The Gift of Stability: How You Can Strengthen Military Families This Holiday Season

For many military families, this holiday season arrives with a heaviness that is difficult to put into words. Like many households across the country, they are confronting rising costs in groceries, housing, and childcare. But unlike many families, so much of their lives are shaped by circumstances they cannot control.

Frequent moves, unpredictable duty schedules, long separations, and limited access to employment or childcare make financial stability extraordinarily difficult to sustain. Even the possibility of having two working adults in the household, which most families rely on today to stay financially stable, is often out of reach. Military spouse unemployment remains nearly four times the national average. It is not the result of a lack of ambition or skill, but rather the result of systems that create barriers sometimes no amount of determination can overcome.

The recent government shutdown made this reality painfully clear. Although it has ended, it revealed how close many families are to the edge, sometimes just one or two missed paychecks away from a crisis. The message was unmistakable. Too many military households live one unexpected moment away from instability, despite the extraordinary sacrifices they make.

Since 1969, the National Military Family Association has been the trusted voice for these families. We advocate for lasting solutions and provide programs that strengthen households today while building stability for tomorrow. This season, you have the power to help families feel seen, supported, and secure when they need it most.

How NMFA Shows Up for Military Families

Your generosity is what makes the following work possible.

Bloom Military Teen Program

Bloom offers military teens a space to feel understood in a world that is often in motion. Through a supportive online community, teens connect with peers who know what it feels like to rebuild friendships, start over at new schools, and carry the emotional weight of deployments and transitions. Bloom helps them find belonging during times when isolation can feel overwhelming. Your support will ensure military teens have a place where their experiences matter and where they can speak openly about the challenges and unique experiences that shape their lives.

Operation Purple® Camp

Operation Purple Camps offer military kids something truly rare and deeply needed: a place where they can simply be themselves. At camp, they are surrounded by peers who understand the realities of deployments, frequent moves, and the complicated emotions that come with growing up in a military household. For many families, these free programs provide the only chance their children have to connect with others who share their experiences and to find space to breathe, recover, and feel understood. Your commitment helps create these moments of healing and belonging at a time in their lives when connection matters more than ever.

Operation Purple® Summer Challenge

Created in response to the uncertainty of the pandemic, Operation Purple Summer Challenge creates a community that follows military families all over the world, no matter where military life takes them. The program brings the joy of camp to them through self-paced activities and virtual gatherings that keep kids active, curious, and connected no matter the distance.

Through partnerships across military and civilian communities, families receive challenges, resources, and opportunities to explore together. Participants tackle new adventures, celebrate achievements, share their stories, and earn recognition for their contributions. Your generosity helps ensure this adaptable, resilient program continues to reach families wherever military life takes them.

Joanne Holbrook Patton Military Spouse Scholarships

Economic mobility is essential to long-term stability. NMFA scholarships help spouses earn degrees, certifications, and professional credentials that open doors to meaningful and portable employment. This kind of employment can support a family through relocations and the unpredictability of military life. For many households, your support is transformational and helps change the trajectory of their financial future.

Driving Long-Term Solutions for Military Families

Stability for military families depends not only on personal effort but also on the policies that determine pay, childcare, health care, and housing. NMFA works directly with policymakers and empowers families to share their experiences with those who can drive change. Donor support fuels this work and strengthens the systems military families rely on every day. When you give, you help create a better tomorrow for households across the country.

Four Ways You Can Show Up for Military Families

Make a holiday gift: Your donation supports programs that build resilience, expand opportunity, and ease the pressures families carry daily. Every gift helps steady a household during a season that can magnify stress and uncertainty.

Become a monthly donor: Monthly giving provides consistency, something military families rarely experience. Your sustained support helps NMFA plan ahead, respond quickly, and maintain programs year-round, long after the holidays have passed.

Give in honor of someone you love: A tribute gift is a meaningful way to mark the season while supporting the families who serve in every moment of their lives.

Share NMFA’s mission: Awareness creates change. When you share NMFA’s work, you broaden understanding of the systemic challenges families face and amplify the call for solutions. You can share our mission by forwarding an NMFA article to a friend, posting one of our stories on social media, or inviting someone in your community to learn more about the challenges military families face. Every conversation strengthens the network of people who care about the military-connected community.

A Season of Support, Strength, and Stability

For nearly sixty years, NMFA has walked alongside military families through transitions, challenges, and moments of uncertainty. We are honored by the trust these families place in us and by the trust donors place in our mission.

Your generosity this holiday season can help military families move forward with greater stability, confidence, and hope for the future. Your support could make all the difference.

Together We’re Stronger®

By: Olivia Brinsfield, Content Manager