Prom dresses and other attire are among the items that Alice’s Kids can provide.
Submitted Photo
Jasmine, a child with cognitive difficulties and who lives with her elderly grandparents and two siblings, gets food and other essentials at the grocery store for her family. The funds for the bike she uses were provided by Alice’s Kids.
Submitted Photo
Prom dresses and other attire are among the items that Alice’s Kids can provide.
Submitted Photo
Alice’s Kids is a national charitable organization that aims to provide for children and families who are in need of a financial boost. While many similar organizations focus on food, Alice’s Kids helps children find secondary items that can be difficult to pay for in a pinch, from prom tickets to sports equipment.
Anonymous requesters — predominantly made up of teachers and other professionals who work with children — from across the country can go to Alice’s Kids’ website and help a child in need get one of these secondary items. Alice’s Kids will send a gift card or check related to the needed item to the requester, who, in turn, can get the money to the parent.
From there, the parent can help their child get what they need, without the stigma and pressure of poverty weighing down the experience. To do so, that anonymity remains essential.
“It lets the parent or the caregiver be the hero. … So the child never even knows they’re receiving charity,” said Hilary Riedemann, director of public relations for Alice’s Kids.
Riedemann said that Alice’s Kids helps out throughout the year, but the start of the school year and the holidays are especially busy times in terms of requests received.
No matter the context, Alice’s Kids keeps the children in need as the focus.
“We don’t judge a child based on their parent situation,” Riedemann said. “It’s really about helping the kid, and doing so with dignity.”
Ron Fitzsimmons and his sister, Laura, founded Alice’s Kids in 2011. They were literally Alice’s kids, and they named the organization after their mother. Money was tight when Ron and Laura were children, and they were called “those welfare kids” by their classmates.
At times, however, their financial situation would improve just enough to afford Ron a chance to get new clothes or other amenities.
“We never forgot how uplifting that was, to go out like a normal person, to go shopping like a normal person, to go to school the next day showing off your new shoes,” Ron Fitzsimmons recalled.
Later on, while working as a substitute teacher, Fitzsimmons helped a student buy their ticket to the prom, which they would have been unable to afford otherwise. Fitzsimmons found that other teachers had similar stories of helping students.
From there, Alice’s Kids was born.
It took a few years to pick up steam, but Alice’s Kids is now an established charity. They helped over 10,000 children in 2024, and are close to helping 13,000 in 2025.
As time has gone on, the reasons for help being needed have changed. Lately, according to Fitzsimmons, instability in the federal government has played a role in more requests coming through to Alice’s Kids.
“There’s the combination of it being Christmas, and people losing their jobs. It’s like we’re in the trenches. We read, ‘Mother lost her job at the Department of Agriculture,’ ‘They lost their SNAP benefits,’” Fitzsimmons said. “We are seeing more of those stories.”
Now, Alice’s Kids is looking to make a mark in Northeast Pennsylvania. It’s a homecoming of sorts for Riedemann, who grew up in the Back Mountain and went to Wyoming Seminary for high school.
“One of the things that my family was really big on was volunteering and giving back,” Riedemann said. “That was instilled in me through my parents. It was instilled in them through my grandparents.”
Before officially joining the Alice’s Kids staff, she was a contributor and volunteer to their cause. She’s hoping to bring that same philanthropic spirit to her home area by spreading the word about Alice’s Kids’ mission.
“It’s a cause near and dear to my heart,” Riedemann said, “And to be able to share it with where I grew up is really special.”
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