Midwest Family Lending Blog

MFLCares is pleased to announce its 2020 calendar! The selected charities include:

• Best Buddies
• Help-A-Heart
• Riverside Bible Camp
• Canistota Fire & Rescue
• Urbandale Food Pantry
• Dorothy’s House             
• HDSA
• Iowa Able Foundation
• Bryce’s Warriors
• EveryStep
• U Can
• Hopespoke

Through MFLCares, Midwest Family Lending employees nominate and select one cause a month that is dear to their hearts.

Each charity will be spotlighted in its respective month. We’ll share how it supports our communities and how you can join our team to help get involved. All of MFLCares’ 2020 causes will also receive a $2020 donation in support of their missions.

“We started the MFLCares program in 2016 in an effort to create a conduit between our communities and the incredible causes within them. However, throughout the last four years, it has become much more than that. MFLCares is a huge part of who we are as a company. Each month, we get the opportunity to meet the real people behind these organizations, and it’s always both inspiring and humbling. We are proud just to play a small part in growing the awareness for these admirable charities.”

Chuck West, president of Midwest Family Lending

MFLCares is a program of Midwest Family Lending, a local mortgage company committed to creating customers for life and to community impact.

Best Buddies Iowa has been selected as MFLCares’ first featured charity for 2020 and has received an $2020 donation through Midwest Family Lending’s MFLCares program. The funds will be used in support of the nonprofit’s mission to “establish a global volunteer movement that creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment, leadership development, and inclusive living for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).”

Through MFLCares, Midwest Family Lending employees nominate and select one cause a month to support that is dear to their hearts. All of MFLCares’ 2020 causes will also receive a $2020 donation in support of their missions.

“My wife and I were fortunate enough to get invited to the Best Buddies’ Chef Challenge last fall, and we were very impressed with the organization,” says Chuck West, president of Midwest Family Lending. “We found the participants in the program to be incredibly inspiring and very deserving of the help Best Buddies provides. The experience compelled us to better understand their program, which resulted in Best Buddies being our choice for the MFLCares charity of the month for January. We hope this helps share their incredible story.”

What They Do

The IDD community that Best Buddies serves includes, but is not limited to, people with Down syndrome, autism, Fragile X, Williams syndrome, cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury and other undiagnosed disabilities.

Programs include:

Best Buddies is the world’s largest organization dedicated to ending the social, physical and economic isolation of the 200 million people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Its programs empower the special abilities of people with IDD by helping them form meaningful friendships with their peers, secure successful jobs, live independently, improve public speaking, self-advocacy and communication skills, and feel valued by society. Just because these individuals have intellectual disabilities doesn’t mean they don’t have value.

Best Buddies Iowa has programs in 200 schools across the state. They are the 35-year-old program’s foundation. However, earlier just this month, Best Buddies Iowa launched its career placement program, making Iowa the 17^th state to offer one. The goal is to provide full-time employment with benefits with an employer of interest to the Buddy.

How You Can Help

A lot has changed within the last 50 years, for Americans with IDD, but there is still a tremendous amount of work to be done. There are many ways to have a positive impact in the lives of Iowans with IDD through the Best Buddies program:

• Join the Friendship Walk, May 2, 2020 at Western Gateway Park
• Consider a position on its Advisory Board
• Assist with a corporate donation
• Be a Buddy
• Employ an individual with IDD at you place of business

The job we do every day at Best Buddies isn’t about the work. It’s about the stories. Positively impacting the lives of Iowans with IDD and our network of volunteers who make it happen. Everyone has their own story to tell, but all of them are about being a part of something bigger than ourselves.

-Carrie Mueller, State Director, Best Buddies International

MFLCares is a program of Midwest Family Lending, a local mortgage company committed to creating customers for life and to community impact.

Thankful. Grateful. Blessed. These words adorn everything from throw pillows to dish towels currently on display on store shelves and remind us that November is a season of gratitude. We have so much to be thankful for in the harvest season and throughout the year.

We often don’t think about the blessings of finding purpose through employment or autonomy in daily activities of living. These are gifts people with disabilities don’t take for granted.

November’s MFLCares Charity Christian Opportunity Center (COC) has been proving what’s possible for Iowans with disabilities for 50 years. COC prides itself on its caring and quality staff and its responsiveness to the needs and wants of the people it serves.

“Christian Opportunity Center (COC) is so incredibly grateful to be chosen as the November MFLCares’ recipient,” says Amy Zuck, COC’s public information director. “This donation will truly make a difference in the lives of people with disabilities in our residential, vocational and spiritual services.”

Christian Opportunity Center (COC) staff and volunteers provide services to more than 300 people with disabilities in four regions of southern Iowa. COC offers a full range of services for working and living in Des Moines, Indianola, Knoxville, Oskaloosa, and Pella. Work skills training includes the Community-Based Employment (CBE) program and small group employment. Training in living skills includes homes with 24-hour staff support, apartments with minimal staff support, and community-based living arrangements with follow-along support.

Midwest Family Lending employees selected COC as November’s charity after learning about the impact the public benefit corporation has had on one of the team’s family members.

“When we heard the reason COC was chosen, it made this experience so special to us,” Amy says. “To be selected by a family member of an individual that we have supported in the past for this donation truly touched every employee of COC’s heart.” 

Check out this video featuring interviews with COC employees and people supported to learn more:

MFLCares is a program of Midwest Family Lending, a local mortgage company committed to creating customers for life and community impact. Through MFLCares, Midwest Family Lending employees nominate and select one cause a month that is dear to their hearts to receive a donation. Check out our calendar to learn more about these great causes in our area.

Though each of the charities MFLCares supports throughout the year are meaningful to Midwest Family Lending’s employees, Bryce’s Warriors Foundation holds a special significance. Bryce was the son of one of our loan officers, and Bryce’s memory and impact lives on through the foundation in his name. Midwest Family Lending was honored to present a $1800 donation to this cause dear to our hearts.

“We thank Midwest Family Lending for this very generous donation,” says Bryce’s Warriors Foundation’s Michelle Draisey. “This kind of financial support will allow Bryce’s Warriors to expand the support that we give to heart transplant children and their families. Our very small and modest charity is growing because of people and businesses like Midwest Family Lending. You are the reason we are able to find new areas that we can make an impact in the lives of these children and their families.”

Bryce’s Warriors Foundation supports the Bryce Draisey Memorial Dollars for Scholars scholarship fund, families of children waiting for and who have had heart transplants, Children’s Miracle Network and Iowa Donor Network. Funds raised through the Foundation also provide Thanksgiving meals to children and families in the PICU at University of Iowa Hospitals, as well as food and gas cards to those families in need while a child is living at the hospital.

“MFLCares is a blessing to Bryce’s Warriors as our largest single donor three years in a row now. We can’t thank you enough!”

-Michelle Draisey, Bryce’s Warriors Foundation and mother of Bryce

Record Funds Raised at the 7th Annual Bryce Draisey Memorial Golf Tournament

The majority of Bryce’s Warrior’s funds are raised through an annual golf tournament held each September at which Midwest Family Lending staff participated. About 130 golfers attended the 7^th Annual Bryce Draisey Memorial Golf Tournament, which raised record funds of about $18,000!

The Draiseys credit the event’s success to the ideas, support and hard work of Bryce’s Warrior’s volunteer board.

“Derek, Brooklyn, and I would like to thank everyone who was involved this year whether you donated funds, prizes, raffles items or treats, helped out with the tournament, or played in the tournament,” Michelle says. “To all of those who have been involved with Bryce’s Warriors since day one, in any capacity, your continued love and support overwhelms us continually.”

Learn more about Bryce’s Warriors Foundation and its four missions here. Bryce was proud to spread his story to as many people as he could to create awareness for organ donation. In doing this, he also spread a story of love, courage, and forgiveness that all who knew him will remember.

MFLCares is a program of Midwest Family Lending, a local mortgage company committed to creating customers for life and community impact. Through MFLCares, Midwest Family Lending employees nominate and select one cause a month that is dear to their hearts to receive a donation. Check out our calendar to learn more about these great causes in our area.