ISSUES FACING AMERICAN UNITED WAY LEADERS: A FIFTY-YEAR PERSPECTIVE

Three times – fifty years ago, twenty-five years ago and very recently – local chief executives were asked to share a list of the top five operational issues with which they were concerned as leaders in the United Way movement. From those lists, a consensus summary was prepared and publicly shared as follows: 

​50 YEARS AGO

• Emerging donor choice issues prompted by new Combined Federal Campaign policies
• Continued proliferation of non-profit organizations that had begun following the Federal grants pipeline that had been opened by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
• Growing substance abuse
• Competition among separate urban and suburban United Way organizations
• Racism and sexism

By Dick Aft,
​United Way Historian and UWRA Emeritus Board Member

25 YEARS AGO

• Increased fundraising competition
• Changing family structure, especially the increasing number of single-parent households
• Declining quality of public urban education
• Random Federal funding cuts
• Racism and sexism

THIS YEAR

• Third-party processors usurping long-term corporate relationships
• Being known more for fundraising than impact on community problems Increasing rate of staff turnover
• Keeping up with technology
• Racism and sexism

From her position as U.S. President of United Way Worldwide and past President of the United Way Suncoast (Tampa, FL), Suzanne McCormick offered this observation:

“What has become painfully obvious to me is that in fifty years, as a United Way network, we haven’t collectively moved the needle enough in creating more equitable societies and definitely not in terms of equal access to education and opportunity. We haven’t moved the needle far enough in creating an understanding of the impact we make in communities. We haven’t moved the needle far enough in creating an imperative understanding that we need to invest resources for the best skills and staff talent to help us solve the world’s most complex social problems to improve lives. We have been playing catch up for too long, without ever actually having caught up. It’s time to stop reinventing the wheel and trying to create solutions in silos or community by community. The future clearly dictates that if we truly want to improve lives, we must harness the power of shared technology, create multi-sector partnerships, and work together – as a functional network – with shared values for shared solutions. We’ve been on a listening journey recently, and are actively learning from our history, our mistakes, and our successes. We hope to change the environment we’ve been operating in to allow for more innovation sharing, best practice sharing and learning, and genuine partnership.”


Each list reflects several perspectives:

• The environment in which local United Way organizations serve their communities
• The impact of external forces on their capacity to achieve goals and objectives
• The values held by the people whose leadership significantly defines United Way

All reinforce the need of local United Way organizations to:

• Work together to address these issues
• Share the most effective actions to resolve them
• Support common services that, over the years, have included staff training and promotion and maintenance of relationships with organizations and individuals
• Find solutions that will increase the quality of life in all communities
• Influence national public policy, laws, and regulations
• Learn from their own shared history

In retrospect, readers might casually observe, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” While a majority of the specifics change, local United Way organizations continue to be confronted by issues that affect fundraising and quality of individual and family life. Continued concern for racism and sexism is a reminder of persistent issues. A deeper analysis of these issues serves as a reminder of several truths proven by United Way history.

1. The issues defined by United Way leaders transcend individual organizations. They touch nearly every community.
2. They directly relate to that common part of the United Way mission: “to  improve lives” and United Ways’ focal responsibility to raise money to do so.
3. United Way continues to serve a centrist role in most communities, developing resources and focusing public attention on causes of problems more often than symptoms of problems. 

​Reflection: This periodic look at issues identified by professional United Way leaders goes beyond the thought that “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” This snapshot of issues underscores the continuing efforts of local, national, and international United Way leaders to confront them in a united way.