Tip: Highlight text to annotate itX
Hello and thank you for joining us
My name is Nelson Baker
I'm Community Impact Director for Green Mountain United Way
with an office in St Johnsbury
and I am very pleased to have
the majority of our staff with us here today
Our Executive Director Nancy Zorn
whose office is in Berlin Vermont in Washington County
Madeleine Roy, who is our Marketing Director with an office in Derby Line
Molly Gleason who is my counterpart
and also in Berlin Vermont
and she is as I am a Community Impact Director
I would
like that start with Nancy and
and I ask Nancy if she would please give us a an overview of
Green Mountain United Way and our function and
how we're currently operating -- Nancy
We are -- United Way is a world-wide organization
there are about thirteen thousand United Ways in the United States
and about twenty six in other countries
This change has happened fairly recently to be a worldwide organization
and as you can see by the number of United Ways in the United States they're a very locally
based organization
There are nine United Ways in the State of Vermont
Most of them in one-county wide. We happen to be five-county wide
We've been in existence for about thirty three years - starting in Washington County
and then going to Orange County
and then the counties in the Northeast Kingdom came on line after that
General question is you know what does United Way do. We've got a good name recognition
of people knowing United Way
They don't know that we're local
and they don't know the initiatives that we are engaged in
Now we're going to talk more about those
today
But how initiatives come up is each area does a community assessment
In other words they look at each one of the communities
and we do that by county
So each of the counties has been looked at
and an extensive community assessment was done on that
and then we looked at what
United Way could to to fulfill those needs that were in each one of those communities
So we've come up with a whole set of initiatives
different for each county - different volunteers
in each county
but an overall
initiative on what we do and how we do that is
similar throughout
our area
Each United Way does have its own board. They're individually incorporated
and from that they determine those needs and how those needs aredone
There is the board
it generally meets in the Central Vermont area
although there is a council in
the Caledonia-South Essex
and also one Orleans-Northern Essex County
So again we have that local focus on
what we should be doing and how we should be doing it
and I think that's one of the hallmarks of United Way
it's localness
and that means that local people can be involved in the decision-making
in what those initiatives should be and how those initiatives should be carried out
It's one of the things I've really liked about the organization
it's localness and that local people can become involved
with the United Way and that I think makes a big difference on how
we operate and how we see ourselves
not someplace else
but right here in this community
for that
That's kind of a quick
overview of what
United Way is about
Thank you Nancy
Madeleine, can get a little more specific in terms of
of what you're doing in
and and where you're located - I know your office is in Derby Line
and your area is pretty much Orleans and Northern Essex
You're Marketing Director but you do a lot more than that
and
it's been my pleasure to work with you and
maybe we can
tell the folks a little bit more about you're
working on
Probably half of my job is doing the marketing for
the organization for all five counties
and
we do it and in variety of ways - obviously like a show like this today
and lots of
newspaper releases - radio shows
you know we try to keep up our web site and
while I think of it
those of you who out there who
would like to go to our web site it's www.gmunitedway.org
and we try to keep that up to date as much as we possibly can
with lots of changes happening all the time so it it's almost a full-time job
to keep a running list of our initiatives on that web site and all of the
the things that we accomplish in our five-county region
The other part of my job is to do some development work
in the NorthEast Kingdom
and obviously that means fundraising
much of the time
We like to be known as
the organization that makes things happen that make a difference in our
area
but we all know that those types of things take money We need to fund raise
It's not a fun thing to do but
we try to put fun in fundraising
Approximately sixty percent of our funding comes
from
work site campaigns and that means we go to businesses where
we talked to the
employees of those businesses and encourage them to
have a payroll deduction taken
by their company
That's an the easy way for them to donate to us
and
they don't have to sit there and write a
fat check - although we like fat checks but
it's much easier for them to give by way of payroll deduction
They can also give
one-time donations
but we don't just go to
businesses - Anyone in our
five-county region can
donate obviously
Another way that we
do fundraising we do mailings - an annual appeal mailing every year
and we get a fair amount of money from that and that goes
to
most people in the five-county region - so that's a
very good way to to build our base for our campaign every year
The other thing that we're really getting into now is special events
in order to augment the campaign
One that's been going on now for
going on four years is our
talent show that happens in
Central Vermont - We call it the Kaleidoscope of Talent
and this year that will happen on the twenty seventh of February it's happening at Spaulding High
School
We also have a
Golf Tournament
every summer and
we're now
organizing the NorthEast Kingdom Bike Ride
that will be a first time event so that we're looking forward to that here in the Northeast
Kingdom
