When Jonnie Carter sat down to build this organization, she wasn’t designing programs. She was thinking about what she needed, and never had, on March 4, 2001, the day Bethany disappeared.
She needed someone to tell her what to do first. She needed to understand her rights. She needed honest information about how to work with law enforcement, how to talk to her other children, how to survive a day when the world had suddenly stopped making sense.
Nobody gave her that.
She also thought about all the children who go missing every year in Tennessee, the more than 500 reported every single month, and about the parents who are doing everything they can to keep their kids safe without ever having the right tools to do it.
Both of those needs shaped the Bethany Markowski Foundation from day one. Our board-approved programs reflect both sides of that mission: supporting the families who are already living this nightmare, and equipping the communities that can help prevent it.
What We Actually Do: Five Programs, One Mission
The Bethany Markowski Foundation is organized around five formal programs, each approved by our Board of Directors and aligned with our 501(c)(3) charitable and educational mission. Everything we build, every project we launch, and every dollar we raise traces back to one of these five areas of work.
Child Safety Education is our largest program at 30% of our organizational focus. We develop and deliver age-appropriate curricula for schools, workshops for parents and educators, and online courses that are free and accessible to anyone in Tennessee and beyond. Every resource we produce is built on evidence-based child safety research, reviewed by professionals, and designed with real learning outcomes in mind, not just awareness, but action.
Family Support represents 25% of our work. This is the direct-care side of what we do: connecting families of missing children to counseling, legal resources, and peer support; offering practical help like travel assistance for search efforts and emergency financial aid; and walking alongside families through the long road that most organizations stop addressing after the first few weeks.
Public Awareness and Advocacy makes up 20% of our focus. This includes our annual observances of Tennessee Missing Children’s Day on March 4th, legislative advocacy for stronger cold case investigative resources, public education campaigns, and community outreach through schools, libraries, media, and events. Jonnie’s testimony in support of SB 2649 this year, legislation that would create dedicated TBI cold case divisions for cases that have gone unsolved for a decade or more, is a direct expression of this program in action.
Community Search and Volunteer Coordination accounts for 15% of our organizational time. When a child goes missing, we want to be the organization that helps mobilize a trained, trauma-informed community response alongside law enforcement, not a well-meaning crowd with no coordination.
Research, Case Documentation, and Resource Development rounds out our work at 10%. This is the infrastructure that makes everything else better: maintaining verified case files, researching best practices, developing training materials, and publishing what we learn so other organizations and advocates can benefit from it too.
These programs are the foundation on which every project we take on is built.
The First Projects: Where the Work Begins
Every program has to start somewhere. In our first year, we are launching two flagship projects, one under Family Support, one under Child Safety Education, that we believe represent the most urgent gaps in what currently exists for Tennessee families and Tennessee communities.
Project One: A Handbook for Families of Missing Persons in Tennessee
Under our Family Support Program
When a child goes missing, families are handed almost nothing.
We researched what exists at the state level across the country. Most states don’t publish anything beyond a webpage linking to a federal guide. The best state-level resource we found anywhere in the United States is a three-page brochure from Virginia, last updated in 2016.
Tennessee deserves better. Tennessee families deserve better.
We are developing what we hope will be the most comprehensive state-specific resource for families of missing persons in the United States. This handbook is designed for the moment everything falls apart. and for every moment after that.
Here’s what we know it will address:
The first 24 hours. The immediate steps that matter most. What to preserve. Who to contact and in what order. What Tennessee law actually requires of law enforcement, including the no-waiting-period rule and the two-hour NCIC entry requirement, that most families never know about.
Your legal rights. Tennessee has real statutory protections for families of missing persons. Most people don’t know they exist. We are going to translate that legal framework into plain language so that every family who needs it can understand what they’re entitled to.
Who to call — in Tennessee, not just in theory. Every resource organized by county, by situation, and by the specific agencies and organizations that serve our state. Not a generic national list. A Tennessee-specific directory built around how our state actually works, including TBI, the county sheriff’s offices, the Children’s Advocacy Centers network, Family Justice Centers, and victim services providers.
Long-term and cold case support. Because disappearances don’t resolve on a television timeline. Families living with years of uncertainty, with cases gone cold, with anniversaries and birthdays and holidays that never stop being hard, have needs that almost no resource in the country takes seriously. This handbook will.
Healing. For the family members left behind. For siblings. For parents. For the extended family and community that loves someone who is missing and doesn’t know how to carry that.
This project is in active development. We are building it carefully because it has to be right. The handbook will grow through input from Tennessee families with lived experience, legal professionals, law enforcement, trauma-informed clinicians, and experts in plain language accessibility.
It will be free. It will be available in multiple languages. And it will be the most useful thing a family in crisis can have in their hands.
If you have expertise to contribute, as a family member who has lived this, a legal professional, a social worker, a trauma counselor, a law enforcement professional, a translator, or a plain language editor — we need you. This resource will only be as strong as the people who help build it. Email us at team@findbethany.org and tell us how you want to be part of it.
Project Two: Free Child Safety Courses for Tennessee Families, Educators, and Communities
Under our Child Safety Education Program
The second project is for every parent who has ever wondered if they’re doing enough, and every educator, coach, faith leader, or community member who works with children and wants to be genuinely prepared.
We are developing a free online child safety course series rooted in what the research actually says about keeping children safe. Not stranger danger. Not fear tactics designed to make parents feel something without giving them anything they can actually use. Real, evidence-based education that translates into real conversations at home, in classrooms, and in communities.
Our free child safety courses in Tennessee will cover topics including:
Body safety. Teaching children the language and the concepts they need to identify unsafe situations and trust their instincts, approached in a way that empowers rather than frightens, and is age-appropriate at every stage.
Recognizing grooming. What the warning signs actually look like in practice. Not the frightening stranger version that statistics don’t support, but the far more common reality of boundary violations, trust manipulation, and behavioral patterns that parents and educators can learn to recognize early.
Online safety and sextortion. The online landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, and the threats facing children, especially teenagers, require education that keeps up. We’ll cover digital safety in plain language that parents can actually act on.
How to talk to your child. Scripts and approaches for having these conversations without shutting them down. Because what matters isn’t just that you have the conversation, it’s how you have it.
What to do if a child discloses. The first adult reaction to a child’s disclosure shapes everything that follows. Most parents have never been told what to actually do in that moment. This is one of the most important things we will teach.
The connection between family safety and child safety. This is an area where our courses go somewhere most programs don’t. The research is clear that children in homes affected by domestic violence face significantly elevated risk. We are building content that addresses this honestly and practically, framed in support of protective parents, because most people watching these courses are already trying to do the right thing.
These courses are being designed for Tennessee families, K-12 educators, school counselors, coaches, faith community leaders, and anyone who works with children in any capacity. They will be produced to meet real accessibility standards, including closed captions and plain language.
They will be free. To everyone. Forever.
We are actively looking for educators, child safety professionals, licensed counselors, curriculum developers, video production volunteers, and anyone with relevant expertise to help us build this content the right way. If that’s you, email us at team@findbethany.org.
What It Actually Costs and What Your Support Does
We want to be honest with you about where we are. We are a young organization, incorporated in October 2025, with tax-exempt status granted in January 2026. We held our first community event as a newly formed nonprofit on March 4th of this year, just 90 days after becoming tax-exempt. We have built more than most organizations accomplish in their first year, and we are doing it lean.
Every dollar donated to the Bethany Markowski Foundation goes toward building these programs. Here is what real contributions look like at every level:
$25 covers research materials, resource licensing fees, and one translated section of the handbook for non-English-speaking families.
$50 supports the professional review of one chapter by a trauma-informed expert who helps us make sure we’re getting it right.
$100 funds accessibility formatting, plain language editing, and design work for one section of online course content.
$250 covers a full module of the free child safety course from script to final video available to every Tennessee family at no cost.
$500 funds one complete, professionally reviewed, accessibility-compliant chapter of the families of missing children handbook, ready for distribution statewide.
These are our best estimates on the actual line items behind the work. We believe you deserve to know exactly what your support is building.
→ Back our programs at givebutter.com/gptnQ8
How to Get Involved Beyond Donating
We are a small team carrying work that deserves a much larger community behind it.
If you are a professional who wants to volunteer your skills in any of the following areas, we want to hear from you: writing and editing, legal review, trauma counseling or clinical consultation, translation and language access, video production, graphic design, curriculum development, or child safety research. Email team@findbethany.org.
If you are a Tennessee family who has lived the experience of a missing loved one and would consider being part of our lived-experience advisory process for the handbook, your voice belongs in this work. We are building a formal process for that input and would be honored to include you. Email team@findbethany.org.
If you are an educator, school counselor, faith community leader, or community organization that wants early access to our courses when they launch, get on our list. We’ll reach out when they’re ready.
If you work in law enforcement, victim services, child advocacy, or a related field and want to explore a formal partnership or professional review role, we’d love to talk. Email team@findbethany.org.
Why This Work, and Why Now
Bethany Markowski has been missing since she was eleven years old. She would be 36 now. Jonnie has been waiting 25 years for answers.
The Bethany Markowski Foundation was built on that wait, and on the quiet, stubborn conviction that no family should face what Jonnie faced without better tools, better resources, and better support than what existed in 2001. Or in 2010. Or today.
Our five programs exist because the gaps are real. The handbook project exists because Tennessee families in crisis deserve more than a three-page brochure. The child safety courses exist because the best outcome is prevention, and prevention requires education that actually reaches people, in plain language, for free.
We are just getting started. These two projects are the first things we are building. There is more behind them — a documentary, a statewide case database, community fingerprinting events, legislative advocacy, search coordination, and a family resource network that we intend to grow across all 95 Tennessee counties over the next several years.
But we start here. With a handbook that says: you are not alone, and here is what to do. With courses that say: here is what you need to know, and it doesn’t cost anything to learn it.
That is why we do what we do.
→ Support the work at givebutter.com/gptnQ8
Questions? Volunteer interest? Partnership inquiries? Reach us at team@findbethany.org or (615) 784-3287.
