Armstrong Community Outreach Foundation traces its roots back to 2005, long before the organization officially existed.

What began as a family effort was inspired by a simple belief: no one should be forgotten or left out.

At the time, we were not a nonprofit organization. We were simply a family that recognized needs within our community and wanted to help. With the support of friends, neighbors, and community members, we began providing Christmas stockings to children facing difficult circumstances, backpacks for students in need, gifts for seniors living in long-term care, and Easter baskets for local youth.

We noticed that many assistance programs focused on essential needs, but important traditions and items that helped people feel included were often overlooked. During the holidays, children living in shelters or experiencing hardship frequently received gifts but missed out on Christmas stockings, a simple tradition many families take for granted. During back-to-school season, backpacks were often one of the most needed and expensive items, yet they were regularly in short supply through donation drives.

Working with shelters, school homeless liaisons, and community partners, we began collecting and distributing backpacks, shoes, clothing, Christmas stockings, and other essentials to help ensure children and teens felt prepared, included, and supported.

As our outreach grew, we recognized another group that was often overlooked: seniors living in long-term care facilities.

We reached out to local care homes to ask how we could help and quickly learned that what many residents valued most was knowing someone remembered them. We partnered with local schools to encourage students to create Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, and holiday cards for residents. During our first year, students from across the community created cards while we delivered gifts to residents in long-term care. What began with socks and handwritten cards grew into an ongoing tradition of providing gifts, blankets, comfort items, and meaningful connections that continues today.

We also saw that Easter was often an overlooked season for charitable outreach. While many organizations focused on Christmas, few programs provided Easter baskets for children living in shelters or facing difficult circumstances. To us, Easter represented an opportunity to create memories, build traditions, and help children feel included. What started as a small effort grew into an annual tradition serving children throughout our community.

In 2010, a new chapter of our story began when our son earned the opportunity to compete at the World Mini Motocross Championship in Nevada. To help cover travel expenses, we organized a community Easter Egg Hunt fundraiser. The response was incredible. More than 90 local businesses and countless community members came together to support the event.

What surprised us most was not the success of the fundraiser itself, but the community's encouragement to continue. People believed in what we were doing and wanted to help us expand our efforts. Through that support, we were able to assist other youth participating in motocross, sports, clubs, and recreational activities.

In 2013, those community efforts officially became a nonprofit organization under the name Armstrong Racing Foundation. Although motocross was an important part of our family's life and community involvement, our outreach had already expanded well beyond racing.

We were helping students prepare for school, supporting holiday traditions, serving seniors, connecting with shelters and schools, and helping individuals participate in activities that strengthened confidence, connection, and belonging.

By 2018, it became clear that our mission reflected something much broader than motorsports. To better represent the work being done throughout the community, we became Armstrong Community Outreach Foundation.

Over the years, community support has allowed our programs to grow beyond anything we originally imagined. Backpack distributions have ranged from assisting a small number of local students to more than 1,600 backpacks during our largest distribution year, made possible by exceptional donations and community support. Holiday outreach, senior engagement, recreation assistance, school readiness efforts, and community partnerships have continued to expand as resources allow.

What started as a family tradition of teaching compassion, empathy, and service has grown into a community-wide effort to help people of all ages participate, connect, and belong.

Today, the mission remains as simple as it was in 2005:

Everyone deserves to be included. Everyone deserves to belong. And no one should be forgotten or left out.