(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Here in Colorado Springs, we have many non-profits dedicated to helping the military community. One of those non-profits, Home Front Military Network (HFMN), has been seeing a huge increase in calls for support.

“We don’t want to pay somebody’s rent one month, (just) to have them get evicted the next month,” said Kate Hatten, HFMN’s Executive Director. “Our goal is to keep them whole, financially stable… making sure that they’re happy, healthy, productive members of our community.”

With a network of 52 partner agencies, they help people navigate available support and connect them to services. Most of their staff is military/veteran connected, and they’d love to use their experience and knowledge to help you get help.

HFMN was created five years ago when two organizations merged into one. Since then, they say their call volume has increased 400% and they’ve served more than 300,000 people. In the past two years, they’ve averaged more than 17,000 calls per year.

HFMN is a free resource that’s available to the full military community. That includes active duty members, guard members, reservists, veterans, their family members, and widows. They encourage everyone to reach out, as some of the people they’ve helped don’t know what services they need, or that they’re even available.

Leaders with the organization say they wish there wasn’t a need for this sort of thing, but their data seems to show it’s valuable to many.

“We work with a lot of people who are below 80% area median income, so they’re on fixed incomes. However, expenses for basic necessities are going up. So that’s a challenge that we’re seeing kind of across the board,” said Hatten. “People have a lot of needs. We unpack it, and figure out what’s going on, and work with them step by step as long as they need us to get those problems resolved.”

She attributes the increase in calls for assistance to multiple things like COVID-19 and public awareness of their successes.

Even though their impact has grown a lot over recent years, they’d love to reach even more military community members who need help. They’re expanding to serve the entire state of Colorado.