The staff and Board of Directors of the Retina Foundation of the Southwest met in December 2015 to formulate a Strategic Plan. This meeting resulted in four key goals: mission achievement, financial sustainability, internal operations, and professional development. Our mission is to prevent and restore vision loss through innovative research and treatment, and it is our top priority to ensure our mission remains intact. Our second goal is to ensure financial integrity and long-term sustainability. Moving forward, we plan to maintain or exceed our overall rating of 95. 61 for the Charity Navigator Financial Ratio Standards for nonprofit financial capacity and efficiency. Our third goal is to build organizational capacity and efficiency to support growth. Finally, we plan to attract and retain people with the right knowledge and talent to lead the organization to success.

To ensure our mission remains intact, we plan to establish national research initiatives and public campaigns to make age-related macular degeneration a public health concern and priority. We will continue building strength and expanding capabilities as a leading international center for inherited eye disease with clinical trials in retinitis pigmentosa and inherited retinal degenerations. We will also continue our role as an international leader in pediatric eye research and clinical trials, and expand our capabilities for developing innovative vision screening technology and for assessment of the effects of pediatric eye diseases on reading, motor skills, and quality of life. Finally, we plan to explore the feasibility of expanding research to include Glaucoma or Diabetic Retinopathy. To ensure financial integrity and long-term sustainability, we will meet or exceed Charity Navigator Financial Ratio Standards for nonprofit financial capacity and efficiency, increase primary revenue growth to meet nonprofit standards, and increase and diversify all sources of revenue and donations. Additionally, we will conduct an overhead and operational audit to reduce costs where possible and have adopted a Donor Bill of Rights to protect donor privacy and intentions. In order to build organizational capacity and efficiency to support growth, the Retina Foundation plans to establish a risk management plan and evaluation process to protect RFSW knowledge, assets people, and clients. We will annually report research grant performance to educate the board of directors, staff, and community constituents. Furthermore, we will use standardized human resource systems to attract, retain and develop talent. Finally, we plan to expand community outreach and awareness of RFSW's research, programs and services outside the DFW Metroplex. To meet our final goal and attract and retain people with the right knowledge and talents to lead the organization to success, we plan to oversee transition to the new organizational structure ensuring all positions and committees are defined, documented and aligned. We will continue to refine the Board recruiting, orientation and ongoing assessment and education of the Board and have established an Executive Management Team that meets twice a month to manage operations with distributed leadership and strategic alignment with the board of directors. Lastly, we plan to improve internal communication and collaboration between departments and labs and establish a marketing position and develop a strategic marketing and communication plan.

We have a history of innovative discoveries and groundbreaking accomplishments. The Retina Foundation discovered that DHA in mother's milk is necessary for infant eye and brain development. Now, enhanced formula containing DHA is sold worldwide. We transformed surgical practice by proving that cataracts should be removed in infants to enable normal vision and brain development. Because of our research, cataracts are routinely removed from infants within the first 6 weeks of life. In addition, our research has led to the FDA approval of a prosthetic device for blind people called the Argus II artificial retina, or the “bionic eye". Our patients, who are blind due to advanced retinitis pigmentosa, are able to distinguish letters, objects, and much more when using the Argus II device. These are just a few of our discoveries that have helped to advance our mission to save sight. The seven laboratories at the Retina Foundation are furnished with state-of-the-art pieces of equipment that allow us to provide in-depth vision evaluations to our patients free of charge.

Our five Scientific Directors, Leadership Team, and Chairman of the Board will assess the progress of the Retina Foundation in meeting and exceeding the goals laid out in the 2015 Strategic Plan. We have accomplished much since our Strategic Plan was developed and plan to continue working toward achieving our goals.

To strengthen our mission, the Retina Foundation has joined forces with the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering to create the Clinical Center of Innovation for AMD. This research initiative is being promoted on the website www. innovationAMD. org as well as on multiple Retina Foundation social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Dr. Karl Csaky is spearheading this initiative that now has 5 projects funded to tackle clinical challenges. Our Rose-Silverthorne Retinal Degenerations Laboratory has helped to improve the use of specific testing techniques and technologies to better evaluate the vision of patients with RP and expedite clinical trials and is the only center in the southwest region that provides genetic testing and counseling free of charge. Our Crystal Charity Ball Pediatric Vision Laboratory plans to begin a new iPad binocular treatment study of children born with cataracts and is expanding the movie study to include specially light and dark contrasted cartoons as well as movies to help treat amblyopia effectively. Our Charity Navigator rating is continuing to rise and our Donor Privacy Policy was recently added to the Retina Foundation website to further increase our score. We are working on increasing and diversifying our sources of revenue and donations. There are two new additions to the Retina Foundation's Development Team and we are focusing on identifying new foundations and funding sources from the private and public sector as well as fully utilizing our donor database in order to find potential donors. We have an established a risk management plan for intellectual property that is created within the Retina Foundation of the Southwest. Our financial assets are being directed by Northern Trust and there is a 410K plan for the employees being managed by One America and Mesirow acting as our 3(38) fiduciary. We have an umbrella insurance policy that covers the work of our scientists and patients. There is a Scientific Review Committee which annually reviews the work of our scientists. We distribute via direct mail and put online our Annual Report each year with financial information from the previous year and send foundations and major donors grant reports for the research projects they help support. We are working on increasing awareness of RFSW's research, programs and services outside the DFW Metroplex. Dr. Karl Csaky became the Managing & Medical Director of the Retina Foundation in January of 2016. We have a strong Board of Directors and are looking to further increase the strength of the Board by attracting members with expertise in areas we need help in such as PR, media, and advertising. We have established an Executive Management Committee that meets weekly to manage operations. We have begun utilizing Sunwest Communications to help with our marketing and communication needs for specific projects.