ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 3, 1996 TAG: 9609030123
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
PREPARING TO kick off its fall campaign next week at Victory Stadium, United Way of Roanoke Valley has set a goal of raising $5.5 million in 1996. That's 7 percent more than was garnered last year, but well within the community's reach.
The charity had an excellent year in 1995, handily surpassing its objective after a string of years in which goals weren't met. This year's campaign, led energetically by Heidi Krisch, looks to be in good shape as well.
The welcome news is attributable in part to the fact that, during tough years, United Way has been working to improve an already high-quality operation. Fall fund-raisers get the attention, but much of the interesting work has been happening behind the scenes, in the charity's oversight of partner agencies and in its struggle to show more leadership in community problem-solving.
This summer, the Roanoke Valley's was one of only two United Ways to win a national award for "Excellence in Quality" - a tribute to staff and volunteer efforts working in teams, measuring performance to help improve it, partnering with suppliers, and focusing on customers.
What's more, by this time next year, all the partner agencies will have developed outcome-based evaluations. According to United Way president Robert Kulinksi, these are aimed at moving beyond simple counting of clients served, to get at the difference an agency is making in people's lives and in the community.
A day-care provider, for example, might measure how much readier its kids are for school, or how much more likely parents are to stay working because child care was available. The evaluations ask agencies to state a problem and show how they're addressing it. "We don't want to be about dependency," says Kulinski, "but about changed lives and self-sufficiency." That's the way to go.
Meantime, the United Way is trying to focus more on allocating contributions where they can do the most good in the community. This effort is complicated by a couple of factors.
First, the United Way has seen a surge in designated gifts, by which donors specify where they want their money to go. Of some $4.5 million available for community services from last year's drive, donor designations removed about $1.2 million from the pool that's allocated according to volunteers' assessments of needs.
Donor choice is a customer-friendly innovation, but its overuse would undercut one of United Way's benefits: its ability to prioritize needs knowledgeably and allocate resources for maximum impact.
A second complication is the sluggishness with which United Way is moving from an administrative model (passing along operating funds to agencies) to a more entrepreneurial outlook (community problem-solving).
It's a balancing act. The United Way has an interest in keeping intact a core base of stable agencies - a human-services capacity, if you will - even as it tries to be more flexible about shifting resources to address pressing ills, such as teen pregnancy or inadequate child care. Yet, if the volunteers who decide allocations become too entrenched as advocates of the agencies they oversee, they detract from United Way's ability to set priorities and make a difference.
None of which overturns in the slightest, of course, the compelling case for giving to United Way. Not only do once-a-year workplace campaigns reduce the number of times residents and businesses are hit up for contributions. United Way also remains a far more efficient fund-raiser than the agencies, freeing them up to concentrate more on serving people and meeting needs.
Fully 86 percent of United Way contributions go directly to services such as Turning Point's protection of domestic-violence victims, Greenvale School's education of at-risk pre-schoolers, Bradley Free Clinic's provision of health care to working families without health insurance, and Total Action Against Poverty's fight against dependence and despair.
The United Way helps make this community a decent place to live. Let's beat the goal again this year.
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