Our Global Community and Commitments
S3C Foundation is an international organization. The survivors, clinicians, volunteers, and listeners we serve live in more than 100 countries, and they bring a wide range of cultures, languages, faiths, identities, and life experiences into our community. Diversity and inclusion have been central to S3C since its founding, and we work to make every program, peer group, and resource a place where people from anywhere in the world can belong.
S3C Foundation is a nonsectarian organization with no religious affiliation. Our founder and Executive Director, Dr. Emma Sunshaw, trained as a community chaplain, and that training shapes her care for people of every faith tradition and of no faith tradition. Many of the people we serve are healing from religious trauma or high-demand groups, so we take seriously our responsibility to offer support that is free of religious pressure and respectful of each person's own beliefs.
Our donors reflect the same diversity as our community. We receive support from individuals, families, foundations, and community organizations across many cultures, faith communities, and regions of the world, and we are grateful for every gift. Donors support our mission; they do not direct our programming, our clinical perspective, or who we serve.
We also collaborate with organizations whose work aligns with our mission. Our community partnerships have included the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), An Infinite Mind, and Beauty After Bruises. When our community brings us an urgent need, we respond where we can.
S3C Foundation is committed to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) in all of our work. We believe every survivor deserves access to informed, respectful care, and we strive to make our education, peer support, and resources welcoming and available to people of every faith and of no faith, every nationality, culture, and language, and every race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, and economic circumstance. We continue to listen to our community and look for ways to reduce barriers to participation. You can see examples of how donations are used HERE.
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How Your Donations Have Been Used
Free community membership. Donations help sustain the System Speak Community, where about two out of every three members participate for free, so survivors can access peer connection and resources regardless of their capacity to pay.
Symposium scholarships. Dedicated donations funded two scholarships for each S3C symposium each year, covering registration for survivors who could not otherwise attend.
Printed books for survivors. Donor funds have supported printed book distribution for every book printed, so that any survivor has access to resources to support their healing regardless of capacity to pay.
Books for Beauty After Bruises Therapy Boxes. S3C has donated books to Beauty After Bruises for their Therapy Box Project, which sends survivors without access to specialized trauma therapy a personalized collection of healing resources and comfort items.
Presence at ISSTD conferences. Dedicated donations covered S3C vendor tables at the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) annual conference each year, connecting survivors and clinicians with our resources.
Recovery book study. In Spring 2026, dedicated donor funds supported a recovery book study with presenter Laura Brown, who came to join us in our study of her book, "Not the Price of Admission" about improving quality of life through healthy relationships.
Conference scholarships with a partner organization. Donations have provided registration scholarships each year for over a decade to support An Infinite Mind's Healing Together Conference for survivors.
Emergency community response. In 2026, dedicated donations provided 600 meals to survivors in Minneapolis at the request of a local community organization.
In addition, general donations help by:
Keeping peer groups running. Donations help sustain our twenty-one active peer groups, including the platforms, scheduling, and facilitator support that make each meeting possible.
Opening trainings to community members. Survivors and community members can attend our professional trainings for free, giving them access to the same education clinicians receive.
Technology and access. Donations support the website, community platform, and digital tools that let survivors in more than 100 countries find us and participate from wherever they live.
Accountability and good governance. Donations help cover the filings, registrations, and recordkeeping that keep S3C a nonprofit in good standing, along with the policies that protect survivors, such as our safeguarding, non-discrimination, and grievance policies.
Room to respond. Unrestricted gifts give S3C the flexibility to say yes when our community brings us an urgent need.
Trauma-responsive care in every detail. Behind each program is careful planning around safety, pacing, and accessibility, so that participating feels supportive for people carrying complex trauma.
All of your donations impact survivors in direct but invisible ways.
Care You Won't See on a Program List
Some of the most meaningful work at S3C never appears in a schedule or a budget line. Survivors of complex trauma often carry their hardest moments alone, and when a community is steady and present, people no longer have to. Your donations sustain that community, and through it, care like this:
Showing up for life's milestones. Our community has gathered for weddings, funerals, and graduations so that survivors who would otherwise have faced those days alone had people beside them.
Opening doors to work and opportunity. We have written reference letters and job recommendations for survivors rebuilding their lives, offering the kind of support many people take for granted.
Helping people find a home. We have walked alongside unhoused community members as they moved into new housing.
Advocating for access. We have advocated for disability rights so that survivors received the accommodations they needed at work, at school, and in care.
Supporting families. We have supported parents in our community and helped meet basic needs, so children and families had more of what they needed to thrive.
This care happens quietly, and we keep it that way to protect the privacy and dignity of the people involved. It is possible because donors help keep this community connected, staffed, and present for one another.