CHENANGO COUNTY – For several years, the United Way has been trying to increase accountability to its donors, and with a new report, released this year, the United Way hopes it will be able to track not only measurable outcomes but also progress over an extended period of time.
The United Way of America rolled out the new report at its National Conference this year. The report showed three factors that impede Americans from living a good life: income, education and health. According to the report, “Almost one in four working parents don’t earn enough to provide for their families. An alarming 25 percent of teenagers will not graduate on time, imperiling their chances to make a successful transition to adulthood. Only one in three adults can be considered healthy, based on risk factor data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 49 million Americans lack even basic health insurance.”
The report tasked local United Ways to pilot a program in one of the three areas and track their results. “The United Way system could have an impact on these areas, and we should be able to track that impact,” said Chenango United Way Executive Director Elizabeth Monaco.
At the local level, Monaco said, each of the three topics fit into the Chenango United Way’s four focus areas, which are programs for children and youth, access to healthcare, poverty issues of housing and hunger and the aging population.
Monaco explained that each of the topics in the UWA report could fall into one of the CUW’s focus areas, and that the CUW had been tracking local data with its progress reports; however the UWA report listed target issues, intended results and indicators that could help determine those results.
“By 2018, we as a nation must: Cut by half the number of young people who drop out of high school, cut by half the number of lower-income families that lack financial stability, increase by a third the number of youths and adults who are healthy and avoid risky behaviors,” the report states.
Monaco said she believes the CUW will begin by implementing the income portion of the UWA report, which will fall under the focus area of poverty issues of housing and hunger. The report includes several target issues including helping families achieving greater financial stability, increase their income, build savings and gain and sustain assets.
“Last year we had a lot of applications for programs that met basic needs and others that promoted self-sufficiency,” Monaco said referring to the request for proposal process that determines which organizations will receive United Way funds. As a result, the poverty focus area will be split into those two sub categories.
While the organization is currently concentrating on incorporating the income portion of the report, Monaco said the CUW could easily stride into all of the topics mentioned. “We want to see how the system reacts and what the trends are, but over the next couple of years we may integrate all of the UWA priorities, but only if locally, we feel they are relevant to the community.
The report is part of a ten year plan. Every two years the data will be looked at and after ten years, the goal is to reduce the number of lower income families that lack financial stability by half.
Monaco reiterated that a change in the focus areas does not correlate to a decrease in funding for the agencies, but she encouraged agencies to be specific on how they would focus the funds they receive and the results they saw so it could be reported back to the donors. Monaco also added that the focus on the poverty topic would not mean that more of the allocable dollars would be concentrated on that area. “It will just mean that we’re tracking more data. This will only help strengthen the applications and provide more accountability to the donors,” Monaco said of the ten year goal.