For nearly five decades, a North Texas nonprofit has been quietly doing what government programs and holiday charity drives often can’t — showing up, year after year, for the kids who need it most.
Love For Kids, Inc. started small. Back in 1975, local businessman and philanthropist Bill Barrett and Alan Powdermaker, CEO of Circle R Ranch, had a straightforward idea: throw a Christmas party for 200 at-risk children. That was it. No grand blueprint, no massive fundraising apparatus. Just two men who thought kids deserved a good day. What grew from that modest gesture has become one of North Texas’s most enduring charitable institutions, documented across decades of community service.
One Ranch, Thousands of Kids
Today, the organization’s flagship program — All Kids Count — serves roughly 1,150 children every year. The event is held at Circle R Ranch in Flower Mound, the same property where Barrett and Powdermaker first dreamed the whole thing up. It’s one of two major events Love For Kids hosts there annually, and by most measures, it’s the crown jewel. North Texas Giving Day notes the event’s scale, which has grown far beyond anything the founders likely imagined in 1975.
What does a day at All Kids Count actually look like? Think horseback riding, hayrides, face painting, games, and a special lunch — all provided free of charge to disabled and seriously ill children and their families. It’s a full day, carefully accommodated, and deliberately joyful. The Cross Timbers Gazette has described the event as a rare space where families dealing with serious illness or disability can simply exhale for a few hours.
More Than a Party
Still, Love For Kids doesn’t see itself as just an event organizer. The organization’s mission, as they put it, is to “work hand in hand with families to ensure families have basic needs like education and resources” — a vision rooted in something longer-term than a single afternoon at a ranch. Empowerment, education, community participation. Those are the pillars, and they shape everything the group does beyond the big annual events.
That broader commitment shows up in the organization’s partnership with Dallas Children’s Charities, through which Love For Kids coordinates the sorting and distribution of toys to children’s charities across North Texas each year. It’s unglamorous, logistical work — the kind that doesn’t make for great photos but keeps the whole ecosystem of holiday giving from collapsing under its own weight. The organization’s own website frames this as a core part of what they do, not an afterthought.
A Quiet Kind of Legacy
Fifty years is a long time to keep showing up. Most nonprofits don’t make it a decade. The ones that do tend to have something the others lack — not just funding or volunteers, but a clarity of purpose that survives leadership changes, economic downturns, and the general entropy of institutional life. Love For Kids, by most appearances, has that.
What started as a Christmas party for 200 kids is now a lifeline for more than a thousand families a year. Not bad for a couple of guys with a ranch and an idea.
