This month represents the start of a new fiscal year for Empower Missouri, and the start of a new strategic plan. The new plan was created using the insights and ideas of hundreds of community partners, board members, staff members, and other Empower Missouri stakeholders, and I couldn’t be more excited about the journey that we’re embarking on. I want to share a few highlights from our plan to give you some insights into what we’re planning for the next three years.
First, we are planning to massively expand our training programs in order to equip more direct service organizations to engage in advocacy work. Direct service organizations are a very important part of our ecosystem because there are urgent needs of families across Missouri that must be met every single day. However, as a sector, we haven’t made a dent in poverty, hunger, or homelessness in this state over the last four decades. We have to marshal our collective power and resources to change the systems that result in people needing those services in the first place. We believe that every nonprofit in the state should be engaging in some level of policy advocacy work, but many organizations are misinformed about their rights to advocate or just simply don’t know where to start. We’re here to help! Over the last two years, we’ve put 20 organizations through our Advocacy Partners Program, currently being rebranded as the Advocacy Accelerator, a year-long cohort-based program to support organizations in building their own advocacy program. Over the next three years, we’re planning to grow that program substantially, ultimately aiming to accept 25 organizations per year into the cohort.
We’re also rebranding our Organizational Membership Program as the Advocacy Alliance, and asking our coalition members to deepen their partnership with us through joining this exciting initiative. Alliance members will have access to intro-level trainings (for those not quite ready for the Advocacy Accelerator) and ongoing trainings and support for Accelerator alumni. Members will also have access to a peer learning community of organizations who are committed to undertaking systems change work over the long haul and know that relationships with other organizations who share that mindset are critical for our collective success. We’re looking for members who want to collaborate with us on a number of initiatives– from our book club series to our Week of Action and beyond. We’re stronger together!
Second, we’ve spent considerable time revisiting our annual calendar of events, and we’ve got some new and exciting opportunities in store to deepen our engagement with coalition members and communities across the state. This year, we’ll be piloting a new “Back-to-Session Bootcamp” at the beginning of January to provide new advocates with the basics (or returning advocates with a refresher course) for a successful session in the Capitol. We’re expanding our the Advocates Book Club to read five titles this year, three in the summer and two in the winter. And in May, we’ll be offering our coalition members a third opportunity, alongside our Anti-Poverty Advocates Summit and our Week of Action, to meet up in person with other coalition members for discussion, networking, and celebrating our collective work during the legislative session.
But, I think the new events that I’m most excited about will be a series of Town Halls, where we’ll be bringing conversations on key issues related to poverty to a community center near you! We’ll be piloting these Town Halls later this year focused on the issue of senior hunger. Seniors experience hunger at a higher rate than the general population (1 in 7 MO seniors experience hunger compared to 1 in 9 Missourians overall). While as a whole, 85% of eligible individuals participate in SNAP, but only approximately 40% of eligible seniors participate in the program. This is a massive problem that contributes greatly to senior hunger statewide, and we’re determined to get those enrollment rates up! Keep an eye out for our calendar of Senior Hunger Town Hall events later this fall.
Finally, of course, the heart of our work will continue to be our state-level policy initiatives. This fall, you can watch for the launch of three new major campaigns across all of our coalitions. In addition to working on the issue of senior hunger, our Food Security team will also be launching a campaign to expand access to free school meals, believing strongly that every child deserves a full belly at school so that they can learn and thrive.
Our Criminal Justice team will be launching a campaign to install a Correctional Oversight entity as an independent observer of the Department of Corrections. Dozens of individuals die in DOC custody every year, often with unsatisfying explanations, and hundreds of residents and DOC staff members are harassed and injured on an annual basis. An early analysis by our task force members estimate that the Department of Corrections spends over $100M annually in taxpayer money paying out damages to former staff who sue the Department. This is an amount equivalent to 15% of the Department’s entire budget. This is an untenable situation for staff and residents alike, and we’re committed to putting an oversight system in place to stop the systemic abuses in our prisons. And, of course, we’ll be continuing our Clean Slate campaign, which took massive strides forward this year. There are few policies that would be more impactful than the automatic expungement of past criminal records that are preventing half a million of our friends and neighbors from finding housing, obtaining good jobs, and fully reintegrating into their families and communities.
And finally, our Affordable Housing team will be launching a campaign to expand the funding mechanism for the Missouri Housing Trust Fund, our primary source of state-level funding for affordable housing assistance, rehabilitation, and creation. Currently, Missouri has one of the most poorly funded trust funds in the country, spending only $0.55 per capita annually on affordable housing initiatives. In comparison, states like Arizona and Florida are spending over $20 per capita annually. This is partially because the funding mechanism for the trust fund (a $3.00 fee on real estate transactions) hasn’t been adjusted since our Trust Fund was set up in 1994. We’ll be raising awareness around this issue while also meeting with legislators on various mechanisms to dramatically increase the revenue designated to this fund on an annual basis.
And, when they aren’t busy reshaping the funding model for the trust fund, our housing organizers will be seeding two new tenant unions in Central and Southern Missouri. With this month’s Supreme Court decision on the Grants Pass case still stinging housing advocates around the country, it has never been more urgent to make sure that tenants have full protections to stay stably housed whenever possible, and that more housing is quickly available to avoid even more unhoused individuals being arrested and criminally charged for simply existing without a home. The Grants Pass decision opens the door for the unjust criminalization of our homeless, and we will have to be extremely diligent to ensure homelessness does not become an immediate pipeline to incarceration.
We can’t do any of this work alone. We’re strong because of our hundreds of coalition members across the state and thousands of supporters like you who partner with us to fuel this work every single day. There will be plenty of opportunities for organizations and individuals alike to join us in big and small ways over the next three years. Ready to get started? We are!
We are in the process of updating and expanding information on our website for all of these programs and initiatives, so check back often for more information. In the meantime, please make sure you are subscribed to our emails or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, o LinkedIn to get all of the latest updates!
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