Nonprofit Quarterly seeks comment on United Way changes

Ruth McCambridge, editor of the Nonprofit Quarterly, has solicited opinions from nonprofit leaders across the country regarding the recent shift in mission and strategy by the United Way of America and local United Ways, including Aloha United Way on Oahu.

She described United Way’s “bold” new initiative as promising, among other things, to reduce the number of families in financial hardship nationally by fifty percent. To do this UWA will encourage its affiliates to narrow their funding categories. In Honolulu, AUW will focus on funding programs that increase individual and family financial stability, improve early childhood development or reduce homelessness and crime and drug use, in addition to disaster and crises response.

McCambridge shared with her readers this excerpt from a May 15 article in the Washington Post, which quoted the head of the United Way and asked them to share their opinions about it:

“Despite spending millions to support scores of local programs, the 121-year-old United Way has not made measurable progress on these core problems, [United Way's president and CEO] Gallagher said. The country’s social safety net is broken, he said, and the United Way must redirect its money toward the root causes and hold itself accountable by declaring bold and measurable – even if unattainable – goals.”

“I don't mean to be a Doubting Thomas.” McCambridge wrote, “but the United Way of America's bold new 10-year initiative aimed at cutting school dropout rates by half, reducing the number of working families struggling financially by half, and increasing the number of adults and youth that are healthy by a third, seems like an unwise and potentially fruitless swim upstream. In saying this, I must admit to a great deal of accumulated skepticism about most top-down funder initiatives.” She enumerated two concerns:

1. The network's ability to move quickly on a cohesive strategy is questionable. A very significant proportion of the network is not yet fully behind United Way's last declared initiative -- the community impact strategy and press reports suggest that many local United Ways knew nothing of this new “bold initiative” until they heard press reports last Thursday.
2. The network may be overestimating its own influence. McCambridge said she believes that influence has been lately eroded.

“The strength of United Way at local levels – as I have experienced it,” she wrote, “has been in its role as gatherer and distributor of resources to strengthen local communities in the many ways that local people wanted that to happen,” and not in a more centralized, nationally directed approach.

“The local United Way made a commitment to the funding of operating costs for mainstay organizations like Boys and Girls Clubs, the local battered women programs, Head Start, community arts programs, community centers and foster care agencies . . . all badly needed and all expressions of community concern at the local level,” she wrote. “I believe deeply in those kinds of organizations. I have seen them consistently turn straw to gold and improve the lives of community members in even the worst of public policy environments. For most of these types of nonprofits, operating grants are like gold because they are rare in being relatively unrestricted – covering the basic costs of keeping such operations going.

“This is, in my opinion, what gives local United Ways their distinctive and hefty influence. They were often the big player in town when playing this role. When they said ‘jump’ – nearly everyone did – for good or for bad. I'm not sure that is true now. Unfortunately, I believe United Way of America may be further eroding the positional power of local United Ways through serial declarations of new directions not yet anchored in the collective will of the network.”

McCambridge asked readers about their experience with their local United Way. “Is the community impact strategy hitting the ground in a useful or less than useful way? What does this or other past practice suggest about the United Way's capacity to carry out this kind of initiative? Do you have worries about any unanticipated consequences of this strategy?”

Editor McCambridge followed up recently with “enormously thoughtful” responses from “an interesting cross-section of passionate opinion from all over the country.” Here is a sampling of excerpts:

• “UW appears to have overestimated their ability to control outcomes in an arena in which they are under-prepared, under-educated and under-valued by agencies providing the various services that could help achieve the stated (grandiose) goals.”
• “I think United Way has a point: The small, local, in-the-trenches organizations are crucial and have important missions BUT they don't work together, there are too many of them and there is no overarching plan among them to address the root causes of problems.”
• “What would serve society better is having the United Way support a return to a more progressive tax system and adequate public funding for our society's safety net, which has been sustaining damage for more than two decades from the self-serving political efforts of the very ‘corporate citizens’ United Way now panders to.”
• "As a United Way executive director I have to say that it is my belief that there has to be some top down leadership and we have that in Brian. I have been at United Way for a little over five years now and I took this job because I saw a need for change, especially here in our United Way. To be known as just a fund raiser and a fund giver is no longer good.”
• “Support for local mainstay organizations is being cut because United Way seems determined to set its own course. The community impact strategy seems to be ignored for the most part – or formed by an increasingly small group of people chosen for their adherence to a particular philosophy or agenda.”
• “Here in Buffalo, the local United Way has done some very solid things over the years. However, I believe that they are currently struggling for relevancy. Their initiative of outcome funding has not developed into what they had thought it might, i.e., ‘paying for results.’”
• “Brian's vision and the community impact strategy is not seen as a centralized, nationally directed approach. Rather it is a call for local United Ways to understand their own community needs, be donor-focused and responsive to donors' philanthropic interests, invest those donors’ dollars to effect real change and be accountable for real community solutions.”

All the comments from those who agreed to have them posted are on the Nonprofit Quarterly website. “In the spirit of encouraging more rigorous dialogues among nonprofits and their funders, we invite you to go have a look at the e-Newsletter and weigh-in with your own commentary,” McCambridge said. She said it is crucial for nonprofit groups, philanthropies and businesses to pool their resources and work together.