NAMI Greater Mississippi Valley

NAMI continues to build partnerships with education, healthcare and social service providers to better connect its nationally-developed programming into the community's continuum of care for individuals living with a mental health condition and their families. NAMI programs complement the work of these providers and leverage their resources include funding sources. As an example, a partnership with UnityPoint Health - Robert Young Center continues as NAMI Family Support Group facilitators serve parents of at-risk youth experiencing suicidal episodes.

NAMI programming is unique in that it is designed to fill an information gap for families in particular. NAMI serves as a family-friendly hub for information, contacts, and support. NAMI's "secret sauce" is our volunteers. They have lived experience with mental illness and have been trained to deliver information to families experiencing trauma.

Our goal is to create greater community awareness, and to engage more families to effectively advocate for their loved one. We encourage families to seek appropriate supports available in a community setting.

Goal 1: Improve Family Understanding of Mental Illness and Access to Supports
Participant evaluations collect and analyze data. Areas looked at include mental illness understanding, coping ability, anxiety/worry levels, and timeliness of receiving treatments and supports. Measurements include pre and post surveys, teacher ratings, numbers in attendance, and a 30-day follow up.

Goal 2: Community Benefit
Community education and outreach efforts help reduce stigma and create a better understanding and acceptance of those living with mental illness. This support structure speeds recovery and reduces ER visits, hospitalizations and jail time. NAMI will share its performance reports with partnering agencies to help build a better community safety net.

Over the course of the Fall of 2018, the NAMI GMV full board identified five areas to develop its strategic goals for 2019 – 2021. These areas are: education, advocacy, support, financial stability/resources and governance.

Strategy #1 addresses the expansion of programming across the 8-county service area:

Strategic Goal 1: Provide individuals living with a mental health condition and their families NAMI evidence-based and other nationally-developed education and support programs designed to improve the quality of their lives. These are provided at no cost to participants.
1. Develop partnerships to increase referrals and sustainable revenue streams for programs.
2. Find additional and more effective methods to market NAMI and its services.
3. Increase the frequency of programs and number of participants
4. Identify, retain and train volunteer teachers and facilitators
5. Increase impact of education programs and support groups.

While honoring its founding as a grassroots organization, NAMI Greater Mississippi Valley has worked to create a professionally-run organization with transparent systems, repeatable processes, and measurable output. To ensure the organization can serve its communities efficiently and effectively, the affiliate has since 2016 upgraded its office systems, financial reporting system, hired its first Executive Director, Education Coordinator, and Development Director. It has also recruited and trained 30 volunteer instructors and facilitators. In 4Q 2020 - 98% of all board, volunteers and staff successfully completed a 7-hour intercultural training. In 2Q 2021 - 14 key volunteers and staff completed an additional 13 hours of intercultural training.

The Board of Directors completed a three-year strategic plan with goals, measurable outputs, and board member assignments in 1Q 2019. An aggressive recruitment campaign has seated 13 new board members with one additional seat currently being recruited. This will help NAMI back fill skill sets needed for organizational growth.

Board members are specifically assisting with making calls on local employers and community organizations to develop long-term relationships for sustainable funding and referral sources for NAMI programming.

A board Education Committee is working with volunteer healthcare professionals to develop quality improvement initiatives. In addition to following the national organization's instructions for evidence-based reporting, the affiliate is developing best practices for education participant quality measurement, and monitoring of instructor/facilitator continuous measurement, education and improvement.

A board Diversity Committee is launched in 2021 to focus on expanding community education into Black, Latinx, LGBTQIA and Veterans communities.

A board Fundraising Committee works with staff to execute on 2 major event fundraisers annually, provide assistance with program grant funding requests and provide introductions to community members who can assist NAMI in meeting its goal.

Saturating eight counties is an ambitious goal. We are covering 5 counties now with in-person programming. We have retooled our "front door" to cover informational seminars and a family support group virtually. Our goal is to have funding sources directly fund specific education programs. Developing partnerships continues to be our focus.