At Easterseals Midwest, we are committed to empower, advocate, innovate, and connect disability support to those who count on us.

Over the past year, we’ve developed a strategic plan to move our organization forward. We’ve established this plan using your input, talking with donors, staff, the individuals we support and their families, and community partners.

Through surveys, focus groups, and interviews, we’ve ensured that this plan not only highlights what we’re doing right - but strengthens and resolves the areas with room for improvement. With your input as a guide, we’ve committed to four promises to take us into the future:

1. We will provide the best disability support to everyone who counts on us.
2. We will invest in our teammates to retain, develop, and attract mission-driven talent.
3. We will advocate for the people we support and our workforce.
4. We will be financially strategic to fuel innovation and growth.

We promise to provide the best disability support to everyone who counts on us.

We will get an “A” in satisfaction.

We are always asking for feedback, looking to see where we’re getting it right and where we need to increase our efforts. Our goal is to ensure that we’re getting an “A” when it comes to the way people grade the support we provide, our staff, and the overall quality of their experience with Easterseals.

We will serve more individuals and families.

We want to offer our services to everyone who needs them and this includes surrounding areas that may not have access to the disability support they need. Strategically, we plan to expand our current programs throughout Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas. We will also create new services where and when they are needed.

We will increase people’s health and happiness.

Health and happiness are important parts of life, and include both physical and emotional well being. To ensure both of these are being elevated for the people we support, we want to help people get and maintain competitive employment; decrease the number of emergency medical care visits; and keep people involved and active in their communities.

We will invest in our teammates to retain, develop, and attract mission-driven talent.

We will be an employer people want to stay with.

About 50% of our staff leave each year, so we’re going to invest in proven strategies to help new team members transition into their roles. We’ll also invest in innovative management tools to help keep great people with us.

We will increase pay for our direct support professionals.

We want our staff to be happy at work, and that includes happiness around how much they’re being paid. We will negotiate rate increases and adjust our program modeling so our staff can be paid more.

We will increase the diversity of our leadership teams.

We will train our next generation of leaders with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. At the end of the day, we will foster a sense of belonging among individuals of all different cognitive styles, backgrounds, demographics, and culture.

We promise to advocate for the people we support and our workforce.

We will advocate for more funding.

We’re going to keep pushing for the government to increase our funding. With more funding, we can pay our staff more, and serve more people who need our services.

We will get more people involved in our advocacy work.

We want to make sure the voices of the disability community are heard in Jefferson City and beyond. We’re going to mobilize and engage our advocacy network to gain 300 new advocates.

We will expand our advocacy into Kansas and Illinois.

We advocate for everyone that we serve. With services expanding into Kansas and Illinois that means our advocacy efforts will expand, as well.

We promise to be financially strategic to fuel growth and innovation.

We will bring in more money than we spend.

The people we support count on us no matter what. We want to increase our income and decrease our spending to have greater financial security.

We will increase revenue from all of our programs.

Right now, most of our revenue is from our Community Living Services. We want to balance this by boosting the funds coming in from our other services.

We will increase our savings.

We want to increase our savings to be better prepared for emergency situations.

We will grow our fundraising.

Fundraising and donations are a large part of our revenue. We want to increase our major and individual gift programs, our foundation giving, and our planned giving efforts.