photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Sharon Spratt poses in her office with a framed article from a 1994 Lawrence Journal-World about her appointment as CEO of Cottonwood Inc.

“Cottonwood has always had an entrepreneurial kind of spirit,” Sharon Spratt says as she reflects on her years leading the Lawrence nonprofit that provides services and jobs to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Spratt, Cottonwood Inc.’s CEO, is retiring this summer after 34 years. The entrepreneurial spirit she’s talking about refers to the people who have been able, with Cottonwood’s help, to take their lives into their own hands. Cottonwood has provided employment opportunities in manufacturing and order-fulfillment work for people who might otherwise have struggled to find work and a sense of purpose.

Spratt says her time at Cottonwood has provided her with a daily dose of joy from the people she serves and serves with.

“A lot of people in the corporate world are looking for their ‘why.’ Our ‘why’ is here every day,” Spratt says about Cottonwood clients and her co-workers.

Spratt graduated from Kansas State University with a degree in elementary and special education. She started working with adult support services in the late 1970s in Fort Myers, Florida, with an organization called LARC, and she never looked back, she says.

Her time at Cottonwood, 2801 W. 31st St., has been about growth — the growth of the business and at times the building too. Cottonwood was built in 1972 after philanthropist Anna “Petey” Cerf donated 40 acres of land with the caveat that a building be built and that services start within a year of the donation, Spratt says.

Spratt has overseen three major expansions of the grounds since becoming CEO. The first nearly doubled the size of the small facility in 1994, but the following construction projects transformed Cottonwood from a small office building into a group of warehouses capable of taking on major manufacturing contracts.

Cottonwood then increased its job placement capabilities even further with a program called JobLink, which connected clients with community businesses, Spratt says.

“We were providing community employment just to the people we were providing services to,” Spratt says. “Then we decided we could offer job services to people with any barrier to employment, not just those with disabilities.”

Carl Locke has worked with Spratt for about 20 years as a member of the Cottonwood Inc. policy board. He joined the board after Spratt gave a presentation at his Rotary Club meeting. Locke says his wife had toured the Cottonwood facility and had told him how Cottonwood was helping the community. Spratt’s presentation was the final push for him to get involved.

“I was impressed by their leadership and that they were well organized, and that (was) something I’d like to be a part of,” Locke says.

Locke says he is particularly impressed by the quality hires Spratt has made over the years.

And Spratt herself credits her success and the success of Cottonwood to those people who have joined her team.

One team member, Kara Walters, started in the late 1980s, one year before Spratt, and many others have been employed with Cottonwood for 20 years or more.

Walters has particular praise for Spratt’s perseverance in the funding fights that so many nonprofits face.

“Sharon never sits back and says ‘OK, we’ll take the little bit you (the Legislature) have for us,” Walters says; rather, she always insists that her clients need and deserve more.

Walters has seen Spratt work to build a national reputation for Cottonwood as a Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) surveyor. As a CARF surveyor, Spratt traveled across the United States, inspecting other facilities and helping to spread the Cottonwood model of success to other disability service providers, all while performing her duties as CEO.

“Family is important here at Cottonwood, and thanks to Sharon we have ‘cousins’ across the nation,” Walters says.

Walters gets a bit emotional as she talks about how Cottonwood will move forward without Spratt.

“We have new people that have brought new viewpoints,” Walters says. “Sharon did that for us during her 34 years — bringing the new ideas, the new initiatives, the new perspectives, and that is what has made us as great as we are.”

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Cottonwood Inc. CEO Sharon Spratt stops to visit with Milissa Hicklin in one of Cottonwood’s contract assembly areas on March 25, 2022. Cottonwood contracts with multiple companies to keep its clients employed on- and offsite.

Spratt says she hasn’t always been able to keep Cottonwood growing, and for a few years the nonprofit was simply in “maintaining” mode rather than growth mode. Despite having reliable allies and trusted community partners in the county and the state, decisions made in Washington, D.C., over the years have had a stagnating financial effect on Cottonwood, starting around 2012 with a managed-care provision in the Affordable Care Act.

“I don’t know how else to say it, but it has really stunted our ability as service providers. We plateaued,” Spratt says.

The managed-care provision lumped support services like Cottonwood in with medical services, which they are not, says Ettie Brightwell, Cottonwood’s community relations director.

Brightwell has been alongside Spratt through the funding struggles. She says lawmakers simply failed to understand the difference between medical providers and service providers like Cottonwood.

The setback hasn’t stopped Cottonwood or its supporters from pushing forward, Spratt says. Even now there are bills in the Kansas Legislature that would increase funds for Cottonwood and other disability support services in the state by 30%. The increase in funding would go directly to hiring support staff to work with clients in their homes and at Cottonwood, she says.

As she prepares to step away, Spratt wants her community partners throughout the years to know how grateful she is. She knows it would have been much harder without them.

One of Spratt’s allies in the city who has helped raise funds is Miles Schnaer with Crown Automotive. Schnaer is a member of Cottonwood’s charity board, the Cottonwood Foundation. He says he started working with Spratt around the same time she started as CEO in 1994. He moved to Lawrence from Decatur, Illinois, where he hosted charity basketball tournaments with as many as 1,000 teams, he says.

“I get a brochure in the mail across my desk that said Cottonwood was having a 3-on-3 basketball tournament,” Schnaer says. “I found out what Cottonwood was and thought I just had to get involved.”

Schnaer’s 3-on-3 basketball tournaments with Cottonwood never really took off, he says, but his commitment to Cottonwood was just starting. He has been on the board for more than 20 years and loves knowing that the money he helps raise during events goes directly back into the community. He attributes part of that success in fundraising to Spratt’s business practices.

“There’s an aura about her that she knows what she’s talking about,” Schnaer says. “I think she is diligent in everything that she does.”

Spratt feels that now is the right time to retire, she says. She helped Cottonwood navigate through the coronavirus pandemic, and the JobLink program that connects clients with jobs in the community has bounced back stronger than ever.

“They are booming,” Spratt says. “Everyone needs to hire.”

Cottonwood’s warehouses are full of contract packaging work, and clients are using the city buses for as many as 450 scheduled trips to and from Cottonwood each week, she said — indicators of robust business.

As for Spratt’s retirement, Cottonwood has hired a Missouri nonprofit leader as the next CEO. Spratt says she has great confidence in that hire: Colleen Himmelberg, who currently is the chief operating officer for Empac Group in Washington, Missouri, whose mission is similar to Cottonwood’s.

Himmelberg will take the reins at Cottonwood this summer, after Spratt retires in June.