Dear Brethren,
I hope this issue of The Ohio Beacon finds you and your families doing well as we prepare for the upcoming holidays.
We are certainly in the full swing of holiday preparations at The Ohio Masonic Communities. Here, you’ll read about Hope for the Holidays, an outreach of The Ohio Masonic Communities Resource Center offering hope and support to our brethren and community members in need. New this year, you can support residents at Springfield Masonic Community and Browning Masonic Community by joining us at holiday events sponsored by their SPRIG volunteer groups. The Festival of Trees and Festival of Wreaths are also great ways for you to offer financial support through The Ohio Masonic Communities Foundation by purchasing your own decorated tree or wreath in the silent auction. More details about these events can be found at the bottom of this page or by visiting omcfoundation.org.
As we wind down the year, I want to thank each of you for your support. Whether you give your time, support our mission financially, or spread the word of the good work we’re doing, you play an important role in helping our communities thrive.
While the renovations and expansions to our buildings and campuses are exciting, it’s the impact we make in people’s lives that’s key. As of writing this letter, The Ohio Masonic Communities Resource Center has already assisted 1,570 individual members of our Fraternity and the community just this year. Each of them has a story of the physical, social, or emotional need that we offered them support with. You can read one of those stories here.
Now is the time that we shift our focus towards 2024 and how we shape the future of our organization. The final phase of the expansion project at Western Reserve Masonic Community will be completed by the end of the year, and we expect to begin accepting more short-term rehab patients and long-term skilled nursing care residents early in 2024. With that wrapping up, we are shifting our focus to Springfield Masonic Community. We’re developing our repositioning plan and evaluating both what we currently offer and what the needs of the local community are. We are evaluating several other service lines to ensure we are meeting the needs of our communities. We’re still early in the planning stages, but we’ll provide updates on these plans in the coming months.
Lastly, we are taking a deep dive into the trends of needs we are seeing through The Ohio Masonic Communities Resource Center throughout the state. We will also be sending out a survey to several thousand of those individuals who have received services to garner their feedback. This will allow us to evaluate current and future needs, and appropriately align services in an efficient and effective manner. We will share our findings in a future issue, and we will continue to discuss them in our travels as well.
Stay safe this fall and winter and enjoy the holiday season with your families and friends.
Fraternally,
Brother Scott Buchanan
CEO, The Ohio Masonic Communities
