By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The United Way of Greater St. Joseph in in the midst of its annual campaign season.
With no specific goal set due to the ongoing COVID pandemic, the main goal is to raise at least as much, if not more, than last campaign season: $2.4 million dollars.
Danielle Brown of Interserv, a partner agency of the United Way, has been out campaigning to raise money. She says one of her favorite things to bring up in presentations to people, is how many agencies the United Way funds.
"I like to bring that it's giving to 17 partner agencies and seven initiatives, and so you're not just making a donation to one program or one thing that you think is important within the community," Brown tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline.
Brown adds that while the money donated is usually evenly distributed between each of the 17 agencies, if there is a particular one that people want to support, that can be specified.
"You absolutely can specify I want my dollars to go to this agency or this initiative," Brown says. "You just have to write that on your pledge form, write that on your donation as you send it in to United Way, and they'll make sure those dollars go specifically to those programs."
Every year, the United Way works with volunteers and the community to decide how funds should be allocated among its 17-member agencies.
And Renita Neville of the United Way believes that this allocation process is why it is less common in St. Joseph for donors to give to specific agencies.
"I think it's interesting that in our community we don't have a very high designation rate, people do choose to do it because generally they've got some connection to some particular program, in other communites that's not the case there's very high desigation rates," Neville explains. "They don't here, and we believe that is largely because of this allocations process, people understand that it's their peers."
While the community is still impacted by the pandemic, volunteers are able to be out talking to potential donors once again. The last time the United Way of Greater St. Joseph volunteers were able to make their pitch in person was 2019, when it raised $3.1 million.
The campaign continues until November 4th. You can donate to the campaign online HERE