I am fortunate to be the Board President for TARC, Shawnee County’s most experienced provider offering excellent services, support, and advocacy to children, families, and adults with developmental, intellectual, and related disabilities. TARC’s team continues to build on the dream of the small group of founding families who set out to improve the quality of their children’s lives.
Since 1954, TARC has worked tirelessly to meet the changing needs of those who utilize our services. By adapting to those needs, we have made the addition of our feeding clinic, responded to family feedback by adding different evenings for our SPARKK program, and are in constant motion advocating and building community partnerships.
Last year, TARC served a record number of children and their families through our tiny-k program. Additionally, TARC’s Children’s Services provided key early intervention to 893 children and their families at no cost and with no wait list. Over the past five years we have continued to see an increase in need for early intervention services. The support of our community is crucial for TARC to deliver the much-sought after early intervention services and programs; each dollar invested in home-based programs like TARC’s tiny-k can save $11 in future intervention. Data for 2019 shows that 27 percent of children who exit TARC’s services no longer require special education programs which is undeniably amazing.
TARC Industries and Employment Services (TIES) is an asset to the business community creating job related opportunities along with paid training for those under the TARC umbrella who choose to work and contribute to today’s society. TIES has partnered with more than 500 local and national businesses to meet sub-contracting, mailing, and printing document destruction needs. This is a priceless opportunity for many within the program!
Our annual fundraising events including Winter Wonderland, the TARC Benefit Golf Tournament, and Taste from the Top continue to raise significant dollars that allows TARC to deliver on a number of key, high quality services and our vision. As a board and organization, we are grateful for the constant, unwavering community support. We believe in creating an environment where everyone reaches their fullest potential and YOU help us every day to achieve that goal. We are beyond thankful.
Michael Munson
Board President, TARC Inc.
TARC enhances the lives of people affected by intellectual, developmental and related disabilities through commitment to excellence in service, support and advocacy.
TARC was formed by a small group of local families in 1954. The families were all seeking to improve the lives of their children with intellectual disabilities. In the last sixty-five years, TARC has grown to serve over 2,500 individuals and families in the Topeka and Shawnee County area providing service, support and advocacy.
Last year, more than 400 individuals, 90 businesses and seven foundations chose to support TARC and our programming, including you! Without your support and generosity, TARC would not be able to continue to our work to help everyone reach their fullest potential. Thank you for supporting what is possible with TARC now and into the future.
Ninety (90) cents of every dollar donated to TARC directly benefits programs and services provided to children, families and adults with developmental, intellectual and related disabilities in our community.
Because of your generosity, TARC provided excellent services and supports to 1,469 children and adults in 2019.
Without continued community support, TARC would not be able to continue to provide the quality and quantity of services that we have for the last 66 years. We’re grateful for all our supporters!
Meet Patrick & Karen Moore who have been involved with TARC for nearly 30 years. Most recently, Karen served as the TARC Board President. This year, the Moore Home Team, Patrick and Karen’s Real Estate Business have decided to donate a percentage of their commissions from each home sold in the area back to TARC to support our much needed services and programs.
“Helping individuals and families to their new beginning is our motto in our Real Estate Business. We believe this motto is also applicable for what we hope to accomplish with our partnership with TARC! We have a passion for helping others and we definitely have a special love and passion for supporting TARC. Beginning in 1991 with the birth of our daughter Kelsey and again in 2012 with our grandson Easton, TARC helped us navigate many new challenges and supported us throughout some challenging times in our family’s life.
Our families personal experience and seeing the results of the services, support and advocacy for the many individuals and families TARC serves inspires us to continue to support by volunteering and being a financial contributor.
We want to see these individuals and families get to new beginning in their lives and TARC’s dedicated staff will help them with help from all of us! #TARCPOSSIBLE”
– Patrick & Karen Moore
TARC Inc. Board of Directors