Black River United Way to begin fund-raising drive with new focus
Black River United Way, reorganized into a virtually new organization, is poised to start its annual fund-raising campaign with a focus on early literacy and career readiness in Georgetown and Williamsburg counties.
“We have a lot going on here, and are about to kick off a new campaign,” says Lucy S. Woodhouse, beginning her second year as CEO. She describes the changes as so sweeping to made Black River a “fledging, new United Way.”
Black River, serving communities from Kingstree in Williamsburg County to Murrells Inlet, is “switching our focus to funding the issues” instead of distributing funds according to member agency operational budget needs.
“We’ve narrowed the focus to early literacy” with a goal of having youngsters reading by third grade. This entails working with elementary school teachers and administrators and identifying programs of nonprofits, such as The Village Group, which will help reach the goal. “The other end of the spectrum is career readiness.”
Georgetown County has a workforce at retirement age and a declining population of persons ages 19 to 44. That creates a problem familiar to the president of the United Way board, Brian Tucker, who is director of Georgetown County Economic Development.
The goal for the new campaign is $500,000 – $400,000 from the workplace campaign for payroll deduction contributions and $100,000 from other sources. The Frances P. Bunnelle Foundation of Pawleys Island has extended its offer to match new money up to $100,000. In the last drive, “we were able to match $52,000.”
Bunnelle has extended the offer for the new campaign and rounded the $48,000 to $50,000 for the new campaign. “Very awesome, very generous” is how Woodhouse describes the Bunnelle grant, noting that will continue to encourage new money. The campaign that ended in June reached 96 percent ($480,000) of the goal. “All things considered, we were very pleased. It went well and we learned a lot.”
Another innovation at Black River was the Women’s Leadership Council, a national United Way “affinity group.” Thirty women raised $7,500 for empowerment of girls and women in the United Way designated areas of education, income and health. The council will recommend to the Black River board how the money will be used.
Coming to the job in August 2014, Woodhouse inherited the last campaign along with a practice of distributing funds to agencies based on pledges prior to receiving payment. The changes at Black River include allocating funds based on cash on hand. Woodhouse says distributions were made to several nonprofits.
Black River has set training of coordinators and a Volunteer Fair for Sept. 9 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Beck Rec Center in Georgetown. “The United Way is also about raising resources,” Woodhouse says.
A Day of Caring is Sept. 24 for volunteers to take on projects such as reorganizing the food pantry shelves at Helping Hands. Nonprofits may apply for $350 “mini grants” for materials such as shelving, paint and so forth. Money is budgeted for 28 grants.
Friday is the deadline for signing up, which may be done online. At the end of the day, volunteers will be thanked in both Kingstree and Georgetown, the latter being tied to the last concert of the season on Front Street.
Woodhouse says the campaign will include “a much harder push to do more in the fall,” short of the 90-day blitz, which will again start United Way of Horry County fund-raising. The campaign begins with Day of Caring Sept. 11. Eventually, Woodhouse wants to do a blitz.
Of all the changes, “the most exciting thing is pulling together people who didn’t recognize their common goals. The possibilities for change are there. The conversation has been so rich and exciting.”
This story was originally published September 1, 2015 at 7:35 AM with the headline "Black River United Way to begin fund-raising drive with new focus."