I wanted to take a moment to talk about what we’ve done this year and where we are going. I wanted to talk about what we’ve accomplished and what we hope to accomplish in the coming three years. The board and staff have spent the last three months in strategic planning, collecting feedback, meeting and discussing goals. We’ve heard a lot of good things, but we’ve also heard some things we need to strengthen. What we need to work on is especially important as we want to reach a pretty significant goal: A CASA for every child in need by 2020.
Child Advocates – Denver CASA’s first accomplishment is that we are on track to serve more kids than we ever have in a calendar year. As of right now, we have served more children than we did last year. Another accomplishment for 2015 is that we now have a volunteer surplus. Basically we’ve improved our website, which improves our ranking in Google. If someone types “volunteer children Denver” we’re usually on the first page and sometimes in the top three. We’ve also improved our internal tracking systems and have moved our entire volunteer application online and into the Optima database. Speaking of the database, we’re very close to having all our volunteers directly enter their information into it which will save everyone time and ensure better information. Lastly, all of this was needed to implement the Peer Coordinator Program, which we have officially begun with this last volunteer class!
On the development side, we had the most successful Light of Hope we ever have. It was truly a great event. It was also the biggest group of people I have spoken too in my life and I survived! Also, during Child Abuse Prevention Month, we continued to strengthen our community and corporate partnerships and had an amazing turn-out at our event at Northfield Mall. We also launched a new Fall Fundraiser which met its goals. We’ve already booked the date for the next one and we are truly excited about growing this event. And, as you might now, we have an anonymous donor who is willing to match $20 for every $100 donated through the end of the year!!
In short, we are better positioned to start a new year than we ever have. Once again, we couldn’t have done it without all of our supporters.
Now the future. The goal over the next three years in some ways is simple: We want to serve all new cases. The best way to get to serving all cases is to make sure all incoming or new cases are being served. We know this is a significant goal which will require everyone’s help. For example, we believe that 120 new cases will be served by the end of the year. There were approximately 350 new cases filed in Denver in 2015. As you can see we have some work to do. This is why developing as many efficiencies within the program (Optima for example) as possible is so important. This is also why Peer Coordinator is so important. This is why you are so important. Once again, we couldn’t do it without you. We hope that you will continue to help us. Thank you.