Alabama Family Trust Makes Plans for National Expansion

Birmingham – There are lots of exciting changes happening at Alabama Family Trust, and we think you should know about them. The state’s nonprofit has been investing and protecting the assets of individuals with disabilities in Alabama for more than 20 years. Now they are making plans to expand further within Alabama and across the state’s borders.

Executive Director Melanie Bradford and CFO and Director of Community Relations Doug Marshall

“We are very excited about the potential of entering Mississippi later this year to administer special needs trusts there for individuals with disabilities,” said CFO and Director of Community Relations Doug Marshall. “Mississippi is right next door and is also the headquarters of our long-term partner, BancorpSouth who provides trust and professional investment services for AFT.”

In preparing for growth, the nonprofit has been making other changes.

AFT has added to its executive team and a new office in Vestavia Hills. They moved recently to a new office in the Berry Building on Columbiana Road. An open house in March allowed community leaders, chamber members, nonprofit and healthcare professionals, judges, elder law attorneys, and corporate executives to tour the new headquarters.

“Our mission is to help enable core government benefits while protecting the assets of the disabled person, thus avoiding a spend-down of assets,” says Marshall. “We work with co-trustees, usually the family members of the beneficiaries, to pay for certain things over and above what Medicaid or SSI will fund for eldercare and special needs.

For instance, Medicaid will not pay for a private room in an assisted living facility, perhaps a new wheelchair, or certain medical expenditures or therapies. AFT can also pay for things such as the beneficiary’s clothing, sitters, telephone and cable bills. Without the kind of fiduciary oversight we provide for these families, many elderly or special-needs individuals would find themselves unable to pay for necessities that may fall outside the textbook definition of ‘core living expenses.’ ”

In 2014, the AL Family Trust realized an office relocation would require IT project management that they could not execute on their own, so they outsourced their IT administration to TekLinks. The partnership resulted in the successful deployment of several fully managed solutions including email, email archiving, and spam filtering; cloud storage; Desktops-as-a-Service (virtual desktops); endpoint monitoring and maintenance; and 24/7 customer support.

“We are thankful TekLinks gets to help Alabama Family Trust move forward their mission to protect and benefit people with disabilities in Alabama and beyond,” says David Powell, Vice President of Strategic Development at TekLinks. “We believe the work this organization does has a lasting impact on our communities and future generations.”

AFT is also excited to announce it is a finalist in the 2016 Birmingham Business Journal Nonprofit Awards. The winner will be announced on June 23 at the BBJ awards banquet.  “It is a tremendous honor for AFT to be in the Final 4 along with Camp Smile-a-Mile, Ronald McDonald House Charities of Alabama, and The Firehouse Shelter for the $1M to $2M category,” says Marshall.

Learn more about Alabama Family Trust.

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