WHAT WE DO

What We Do

United Way is in the community impact business.  What we mean by community impact is: changing social conditions and creating opportunities for a better life for individuals, families and communities. Our goal is for our communities to be measurably better off as a result of the work of United Way and others.

Community impact isn't new to United Way. What is new is our focus. Today’s United Way places more and more emphasis on addressing the underlying causes of social problems. We work to effect long-term changes that can be sustained over time, and that make a measurable difference in the community, a difference we can demonstrate. Because it takes a whole community working together to change social conditions, United Way works to build partnerships that mobilize communities, agencies, funders and other sectors to achieve shared goals. We have built our Community Impact strategy around the three pillars of Healthy People, Strong Community; All That Kids Can Be, From Poverty to Possibility, and through several large-scale Special Initiatives and Area Community Partnerships.

 

United Way focuses on four strategies that help achieve the goal of creating better community outcomes by:

  • Influencing public attitudes, systems and policy
  • Focusing on underlying causes of social issues
  • Strengthening the network of services and the capacity of nonprofits and the community
  • Engaging the community’s resources: financial, influence, time, knowledge and action.

 

Key Pillars of our Business Model

Our community impact framework describes how we create positive change. The framework is based on four key pillars:

Setting priorities, outcomes and goals with the community, developing plans in partnership.

We work to engage the community upfront in identifying priority issues, the changes we want to see, shared goals, and the steps needed to achieve them. Together we develop plans, and together identify the role each community partner plays.

Partnerships with the human care sector.

United Way develops partnerships with human care organizations that are working to address community priorities and achieve shared goals.  One of United Way’s roles is to provide financial, human and other resources to build capacity and find opportunities to work together as a sector to tackle complex social issues.

Measuring and communicating changes in communities.

We measure the outcomes and indicators of our collective success in addressing community priorities. And we communicate the difference we’re making in communities, using the outcomes and indicators we measure as concrete evidence.

We measure outputs, for example, the number of clients served. We also, in order to understand community change, measure outcomes. Outcomes help us understand changes in: individuals, people participating in a particular program, target populations such as youth, and in communities.  These outcomes help us tell a story about change. We look to indicators to tell us what is changing, how much, and whether things are improving or getting worse.

Engaging our whole organization to achieve our goal.

Finally, all volunteers and staff focus, align and integrate our work to address community priorities and achieve shared goals.  Everyone has an important role to play in achieving our community impact goal.

 

United Way’s Community Impact Framework builds on the efforts already underway by many individuals and organizations to improve their communities. Our partnerships are making a difference, and together we can make an even greater impact on the long-term wellbeing of communities.

 

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