Epilepsy Services Foundation, Inc.

ESF has four main goals:

* Maintain and enhance a strong, enduring, responsive, financially stable, accountable and caring organization.
* Develop and implement family programs.
* Provide epilepsy education and awareness programs.
* Expand and enhance community outreach and partnerships, awareness and understanding about epilepsy.

Goal 1:
1. Endowment
• Enhance marketing efforts regarding donation options: emphasize naming ESF as a recipient in a Life Insurance policy (10,20 or a higher %) or charitable gifts of appreciated securities (donation of actual stock shares).
2. Grants
• Increase grant funding by 10%/year
3. Special Awareness/Charity Events
• Utilize current events to increase levels of fundraising by 20% over 3 year: Walk For Epilepsy, Golf for Kids Classic, ESF SeptemBEERfest
• Utilize AmazonSmile, Facebook and Go Fund Me as charity/fundraising initiatives.
4. Direct Mail: grow response to annual appeal at Thanksgiving
5. Major/Matching Gifts
• Develop a major gifts program
• Enlist Board to identify one major gift donor to make a donation to ESF
• Enlist Board to identify employers that give matching gifts.
• Market the use of matching gifts from employers or by a donor(s) giving their gift as a match to offer an incentive to other prospective donors to give.

Goal 2:
1. Increase participation in the “Meet & Greet" program for parents, children, teens and young adults and their families.
2. Increase participation in the Grace's Hope Hospital Visitation Program and the HOPE Mentoring Program.
3. Increase participation in epilepsy camp and epilepsy family retreat weekends.

Goal 3:
1. Provide Epilepsy Mentor training program twice/year.
2. Provide medical education programs utilizing neurologists and epileptologists.
3. Provide community epilepsy education programs in schools, school nurses and bus drivers.
4. Provide epilepsy programs to day care personnel.

Goal 4:
1. Engage the board, volunteers and persons affected by epilepsy in community educational events, partnering opportunities and awareness events.
2. Create greater community awareness for persons affected by epilepsy through educational and support group programs, social media, public service messages and fundraising programs. Utilize the services of teen and young adult individuals who are adept at using social media and know what young people want to see and read: shorter articles, videos and persons of interest.
3. Engage epileptologists and neurologists to help ESF make available information and resources for families.
4. Continue to expand school and day care educational programs.
5. Create an “Ask the Neurologist" section in ESF website or on Facebook to address Questions and Information Issues.

Goal 1.
ESF can meet these goals due to an active group of 150+ volunteers who support staff in developing and implementing the goals. Together with the staff, the volunteers assist in developing the steps ESF must take to insure the Foundation remains a viable force within the community. The volunteers look at exploring and developing additional donation options, creating new awareness events and seeking additional grants and opportunities to solicit major gifts.

Goal 2.
There are approximately 16,000 children, teens and young adults with epilepsy living in ESF's service area. We are utilizing volunteers to visit families of children newly diagnosed with epilepsy while in the hospital. We utilize social media to expand participation in the epilepsy camp program and the family retreat program.

Goal 3.
To meet the needs of these individuals we have more volunteers to help ESF expand our training programs so more families can assist us with our community awareness, mentoring and educational programs.

Goal 4.
Together with volunteers, ESF is expanding its social media program to market our services via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to reach out to more of the 16,000 individuals and their families living in our service area. We have updated our website which has increased the number of persons seeking information about ESF and its services from less than 100/month to 500/month. We have asked neurologists to write articles or submit articles of interest that we can share with families on our social media sites.

Goal 1:
* ESF has one new securities donation and one life insurance policy that lists ESF as a 10% beneficiary. We need more and will enlist the help of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Planners-Tampa during the coming year.
* ESF wrote several recurring grants and 4 additional grants during the past year. ESF received the recurring grants and all 4 additional grants.
* ESF increased it awareness events funding from $25,000 to almost $60,000.
* ESF has not accomplished to date a major gifts program or donor.

Goal 2:
* The Meet & Greet Support Groups are increasing as more families the ESF service programs like the Family Retreat Weekends. We have more families participating because we center the support groups around social settings that enable the families to have fun while talking about the impact of epilepsy on their children and their families. The greatest results are seen in the Young Adults groups who has seen an increase from 3 persons coming together to 15+ during the year.
* The Hospital Visitation has 4 active volunteers who go to St. Joseph's Hospital when contacted by the nurse coordinator.
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Goal 3.
* This year we had 12 participants in the HOPE Mentoring Program. These individuals helped us to give presentations to schools, school nurses, bus drivers, community groups and the hospital visitation program.. This is one area that has become a positive force for educating more people in the community.
* We highlighted the positive impact of other programs in goal 2.

Goal 4:
* The social media program is a new work in progress. We now have an adult, a teen and a young adult who have agreed to enhance ESF's social media sites. The teen and young adult will be offering weekly articles geared toward teens and young adult. They created hashtags and postings to reach more people than 2,000 regulars during the past year, an increase of a thousand persons. Their goal is to reach thousands more.