The image of building this past year captures the essence of what we achieved. The year began with us developing a new strategic plan to serve as our blueprint for the next five years. This plan builds on our legacy of thought leadership and advocacy in the field of blindness and low vision, further anchored by our long-standing partnerships and a renewed commitment to our financial stewardship. When our Board of Trustees voted in November 2023 to adopt the new strategic plan, we all hit the ground running, eager to build from this blueprint and map out our next five years.
The plan will carry us through 2029 and centers on five core strategic goals. The first three goals are programmatic, each leveraging a pillar of AFB that has been the benchmark of our success for the past century. The first goal is to generate knowledge that drives change. The second goal is to expand possibilities through workforce programs and community engagement. The third programmatic goal is to build a national narrative on blindness. The remaining two goals will help create a solid foundation capable of lifting these three pillars: fostering a high-performance workplace and achieving financial stability.
To help ensure this strategic plan is effectively executed, we implemented a new business operating system in preparation for the strategic plan launch. This new management paradigm is called System & Soul, and it seeks to harmonize business units across the organization, breaking down silos and cultivating a culture that works together on shared company objectives. These objectives are comprised of milestones that each department leads. These milestones are the bricks that will build our dream house. With our new blueprint spread out to us, each member of the AFB team plays a key role in building our success.
The following pages in this annual report look at our past year’s work and how we began to build out our new strategic plan: dream by dream, goal by goal, and brick by brick.
Eric Bridges
AFB President & CEO
