United Way's Road to Community Impact

Producing results around our community's critical needs has become the major focus for United Way. We're looking at the conditions that exist in the community today and we're transforming our organization - what we do, how we do it and most importantly, how we define success.  In the past, our success was defined by how much money we raised for a certain number of deserving nonprofit organizations in the community.  It is but one measure of success - a tool for our work.   But by all means, it should not be our only measure.

Why is United Way of Faribault making the shift from being a funder of programs at our local nonprofit organizations to tackling and solving our most critical needs?  Because our helping systems were built for a different economic time and a different set of social conditions.  The federal government even recognized change was needed through child welfare reform and most recently, social security reform.   In the U.S. we have evolved from an industrial economy to a service economy and finally to an information and technology economy.  And we are now in a global marketplace that changes how money is earned and how wealth and income is accumulated and distributed.

Our social service systems were built for a time when economic good times would lift all boats.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way anymore, so United Way needs to change too.  We've got to get a laser beam like focus on creating real results in our health systems, education systems and communities.  To make your United Way relevant in today's world, we must create different strategies, work with new partners, invest our resources differently, use different metrics of success and make progress which will satisfy donor aspirations and thereby expand their trust and confidence.