"Would You Like To Support United Way?"
The year was 1967, but the memory is still fresh.
A woman marched up to my desk in the crowded newsroom of The Washington Post. I had worked there for a week. Finding the men's room and the cafeteria were still major challenges.
"Would you like to support United Way?," she said.
I had never heard of it.
I had grown up in another city, gone to college elsewhere, knew very little about the Washington metropolitan area. I had never given a nickel to any charity because I hadn't had a nickel to give.
But the woman said something to me that day that made this leopard change his spots.
"United Way unites us," she said. I immediately made a donation. I've done so for each of the last 42 years. And now I'm inside the belly of the beast.
In early November, I signed on to the staff of United Way of the National Capital Area. My job will be to sing the song--explain why a dollar given to United Way is a dollar that makes us all stronger. This blog will be one important place where that song will get sung.
I doubt that I can make the case more crisply than my colleague made it more than four decades ago. So let me build on her choice of words. This is a community with terrific strengths, yet underlying weaknesses. We are as vulnerable to social and economic troubles as any place else. And we have always been generous about donating money to address those problems.
But we're a community that embraces parts of two states and all of an unusual place called the District of Columbia. There can be only one solution to the problems of the area as a whole. It's called United Way.
Like Superman, it leaps borders in a single bound. It doesn't offer an Alexandria solution, a Hyattsville solution and a Northeast Washington solution. It wraps the entire metropolitan area in one blanket and says: "A gift from anyone is a gift to everyone."
No other organization does that as widely or as well. No other organization aims donated dollars so quickly or so closely at the problems they can fix. No other organization treats every need and every nonprofit organization with the same degree of importance. I work for UWNCA because of that philosophy.
This isn't a place where solutions rain down from 30,000 feet. This isn't a place where politics and status dictate who gets help and who doesn't. This is a place that seeks ground-level answers, finds them, funds them and makes sure that even the smallest pieces of the solution won't get overlooked.
Best of all, United Way seeks out community-based decisions and decision-makers.
In each of the eight areas it serves, a board of volunteers meets regularly. It and it alone decides how to allocate Community Impact funds in that jurisdiction. No government official or UWNCA official puts his thumb on the scale.
Community Impact money is allocated to fix an entire problem, not just to fund one agency. So, for example, if Falls Church has an issue with teenage pregnancy, volunteers in that community can fund education programs, health programs, after-school programs and possibly others. It's all up to them.
I'd be happy to discuss UWNCA with anyone, at any time. My e-mail address is blevey@uwnca.org. Don't be bashful. If you'd like more information about making a donation, I'd be happy to discuss that, too.
The annual United Way campaign is in high gear throughout the fall. This would be an excellent time to support our community. It would be an excellent way to say what I began saying 42 years ago: This is my community, and this is my way of uniting us.
A woman marched up to my desk in the crowded newsroom of The Washington Post. I had worked there for a week. Finding the men's room and the cafeteria were still major challenges.
"Would you like to support United Way?," she said.
I had never heard of it.
I had grown up in another city, gone to college elsewhere, knew very little about the Washington metropolitan area. I had never given a nickel to any charity because I hadn't had a nickel to give.
But the woman said something to me that day that made this leopard change his spots.
"United Way unites us," she said. I immediately made a donation. I've done so for each of the last 42 years. And now I'm inside the belly of the beast.
In early November, I signed on to the staff of United Way of the National Capital Area. My job will be to sing the song--explain why a dollar given to United Way is a dollar that makes us all stronger. This blog will be one important place where that song will get sung.
I doubt that I can make the case more crisply than my colleague made it more than four decades ago. So let me build on her choice of words. This is a community with terrific strengths, yet underlying weaknesses. We are as vulnerable to social and economic troubles as any place else. And we have always been generous about donating money to address those problems.
But we're a community that embraces parts of two states and all of an unusual place called the District of Columbia. There can be only one solution to the problems of the area as a whole. It's called United Way.
Like Superman, it leaps borders in a single bound. It doesn't offer an Alexandria solution, a Hyattsville solution and a Northeast Washington solution. It wraps the entire metropolitan area in one blanket and says: "A gift from anyone is a gift to everyone."
No other organization does that as widely or as well. No other organization aims donated dollars so quickly or so closely at the problems they can fix. No other organization treats every need and every nonprofit organization with the same degree of importance. I work for UWNCA because of that philosophy.
This isn't a place where solutions rain down from 30,000 feet. This isn't a place where politics and status dictate who gets help and who doesn't. This is a place that seeks ground-level answers, finds them, funds them and makes sure that even the smallest pieces of the solution won't get overlooked.
Best of all, United Way seeks out community-based decisions and decision-makers.
In each of the eight areas it serves, a board of volunteers meets regularly. It and it alone decides how to allocate Community Impact funds in that jurisdiction. No government official or UWNCA official puts his thumb on the scale.
Community Impact money is allocated to fix an entire problem, not just to fund one agency. So, for example, if Falls Church has an issue with teenage pregnancy, volunteers in that community can fund education programs, health programs, after-school programs and possibly others. It's all up to them.
I'd be happy to discuss UWNCA with anyone, at any time. My e-mail address is blevey@uwnca.org. Don't be bashful. If you'd like more information about making a donation, I'd be happy to discuss that, too.
The annual United Way campaign is in high gear throughout the fall. This would be an excellent time to support our community. It would be an excellent way to say what I began saying 42 years ago: This is my community, and this is my way of uniting us.
posted by Bob Levey's United Way at
1:53 PM
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