The United Way of the Flint Hills is more than two-thirds of the way toward its goal of $600,000 or more.
As of Monday, $460,776 has been pledged to the local United Way, Executive Director Duane Dreiling said. Of that, about $200,000 has come from two major donors: Wolf Creek nuclear plant and Tyson.
“Every day we get more,” Dreiling said. “I think we’re right on track with where we need to be.”
The campaign runs through Dec. 31. A formal declaration of the final results will come in mid-January, which is a break in tradition for the United Way. Normally, its celebrations are held right about now, in mid-November.
Dreiling said that he and drive chair Chris Walker decided to change the date because many of the larger donors had to go through their own corporate offices. In the past, that meant that the celebration would only be able to announce partial figures.
“We’re waiting for everyone to be in the total,” Dreiling said.
Last year’s drive raised a little more than $600,000. But even though that reached the United Way’s goal, Dreiling said, there was still $90,000 of agency requests that couldn’t be filled.
“The need is still out there,” Dreiling said. “That’s why we’re striving hard to raise more than $600,000. It’s important that we fund these agencies.”
The United Way supports 25 member agencies ranging from child-oriented groups like Big Brothers Big Sisters to SOS, which assists battered women.
Not all of the traditional large donors have announced their pledges yet. Among those still to come are Menu Foods, Hopkins Manufacturing, Dolly Madison and Vektek.
Many of the pledges that have come in are slightly up from 2005, Dreiling said. That may continue a trend from last year, when pledges increased by $50,000.
“That was a very exciting response,” Dreiling said. “We hope we can do that again.”
To make a donation, get information about the campaign or volunteer for a member agency, call the United Way of the Flint Hills at 342-7564.
kst8wct (anonymous) says...
To quote the wise man Kevin Meyer on his 11/7/2006 post at www.evolvingexcellence.com:
"The middleman. I have never quite understood why organizations like the United Way must exist. I know they help, but must they? To my knowledge they don’t truly touch the final customer… they just accumulate incoming donations and then dole them out to smaller true charities after subtracting their administrative and fundraising costs. My big peeve at a previous company was how all employees were cajoled and coerced into accepting United Way payroll deductions… when I wanted to give even more directly to specific charities without having my donation effectively reduced by United Way administrative expenses. Yes UW creates more net dollars, but is there a better way? One major impact of the internet has been the reduction of middleman activities in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) transactions. Why can’t we do more with “D2C” – donor-to-charity?"
I can appreciate Kevin's comments because we have an annual event where we get solicitations to donate to United Way on our desks. I find the page to be good kindling. I have read article after article about corrupt United Way officials stealing and I'd rather not feed the beast. I'd rather donate directly and eliminate the middleman.
November 14, 2006 at 9:29 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
murchins (anonymous) says...
In the best of all possible worlds, all income-earning people would give annually to the charities of their choice. Then we wouldn't need fundraisers! Using an effective, centralized, and efficient entity like the United Way eases the huge fundraising burden on individual charities. If each group had to spend all their time raising money, there wouldn't be any time left to do the good works they do. If we would ALL do our part, these organizations wouldn't have to go "begging" for money every year.
We're all in it together!
November 15, 2006 at 11:09 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )