Community Impact
The United Way partners with 25 not-for-profit agencies, one nonfunded affiliate, and three broad-based initiatives to impact important community needs in three key focus areas. The impact focus areas are:
Building Successful Families, Children and Youth
Creating a Healthier Community
Fostering Self Sufficiency
The Community Impact Fund encourages collaboration between Partner Agencies and other community organizations to address a community need.
Community Impact Fund Recipients:
Wednesdays at Liberty Hall:. A Community Initiative to Improve Adolescent Health Promoting Healthy Choices, Voices, and Relationships," is the implementation of a citywide prevention education program building on the strengths of the community and the power of teens through learning opportunities that promote positive development while enhancing the teen connection to their community.
Wednesdays at Liberty Hall was created to address the community need for safe, structured, and supervised activities for teens grades 7-9th downtown on early release Wednesdays. This program was managed by GaDuGi SafeCenter, a United Way Partner Agency. This program ran from 2005--2008, helping hundreds of youth use their Wednesdays in an educational way.
Skill Builders Program: A series of programs on a variety of topics designed to assist widows and widowers with daily living. Program session content includes teaching skills such as cooking for one, car repairs and financial changes. More importantly, Skill Builders provides emotional and grief support. This program is managed by Douglas County Visiting Nurses, Rehabilitation and Hospice Care, a United Way Partner Agency. This program will run from 2008-2009.
Prosperity Partners: A (12) partner collaboration that will work with individuals and households to increase family self sufficiency in Douglas County by providing concentrated, volunteer-led educational services that assist families experiencing financial instability and coordinating existing services to maximize their effect in overcoming economic instability. This program will run from 2009-2010.
United Way of Douglas County Community Impact Talking Points
History:
United Way is committed to working to strengthen Douglas County. For over 65 years we have supported critical programs and agencies helping thousands of people. As we continue to help strengthen our community, we will be more creative in how we do this. For years it worked to function as a conduit for donors to give to important organizations. We believe that our greatest value builds on our strength of being a charitable giving conduit. United Way is focused on maintaining our value as a great investment for Douglas County.
Commitment:
While we will not abandon our partnerships with great agencies in Douglas County, it is vital that we seek out opportunities where we can realize significant impact on our community and its residents. In our history, we have responded to opportunities with the creation of the Roger Hill Volunteer Center, Fairy Godmother Fund and the United Way Center for Human Services. Over the last three years United Way has awarded Community Impact Grants to Wednesdays at Liberty Hall and SkillBuilders. We believe there are more opportunities in the community that can strengthen our collective capacity to respond to Douglas County needs.
Challenge:
United Way is trying to further define mechanisms to effectively and proactively support efforts that are addressing systemic issues facing our community. To do this, the United Way of Douglas County Board is inviting partner agencies to help us better refine our community impact grant and allocations process so that we can foster collaboration and achieve additional impact in our community.
As part of this, we have recently proposed a new mission statement to reflect our focus. Current Mission Statement - Helping people help each other through local human services.
Proposed Mission Statement: United Way of Douglas County: Mobilizing community resources and building partnerships to address human service needs.
Next Steps:
In addition to considering a new mission statement, United Way is reviewing the process of awarding community impact grants for 2009, providing more explanation about the types of projects that are desirable and reviewing our allocations proposal format and process. In doing this, we are working with partner agencies and inviting all United Way partners to provide insights and ideas regarding this important evolutionary endeavor. The United Way anticipates providing the community with further details in December about decisions that the board and partner agencies reach during this process.
Please address any questions to: Vicki Wilkerson, C/O United Way, 2518 Ridge Court, Lawrence, Kansas.