Jake McCluskey knows about major life changes. In the last year, the Japantown resident dropped 150 pounds, ran his first marathon and started a crowd-funding campaign to help young people facing their own major life changes.

His campaign will culminate on June 21, when McCluskey takes a 50-mile run from downtown San Jose to the South of Market district of San Francisco to celebrate his 42nd birthday and benefit the Silicon Valley Children’s Fund. The nonprofit SVCF runs programs designed to help foster youths in Santa Clara County find their footing once they turn 18 and age out of the system.

Having grown up without a father, McCluskey has often found his own birthday to be bittersweet, particularly in years like this one when it falls on Father’s Day. But having made such positive strides in his own life recently inspired him to help others do the same.

“I’ve come so far in the past year that I wanted to do something cool for my birthday,” he says. “If I [only] raise a dollar, I’m going to do it anyway.”

As of May 11, McCluskey had raised almost $2,000 in donations through his crowd-funding site at svgives.razoo.com/story/Karma maker.

McCluskey says he had “no clue” about the low high school graduation and college attendance rates among foster youths when he first decided his run would benefit that community. According to the SVCF, less than 3 percent of foster youths in the U.S. graduate from college.

“When I found out, it became that much more important to me,” he says.

He also didn’t realize that he was setting a fundraising precedent for SVCF on a couple of fronts.

“This is the first time an individual as opposed to an organization has really stepped up,” says Priya Mistry, SVCF’s director of philanthropy and program advancement.

That the fundraising is all being done online also is a new twist for the nonprofit. “Even before this came up, we were talking about putting more emphasis on social media,” Mistry says. “We’d like to take Jake’s story and put it out there.”

Making a beer run

For McCluskey, the moral of his story is, “It’s never too late.”

“I didn’t really start caring about my health until I was 40-plus,” he says. “A year ago, I couldn’t even run 50 feet. In the beginning, I was so embarrassed about my running that I used to run at 3 a.m.”

That embarrassment has given way to a love of distance running. McCluskey completed the Oakland marathon in March and has been training for his Father’s Day run ever since. He plans to finish the 50-mile course within 10 hours by averaging 12 mph and taking rest breaks.

He also plans to celebrate at the start and end points of his run, which just happen to be “two of my favorite beer places on Earth.” He’ll take off from Good Karma Artisan Ales and Cafe in downtown San Jose and end up at Cellarmaker Brewing Co. in San Francisco.

“It seemed like the logical choice to me,” he says. “I still drink beer every day.”

In fact, McCluskey spends his workday at Strike Brewing Co. in San Jose, where he’s an assistant brewer and taproom manager. He’s worked at other local hops-and-malt meccas, such as ISOBeers and Kelly’s Liquors, and he’s tapped into this network to help him with his fundraising efforts.

“The craft beer community is pretty supportive,” he says.

Mistry says this show of support has been “really inspiring” to the SVCF staff.

“It’s great to see the community give more attention to the needs of foster youth,” she adds. “Awareness is really important for people to understand and not be misinformed about what our foster kid community is.”

SVCF is also trying to raise awareness about what foster youths need to succeed as adults. “Before, the focus was on basic needs,” Mistry says. “We need to think past that to what these kids need to achieve.”

Fostering achievement

The tools SVCF provides to help foster youths succeed range from scholarships to education planning and career development, all designed to offer the guidance, encouragement and advocacy typically provided by parents.

“We have a scholarship program, but it’s so much more than that,” Mistry says, pointing to the nonprofit’s mentor program. “What’s really exciting is the peer-to-peer relationships. They get to see role models who have been in similar situations.

“When they see others focused on their education and their future, they really have a support network.”

This network has helped foster youths in Santa Clara County buck the national average when it comes to graduation rates. While less than 50 percent of foster kids throughout the country graduate from high school, 77 percent of those who have been through SVCF’s Emerging Scholars program earn their diplomas. And the organization’s YES higher education scholars are 10 times more likely to earn a college degree.

As with public schools, SVCF is more focused these days on helping students prepare for careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Mistry says this focus is as much pragmatic as it is academic.

“Being in Silicon Valley, there’s so much opportunity not just with money but with being introduced to STEM careers,” she adds. “For these youth to be able to live here, where they feel it’s their home, they have to get jobs that pay the rent.”

Now that McCluskey feels at home with running, he says he’d be willing to hoof it for another good cause after his birthday trek.

“My running’s not ending with that run,” he adds. “I’m sure there’ll be something for me down the road.”

He’s had people ask to run with him on June 21, and he encourages others in the community to find ways to give back.

“We can all do something,” he says. “It’s a bonus if we can do it while we’re doing something we love.”

“You don’t have to run 50 miles,” Mistry concurs, “but you can do things that make a serious impact.”

The Silicon Valley Children’s Fund is located at 1871 The Alameda, San Jose. For more information, visit svcf.org.