An Oklahoma family. An Oklahoma mission.

Chase Morris died on the night of May 20, 2013. The funeral was four days later. The video shown at the service — assembled by family in the hours after his death — is still publicly available on the foundation's YouTube channel, where it has lived since 2014.

On August 12, 2013 — eighty-four days after Chase's death — Chase's father filed Articles of Incorporation with the Oklahoma Secretary of State. The Internal Revenue Service later recognized the foundation as a tax-exempt public charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, with an effective date of exemption retroactive to the date of incorporation. The Oklahoma Tax Commission issued the foundation's sales tax exemption permit in January 2016. The foundation has operated continuously in Oklahoma since.

The decision to begin the work that quickly was, the family says, not a strategic one. The first heart screening — at Metro Christian Academy in Tulsa, the alma mater of the pediatric cardiologist who would guide every screening that followed — happened in the fall of 2014. The second, at Booker T. Washington High School in partnership with Tulsa Public Schools, happened in January 2015. By the spring of 2015 a bipartisan coalition of Oklahoma legislators had introduced the bill that would carry Chase's name. By June of 2015 the Governor had signed it.

None of this was on a plan. All of it became one.

The Chase Morris Foundation is, and has always been, a family-led organization. Chase's two brothers — his older brother and his younger brother — are the principal voices of the foundation today. They were the boys who grew up with him. They are the men who carry his name now.

The foundation has been guided since its earliest days by a small board of advisors — physicians, educators, and family — drawn from Oklahoma and beyond. We have been deliberately self-funded for most of our history, which has kept our overhead small and our focus narrow. We have not sought to become a large organization. We have sought to do specific, defensible work in a single state, in the name of one specific son, with a clearly defined mission.

Our advisors and partners are listed elsewhere on this site. Our medical guidance comes from board-certified pediatric cardiology and sports medicine. Our screening protocol is the international standard published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Our work has been recognized by both U.S. Senators of Oklahoma, the Governor of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner, and a bipartisan supermajority of the Oklahoma Legislature.

We are a small foundation. We have always been a small foundation. The work we have done — and the work we will continue to do — has been disproportionate to our size, and that is by design.