Join Hands.
Open Your Heart.
Lend Your Muscle.
Find Your Voice.
GIVE. ADVOCATE. VOLUNTEER.
LIVE UNITED.

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That’s the new slogan for United Way…you know, that nonprofit organization that does …good stuff.
What exactly does the United Way do? I interviewed Susan Black, director of marketing and communications at the local Central Florida branch, who said that their new LIVE UNITED campaign should introduce us all to the community changing impact United Way has Nationwide.

Every community has issues that wreak havoc on the lives of children, families and disabled persons. Living United means being part of changing these issues in communities by working toward three initiatives: helping children through education, helping families through training and helping the disabled or elderly through wellness.

United Way is essential to any community because they financially support the various nonprofit organizations that provide the services to help such people. They also track the success of the programs to produce quantifiable results.

Mrs. Black pointed out that the organization’s main focus is not to simply temporarily relieve problems but to support programs that help people get their lives back on track. “It’s not enough to just feed someone who is hungry, we want to find out the root of the problem and help them fix that,” said Mrs. Black.

The United Way of Central Florida’s Community Impact Cabinet just did a huge research project studying the root causes of grade school dropouts. After speaking to professionals, studying statistics and bringing in analysts they discovered that a strong education began in preschool. So, they concluded, when a child is held back or not educated well enough in those first five years of life they have a significant likelihood to drop out of high school before graduating. A lack of an education then can lead to going to jail, teen pregnancy and/or dependency on government support for help. To prevent this issue United Way supports and refers people to nonprofit organizations who can help parents prepare their children for grade school.
A few examples of the local organizations who deal with childhood education that United Way supports are the Boys and Girls Club, Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Salvation Army and Achievement Academy, Inc.

(This is a basic video about what United Way does to positively impact local communities across the nation.)

As one of the largest and most successful nonprofit organizations in the country, United Way knows how to create a unified community by supporting other nonprofits such as those previously mentioned. The Central Florida branch has 5 people on staff whose main purpose is to raise funds. They are the middle men and women between United Way and donors who prepare presentations, train volunteers and lead the loaned executives program.

The loaned executives program brings in business executives from big companies, trains them about the United Way and prepares them to give presentations to other companies to help raise funds. The majority of United Way’s funding comes from corporate businesses, their employees and individual donors. Then all of the collected funds are allocated to the various nonprofit organizations the United Way supports.

Volunteers can get involved at this point in many ways. Some volunteers from the business community help analyze the programs implemented by each organization and determine whether the program is worthy of funding. Other volunteers may be the ones who actually go into the community to test a program or help an organization develop a quantifiable way of evaluating a program.

Staff members from the United Way, such as Mrs. Black, also reach out to other nonprofit organizations to help them develop better public relations and marketing skills so that they can raise their own funds as well.

“I feel like I am involved and more a part of the community when I am actually doing something that changes people’s lives,” said Black. Other nonprofit employees also say the wonder of working for a nonprofit organization that helps people is that you know that your hours of hard work are not in vain.

Mrs. Black says the pay is the only downfall to working for a nonprofit. Many nonprofits cannot even afford to have any paid staff, but the United Way is one of only a few that actually can offer paid positions to their employees. Yet, like the majority of nonprofits, most of the staff is made up of unpaid volunteers who sacrifice their time to help their communities.

The United Way connects businesses and individuals to the nonprofits. The nonprofits connect to the poor, needy, helpless, elderly, disabled and uneducated. Then, as those people and their situations improve, they give back to the community, society and economy which feed the American businesses. It unites all of the pieces of a community together to make our little pieces of the world a better place.

Hence the slogan LIVE UNITED is an excellent way to explain to donors just exactly what the United Way accomplishes for the good of community, which includes you!

So LIVE UNITED, get out in your community and make a difference. Use your gifts and talents to help someone less fortunate than you. A great place to start is the United Way.

To volunteer, ask questions about referrals, donate or get more information, the Central Florida chapter (located at 5605 U.S. Highway 98 South in Highlands City just outside of Lakeland) can be reached via telephone at 863-648-1515. The local website is www.uwcf.org and the national website is www.unitedway.org. Also, the United Way has a facebook group named LIVE UNITED. To hear from other volunteers about their experiences with the United Way see the volunteer blog by clicking on the logo below. By the way, if you don’t have anything to do for Spring Break the United Way has many opportunities for you to serve in your community no matter what state you’re in. For alternative spring break plans click on the logo to see what other students are saying about United Way’s spring break initiatives. Also to see videos about alternative spring breaks done in the past see the think mtv link. Check out all of these resources to see how you can join the campaign and help others.