Our Approach

• Make strategic social investments. Demonstrate results.
  • Change the lives of people in a lasting way. Help people be more independent. Be able to prove it with data. Invest in results.
  • Create changes that can benefit society as a whole.
  • Use United Way dollars to attract other funding. Create leverage.
  • Create stronger relationships with those we fund.  Move away from the transactional relationship of grant-making and accountability toward being in it together to solve problems and create learning. Help organizations work together. Support collaboration, shared management services and mergers.
  • Support learning. Use United Way’s ability to collect data and to conduct research, not simply to hold service providers accountable, but to create knowledge. Support best practices and learn from mistakes.
• Be a direct provider of information and referral services, evaluative data and advocacy. Provide learning opportunities for the community. Use data and best practice models to shape our advocacy work. Use the UWRI headquarters itself as a community resource; provide a venue for blood drives, financial literacy training, senior citizen information and referral services, school supply distribution and more. Attract donors directly to our work.
• Be a connector and an advocate for social policy change. UWRI will use its reputation and its place between government, community and business sectors to bring people together to influence government to change systems that support people toward self sufficiency and reduce cycles of crisis.
• Maximize UWRI position in the workplace. The workplace is still a potent force for fundraising. UWRI will have to keep valuable workplace relationships (and develop some new ones).
• Be engaging. Build new relationships with donors through affinity groups.  Build personal relationships that transcend the workplace. Young professionals, women and more. Build out the volunteer program to create volunteer opportunities with United Way.
• Make the United Way message stronger.
  • Our community must understand what we do to make their lives better. Provide compelling and useful messages that cut through the din of everyday competition for the donor’s attention. Communicate the way the donor wants us to.
  • Use technology to drive the donor relationship to their home, office, phone; wherever they want it to be. Give the donor information that impacts their lives in a positive way.