For years, Ken Jaeger, founder and CEO of MorningStar Senior Living, had participated in missions abroad to help people living in impoverished conditions. As he would share stories of the trips with his colleagues at MorningStar, he often found that they responded with enthusiastic interest about the work and the people it helped. Team members frequently expressed a desire to participate in similar efforts themselves.
Jaeger eventually saw an ideal opportunity to lean into that interest. Each year, MorningStar held a three-day meeting at an upscale hotel in Denver – where the company is based – for its executive directors, celebrating them and the work that they had done in the past year. Jaeger decided to cancel the meeting and instead bring together those executive directors and the company’s C-suite and go on a mission.
“There’s so much poverty in this world, and I thought we could do more,” Jaeger said.
As a result, 40 members of the MorningStar team traveled to Tijuana, Mexico in April 2024 to build three homes for those who badly needed them. That was followed by a trip of MorningStar team members in September 2024 to Juarez, Mexico to build a home for a family in need.
MorningStar is a service-oriented company with an emphasis on philanthropy, and Jaeger said the trips underline the company’s core values and founding principles. He said the idea of the missions received overwhelming support from the team members asked to participate from the outset. He saw the impact on the participants at the beginning of their first trip into the Tijuana neighborhood where they would help build three homes in April.
“When we drove out to where we were going to start building, you could have heard of a pin drop,” Jaeger said. “The quietness, the humbleness, the shock and awe of wondering, ‘How do people live like this in today’s world?’ They didn’t know it existed. They would hear me talk about it, but to see it firsthand was different. We have a pretty tight company to begin with, but I’d never seen a team come together with more joy, more happiness, yet humbleness, for those three days. There were tears in their eyes when they would hand the keys over to the new homes to these families. And to a person, they said, ‘Let’s do it again.’”
Steve McConaghie, vice president of leadership and training, said the mission trips are “an extension of who we are.”
“We could choose to give our leaders another conventional training session,” McConaghie said. “But we believe the experience of serving the poor in tangible ways will inspire more compassion in their work and in the world. It offers the opportunity to practice the kind of servant-leadership we want executive directors and others to model daily.”
As part of the September trip, the MorningStar contingent visited a local retirement home where 30 seniors lived in difficult conditions. “It was tough to witness, but we respected the staff who were trying their best to serve vulnerable people in extremely harsh and meager surroundings,” McConaghie said.
The missions only hint at the philanthropic projects that MorningStar is pursuing. Most prominently, the company supports an orphanage in Nicaragua and is a partner of Water For Good, which works to improve water quality and accessibility in Africa.
In addition, each of MorningStar’s senior living communities choose local nonprofits to support in a variety of ways.
“We choose to marshal our resources and put them into action where we see great need,” said Christine Jaeger, director of philanthropy for MorningStar. “It goes to show what can happen when people come together with a common purpose and mission.”
MorningStar also strives to help its team members who might be struggling. Through its benevolence program, employees who are facing a financial difficulty, such as a costly car repair, difficulty making rent, or travel expenses to visit a sick relative, can apply for financial help. A third-party evaluates each request for the program, which is funded by employees.
In addition, MorningStar employees each have the option to donate money to the company’s philanthropic endeavors through payroll deductions, and Jaeger said 100% of the deductions go to the causes. In this way, he said, team members who do not have much money or time to devote to the efforts are able to contribute as they can. Eighty percent of employees contribute.
When visiting the company’s communities, Jaeger said he sometimes will be stopped by employees who have committed to the payroll deductions with questions about how the efforts that they are helping are doing. He said their pride in participating and helping are obvious.
MorningStar is able to follow the people it helps. For instance, Jaeger said kids from the Nicaraguan orphanage are going to college and starting careers, aided in part by the boost they received from the company. One orphan graduated from medical school and is now a doctor serving his old village.
Jaeger said MorningStar’s vendors, investors and partners all are involved in contributing to the various philanthropic efforts, and he emphasizes that “we don’t do it as a sales gimmick. It’s just who we are.”
“You’ve got margin and mission, and you have to balance those two,” Jaeger said. “One can’t outweigh the other. Mission and margin should be so combined that they work together, and you don’t know which one is pushing the other, but we know in our heart that we’re doing the right thing – and then that pushes the margin to be profitable.”
Jaeger said the mission trips will continue for MorningStar, which hopes to raise $60,000 for a group of 50 team members to travel to North Central Mexico in February 2025 to build three more homes.
“I’m always amazed at the awakening of people’s spirits and their awakening of their minds to say, ‘Wow, I did not know the depth of poverty still in this world,’” Jaeger said.
Jaeger said those who complete the trips find that they are driven to do more to help afterward. He believes everyone should understand that “service to others is the key to success and the key to contentment.”
“It moves a person’s heart,” he said. “It moves their soul to be a better person.”
