Strategic Plan Executive Summary
Community Input + Process
To ensure the strategic plan reflects the diversity of our community, we employed three different tactics to engage directly with community members: listening circles, 1:1 conversations with individuals, and conversations focused on building trust and healing with community partners.
Over two years, we hosted Community Listening Circles across Missouri, ensuring diverse representation from various regions and identities, including sessions centering queer and trans voices. Additional engagement came through Brews with a Board Member, offering one-on-one conversations with us directly. Finally, the “Hearing the Hurt and Healing the Hurt” initiative, led by Rev. Dietra Wise Baker and Better World Collaborative, provided vital insights derived from 31 interviews with past and present staff, board members, and partner organizations.
This feedback and the early work of our board’s “Healing, Equity, Power, and Privilege” committee, helped us shape this strategic plan. Staff input through interviews and discussions ensured transparency, alignment with capacity, and a collective approach to driving the organization’s future.
Mission + Vision
Mission:
PROMO confronts systemic inequities to liberate the full spectrum of the LGBTQ+ community from discrimination and oppression.
Vision:
Missouri is a state in which LGBTQ+ people - every race, ethnicity, demographic, zip code, and experience - are valued and thriving.
Values
People-First:
We recognize the inherent worth and dignity of every individual. The significance of our work grounds us in a deep sense of responsibility and accountability.
Liberation: We believe that collective liberation is brought about through people working together to achieve their shared interests. Our struggles across the LGBTQ+ spectrum and beyond are interconnected and our liberation is bound together. In pursuit of solidarity, we lead on issues that most impact our community and actively support others’ leadership on issues that intersect with our community.
Intersectionality: We strive to be radically inclusive and to center and amplify the experiences of our most marginalized community members within the LGBTQ+ spectrum and across the geographic diversity of Missouri.
Joy: We celebrate our queer existence. Our joy is a reminder that despite the challenges we face, our passion and hope drive us to persist in our efforts. Joy fuels our determination for our community to ultimately triumph over adversity.
Learning: We recognize and celebrate that growth and improvement comes from learning through humility and ongoing evolution.
Clarifying PROMO’s Lane
Key goals of this strategic planning process were to address past challenges stemming from confusion around what PROMO does and does not do, and to clearly articulate how PROMO’s work creates impact in the community.
PROMO’s theory of change and information on lane clarity can be found in the full strategic plan document linked above. PROMO recognizes that the entire community is best served when we are part of a larger ecosystem working collaboratively to build Missouri into an equitable state
Our collective liberation will not come from one person or one organization, but through all LGBTQ+ people and organizations – with diverse visions and missions – working together.
Theory of Change
Build power and mobilize supporters through deep canvassing, storytelling, narrative change, and intersectional organizing
Changed hearts and minds of people who embrace shared values and what we have in common
Expanded access for LGBTQ+ people to rights and resources that create healthy and fulfilling lives
Educate and train leaders and community members on LGBTQ+ policy and advocacy issues
An organized base of people who will take action to support LGBTQ+ equality
then we’ll create ... resulting in ... if we ...
Advance intentional policy and advocacy by building relationships with elected, appointed, and community leaders and bringing LGBTQ+ voices to the table
LGBTQ+ narratives told by our own voices that humanize every facet of LGBTQ+ life, combat misinformation, and center joy
More elected and appointed policymakers and community leaders that support LGBTQ+ rights
Connectedness and solidarity among the LGBTQ+ community and with our allies and coalition partners
Missouri will be a safe and welcoming place to live, work, and thrive for LGBTQ+ people
Missouri’s elected and appointed officials will actively support LGBTQ+ rights
Our organized LGBTQ+ community will self-mobilize to advocate and advance our vision
A majority of people will form an inclusive and broad coalition that supports LGBTQ+ equality
Strategic Priorities + Goals
Strategic Priority 1:
Organize and Mobilize PROMO’s Base of Support
Impact Statement (Guiding Star)
By 2027, PROMO will have built a statewide base of people that take action to ensure that LGBTQ+ people in Missouri are valued and thriving.
Goals within this priority focus on: expanding PROMO’s field organizing capacity to create a community of advocates ready to take action, establishing deep canvassing programs, voter mobilization and education, leadership development, narrative change, and faith-based organizing.
Strategic Priority 2:
Strengthen Accountability to Community + Collaboration Impact Statement (Guiding Star)
By 2027, PROMO will have built new relationships, structures, and practices to incorporate community voice into its work, with particular attention to the voices of the most marginalized people in the LGBTQ+ community. PROMO will have continued to contribute to the ecosystem and infrastructure of intersectional organizing and advocacy in Missouri as aligned with our mission.
Goals within this priority focus on:
Community transparency and healed and healing relationships with key partners and community members. Examples include:
1. A Community Advisory Council model and pipeline to leadership
2. Continuing to diversify staff and board leadership to reflect the full spectrum of the LGBTQ+ community
3. Creating on-going learning opportunities for board and staff focused on privilege, power, equity, and healing
4. Participating in existing structures for intentional and regular relationship building with partner organizations
Strategic Priority 3:
Change Policy and Practice to Make Missouri a Better Place for the LGBTQ+ Community Impact Statement (Guiding Star)
By 2027, PROMO will have created positive LGBTQ+ policy change in a wider variety of settings across Missouri by expanding the base of partners, elected officials, and community leaders who champion LGBTQ+ policy and inclusive practice.
Goals within this priority focus on: Combating misinformation and increasing access to policy and legislative updates, proactive statewide policy/campaign work focused on developing model policy and building relationships with leaders, defensive statewide policy/campaign work focused on harm mitigation while protecting PROMO’s ability to advance its other work, strategically reimagining the PAC, placing LGBTQ+ Missourians and allies on commissions and agencies, and focusing on school boards, the business community, and municipalities.
Strategic Priority 4:
Sustain and Grow Staff, Volunteer, and Financial Capacity Impact Statement (Guide Star)
By 2027, PROMO will sustainably increase its resources to expand the people power of its staff, board, and volunteers while maintaining a culture of care.
Goals within this priority focus on: Employing community-centric fundraising principles to raise additional resources to support the strategic priorities through values-aligned strategies including:
1. Investing in an expanded staffing structure aligned with PROMO’s culture of community care
2. Utilizing PROMO’s volunteer base more effectively to support the organization’s mission
3. Reimagining and implementing a new non-hierarchical giving circle