Community Impact

Mission Statement

Uniting people and resources in a community-wide effort to improve lives.

What is Community Impact?

Our experience tells us that the best way to help the most people is to focus on the underlying causes of the most serious problems. We’re focused on critical issues like health care, financial stability, child development and long-term solutions.

It takes the whole community working together to reach our goals in these areas. So we bring together people from all across the community – people from government, business, faith groups, non-profits and every day citizens. If it requires going to local government officials, getting people to work together or fundraising, that’s what we do.

Over the last four years, United Way of Wayne and Holmes Counties has been focusing efforts on becoming a ‘Community Impact’ United Way. To this end, we have done the following:

1. Identified how, when and who to engage in identifying community and organizational issues/priorities for action
2. Identified a limited number of high-priority issues
3. Established specific vision, targeted issues, objectives and investment strategies for each priority issue to guide hard choices and focus resources, not just money, to achieve significant results
4. Identified metrics for demonstrating progress and results.

Our goal is long-lasting change that prevents problems from happening in the first place. The programs that are funded by United Way of Wayne and Holmes Counties fall under one of four ‘impact’ areas: Education, Family & Financial Stability, Health or Core Emergency Services.

Okay. I get it…United Way of Wayne and Holmes Counties funds programs that make a lasting impact in one of the four ‘impact’ areas. But what is United Way of Wayne and Holmes Counties doing in each of those areas?

Education

We know that nationally, 40 percent of children are not ready to learn by the time they reach kindergarten. If they start at a deficit, they spend the rest of their lives trying to catch up.

Family & Financial Stability

A survey of local workplaces posed the question, “What are the biggest obstacles you and your family are currently facing?” The overwhelming response was “financial stability.” This impact area is currently being addressed through various initiatives, including the following:

• Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA), free tax preparation program, which served 196 individuals and families in 2009, collectively bringing more than $220,000 back to the area in EITC dollars!
• Working to create a Prosperity Center where individuals can learn about budgeting, credit repair and work towards building assets.
• Working with local banks and credit unions to create banking products focused on individuals of low-to-moderate incomes.
• Working with local banks and credit unions on setting up Individual Development Accounts (IDA) where dollars put into a savings account for home ownership could be matched at a defined ratio.

Health

A corporate wellness directory is now available for any and all workplaces in Wayne and Holmes Counties at no cost. The resource guide includes the following:

• Listing of resources to promote workplace wellness.
• Resource guide identifying which companies have wellness initiatives and who to contact for information to discuss how to replicate it.

Eventually, it is the hope of this impact area that they will establish a local wellness support group where all organizations can share best practices, motivational ideas and other topics. Other initiatives in this impact area will include connecting families to no-cost health services and increasing children’s enrollment in insurance plans.

Core Emergency Services

The “vision council” in this impact worked diligently to put together the Wayne/Holmes Rx program, now part of 2-1-1 InfoLink. This new effort not only helps people who do not have prescription cards gain better access to their medications, it enables local emergency agencies, collectively spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on helping people purchase medications, to purchase them at a lesser cost.