency in Illinois to have this type of database and we use it in multiple ways for the benefit of the children we serve. Through recruitment and placement, we also amplify the voices of foster and adoptive parents, strengthening their abilities to be matched with children that align with their strengths, making for more successful outcomes and less placement disruptions.
At Let It Be us, one of the silver linings of the pandemic was that we learned to recruit more effectively via webinars. We regularly host webinars for different communities of future foster and adoptive parents interested in parenting children with special needs
5. Innovation and Adaptability for Long-Term Impact
I view innovation and adaptability at Let It Be Us as essential tools for breaking barriers in the foster care system and ensuring every child has a real chance at permanency. Rather than relying on outdated methods, I embrace data, technology, and strategic problem-solving to create scalable, effective solutions that meet the unique needs of children in foster care, including those awaiting adoption. My long-term vision is about systemic change rooted in making foster and adoption recruitment more proactive, inclusive, and impactful — so that no child is left waiting for a family, and so that no child ages out of the system alone. As we have observed, that is the absolute worst thing that can ever happen to a child.
Let It Be Us is not a traditional child welfare foster care and adoption agency — it’s an innovator in recruitment. We are leaders in:
- Data-Driven Recruitment: Using analytics to track which outreach methods are most effective in securing families experienced with particular special needs, which ones are open to LGBTQ youth, and which ones are open to teens and sibling groups.
- Digital & Social Media Strategies: Leveraging technology to reach potential foster and adoptive families beyond traditional marketing.
- Pilot Programs: Testing new approaches, like recruiting parents specifically for older children, children with special needs, sibling groups, and teens. We believe we are an incubator of innovation and our team embraces failure in new spaces, because that is where we learn.
One of the things I have loved about founding this nonprofit is that I have been able to usher in and execute all of these strategies. And because I bootstrapped this nonprofit, I did so both on the macro and micro level, which is hard work but always puts an entrepreneur in the catbird seat.
One final thought on building a lasting legacy … I didn’t build Let It Be Us to be a personal project or to just fill a gap. I built it to redefine how recruitment and placement within foster care and adoption is done. By staying mission-focused, leadership-driven, financially stable, stakeholder and community-driven, and innovative and adaptable, Let It Be Us is creating a model that can be replicated, expanded and sustained long into the future. And long after I am gone.
How has the pandemic changed your definition of success?
The pandemic has reshaped success from merely hitting predefined targets to nurturing a resilient, adaptive, and empathetic organization. As a leader of a Child Welfare Agency like Let It Be Us, I have found that traditional metrics, such as efficiency and numerical outcomes, now intertwine with the well-being of my team. I have found that prioritizing well-being and flexibility is as important as prioritizing outcomes.
Managing a hybrid and remote team introduces unique challenges that require innovative communication strategies and trust-building measures. Balancing the dynamics of in-person and virtual collaboration can lead to misunderstandings and difficulties in aligning team goals, which demands intentional and frequent check-ins. Ultimately, overcoming these hurdles not only fosters a more flexible work environment, but also strengthens team cohesion and adaptability.
We start our work week with an all-person in-person Monday Morning Meeting. We did this before the pandemic, actually, but it grew in importance during the pandemic and now it’s like religion to us, much like it was at Apple early on. It allows us to share updates, address concerns and brainstorm solutions. I also see that it promotes accountability by allowing team members to voice their ideas and challenges right from the start.
As a leader I have worked to develop sustainable practices in our work that can withstand future uncertainties, ensuring that the agency remains a stable and trusted resource. By this I mean we have developed cloud based platforms for all of our work, including the work that our government agencies require to be on paper. This has allowed our team access to anything, from anywhere, at any time. And all of our work in the cloud is HIPPA compliant. I see this as safety and security.
How do you get inspired after an inevitable setback?
I remember attending one of my son’s college graduations at the University of Illinois and hearing the commencement speaker, a CEO from AT&T, tell an enormous colosseum full of capped and gowned students that they had one thing in common … they had never made a mistake, or they wouldn’t be sitting where they were. Then he told them that they had better go out and make some mistakes so that they could be successful. I think only the adults in the stands understood.
Of course, I hate it when mistakes happen but I know one thing for sure — mistakes will happen. When they do, what I do, and what I teach my teams to do, is to recognize them and embrace them right away, and learn from them. We will often all get on a group call after we have a recruitment webinar that didn’t go so well and hash it out. I always make sure that we wrap up our projects, one way or another, and give each other feedback.
Personally, I draw inspiration from setbacks by reflecting on the lessons learned. I often lean on my established support network that I have built over time — and they help me see the opportunities that lie in adversity at hand. I am also a true believer in silver linings and I know that often they don’t show up right away.
My strongest tool, when I face setbacks, is my ultimate secret weapon, my husband, my partner in life. Everything brave, everything daring I have ever done, is because of him. I married an incredibly brilliant and supportive partner, and that is the smartest thing I could have ever done for my own wellbeing and for my own future. He answers the phone every time I call and he spends incredibly crazy amounts of time with me. He has always been expert at helping me navigate challenges and turning obstacles into opportunities for growth. With unwavering encouragement, he reminds me of my potential and he inspires me to keep moving forward. From the moment I met him I knew that he would be my greatest asset in life, through thick and thin, and he always has been, for almost 40 years now.
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world who you would like to talk to, to share the idea behind your non-profit? He, she, or they might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
As a leader of a Child Welfare Agency in Illinois I would appreciate being able to meet Governor Pritzker to be able to discuss child welfare policy and solutions to some of the biggest challenges in Illinois.
You’re doing important work. How can our readers follow your progress online? https://letitbeus.org/blog/
Thank you for a meaningful conversation. We wish you continued success with your mission.
Dr Susan A McConnell Of Let It Be Us: 5 Things You Need To Create A Successful & Effective… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.