A Texas-based senior living community is using a resident-driven scholarship program to bring purpose to the lives of residents while contributing to employee growth and loyalty.
In 2015, Corpus Christi-based Mirador Retirement Community, a nonprofit, faith-based Methodist Retirement Communities continuing care retirement / life plan community, launched the Mirador Resident Council to provide residents with an opportunity to become involved in philanthropy.
Without any restrictions on how to use the initial $3,000 in seed funding the resident council received each year for its first three years, the CCRC’s independent living residents voted on providing employee scholarships. Mirador’s resident scholarship program is fully funded, promoted and governed by a resident scholarship committee to benefit employees seeking career growth.
“We were looking for something that affected everyone — all of us are very affected by employees,” Mirador Resident Council President Sally Rausch explained during Monday’s LeadingAge membership call. “It was something everyone could understand and wanted to support.”
The only requirement for recipients is that they must have worked at the CCRC for at least six months. The council accepts requests for scholarships for any field of learning, certification or licensure. A common request, Rausch said, is for welding scholarships, even though the community does not have any jobs for welders.
“Many employees are the first in their family to go to college; they have not had a mentor in the past,” she said. “We can provide that. In independent living, we have a lot of years of experience in parenting and are willing to contribute and be a stand-in and substitute parent if that’s needed.”
The resident council has awarded 79 employee scholarships since 2015, spending $135,000. Mirador Executive Director Deborah Nugent said that the community’s staff demographics reflect the Corpus Christi community at large — 50% of employees are Hispanic, and many need training in trades to pick up additional work and support their families.
Along with resident donations, scholarships are funded by resident transition-related sales of furnishings and other items from those who move to higher levels of service or who pass away. Items offered are for sale to residents and employees at a “favorable” price point.
The council recently took its fundraising to the next level by soliciting gifts from vendors and other companies that do business with the community.
Rausch said that the scholarship program gives residents a sense of purpose, whether they donate funds or volunteer to help out during transition sales. She shared two success stories of former employees who were scholarship recipients:
- A 20-year-old dining room server who had lost both of her parents found her way to Mirador in her search for substitute parents. The residents drew the woman out of her shell and learned that she had finished one year of college before her parents died. She received a scholarship to finish college, eventually graduating from Texas A&M Corpus Christi. Today, she works for a major investment company as an investment counselor.
- Another employee, a certified nursing assistant, received a scholarship to pursue education to become a hospice nurse. As a young girl, the employee had lived with her grandparents after the deaths of her own parents. When her grandfather became ill, a hospice nurse explained what was happening with her grandfather and helped her cope with the loss. The experience left an impression and created a career path that the scholarship allowed her to pursue.
Nugent said the scholarship program is a great staff recruitment tool, adding that it also has helped the CCRC retain staff members who have used scholarships to enhance their skills and move up in careers within the company. Nugent also took the resident council on the road to other Methodist Retirement Communities to share their experience. Five of the company’s eight Texas communities now participate in a scholarship program, and in 2022, those communities raised $91,000 and awarded 23 scholarships.
“We’re here to serve the residents, but for the residents to have a purpose in life, they need to have value,” Nugent said. “Whenthe can give back and mentor — they trained me how to do my job here — it helps all of us, and we all have a much better daily living and working life.”
