By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
A Seattle-based nonprofit with no Maryland legislative authorization, no independent governance structure, and no publicly available outcome data is now placing attorneys inside Southern Maryland custody proceedings — and expanding.
The expansion is happening quietly, with no public debate and no action by the Maryland General Assembly.
The organization is the Child’s Voice Project, a fiscally sponsored project of the Goodnation Foundation whose leadership is employed by Panorama Global, a Seattle-based nonprofit whose CEO is a former Gates Foundation director and which has received more than $12 million in Gates funding. Since May 2025, CVP has provided what it calls “child advocate attorneys” to 55 children across 38 cases in St. Mary’s and Charles counties. This month, Calvert County joins the program.
The expansion is happening quietly, with no public debate and no action by the Maryland General Assembly.
What the program does
Under Maryland Rule 9-205.1, circuit court judges already have authority to appoint counsel for children in contested custody proceedings. CVP’s model leans on that existing authority: judges appoint CVP attorneys to represent children as advocate attorneys, distinct from the more commonly appointed best-interest attorney.
The question no one in Maryland’s court system appears to have asked publicly is: whose voice, exactly, and filtered through whose training?
The distinction matters. A best-interest attorney conducts an independent investigation and advocates for what they believe serves the child — even if that conflicts with what the child says they want. A child advocate attorney, by contrast, is bound to carry the child’s stated preferences to the court, much as any attorney represents a client’s expressed position.
CVP characterizes this as giving children a voice. The question no one in Maryland’s court system appears to have asked publicly is: whose voice, exactly, and filtered through whose training?
The attorneys operating in Maryland under CVP’s program come from three Southern Maryland firms: Williams, McClernan & Stack; Delaney Stafford; and Fanning Law — all of whom CVP says have completed its specialized training. The program began in St. Mary’s County at the direction of Circuit Court Judge Sean Hill, whom CVP’s Maryland Legal Partner Connie Kratovil-Lavelle has credited directly: “Judge Hill is the reason we have this project,” she told The Daily Record.
The governance gap
CVP has no standalone board of directors and no independent 501(c)(3) registration. It operates as a sponsored project under the Goodnation Foundation — itself a vehicle for organized progressive philanthropy, with reported funders including Arnold Ventures, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Borealis Philanthropy, and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies. CVP’s executive leadership is employed by Panorama Global, an organization whose stated focus areas are global health, pandemic preparedness, and international development — not family law.
The program describes its pilot as being evaluated through a “quasi-experimental design,” but that evaluation is being conducted by CVP itself. There is no independent third-party evaluation of outcomes, no Maryland oversight body reviewing results, and no public reporting requirement.
CVP did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.
The authorization question
CVP’s Maryland legal partner told The Daily Record that judges “already have the power” to appoint advocate attorneys in custody cases — which is true. But the CVP model is not simply judges appointing individual attorneys. It is a private nonprofit, funded by undisclosed sources, training attorneys according to its own ideological framework, placing them in cases at scale, and expanding county by county without any state review of methodology or outcomes.
Maryland has no statute authorizing a private national organization to operate as a de facto institutional actor in its family courts.
Maryland has no statute authorizing a private national organization to operate as a de facto institutional actor in its family courts. The authorization is being found retroactively in a procedural rule designed for individual appointments — not for a privately managed pipeline of trained attorneys inserting an organization’s framework into contested family proceedings across multiple jurisdictions.
The Maryland Judiciary has not issued any public guidance on CVP’s participation in circuit court proceedings. The Governor’s office did not respond to an inquiry about whether the Moore administration is aware of the program or has reviewed it.
What’s coming
CVP’s own stated mission is national replication. Three Southern Maryland counties are the pilot. The organization’s website describes plans to expand its training programs, generate “evidence of impact,” and advance “systemic reform” in family courts nationally.
The burden of transparency falls on the courts that are allowing it in, not merely on the organization itself.
That ambition is not inherently disqualifying. But when a private organization with a defined ideological framework — and with no public accountability structure — begins operating at scale inside state judicial proceedings, the burden of transparency falls on the courts that are allowing it in, not merely on the organization itself.
The Maryland General Assembly has not debated CVP’s model. The Maryland Judiciary has not published standards for CVP attorney training. No Maryland official has publicly explained what oversight, if any, exists.
Those are questions worth asking before this program reaches another courthouse.
For a deeper analysis of the child advocate attorney model, its structural limitations, and what it means for parents in contested custody proceedings, see Father & Co.
Sources: The Daily Record, “Pilot program gives MD children a say in custody cases,” Ian Round, June 16, 2026 (thedailyrecord.com) — primary news peg, source for the 55 children/38 cases figures, the Kratovil-Lavelle quote attributing the program to Judge Hill, age eligibility by county, and Calvert joining. Child’s Voice Project website (childsvoiceproject.org) — source for the organization’s mission statement, program description, “quasi-experimental design” self-evaluation language, and the three Maryland law firm partners (Williams McClernan & Stack, Delaney Stafford, Fanning Law). Goodnation Foundation/Influence Watch, “Goodnation,” InfluenceWatch.org — source for the $66M+ figure, funder network (Arnold Ventures, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Borealis Philanthropy, Schusterman Family Philanthropies), and the Goodnation organizational structure. Maryland Rule 9-205.1, Maryland Courts (mdcourts.gov) — source for the legal authority under which CVP attorneys are appointed. Panorama Global, panoramaglobal.org and InfluenceWatch — source for Fitzgerald’s Gates Foundation background and the $12M+ in Gates funding to Panorama.
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