Our New Direction: Community Impact

Looking to examples from leading United Ways all over the country, your United Way of Washington County is transforming into an organization that strategically invests resources to forward long-term impact to the root causes of the issues facing our community.

Steps in the Process

• Focus – To do Community Impact work we have to start with a true understanding of the issues facing Washington County. By selecting a limited number of goals and strategies in which to invest time, relationships, technology, expertise, money, and other resources we can begin to make a lasting change in people’s lives. Getting focused is essential for delivering meaningful results with limited resources.
• Align – Once we have a well-rounded understanding of the areas needing our focus, we have to align our work to meet the needs of these target areas. At its most basic level, alignment refers to a group of individuals working toward a common goal with coordinated effort. One of the most significant challenges faced by nonprofits today is properly aligning around the organization’s mission and strategy. As missions and strategies change, an organization’s systems, processes and structures often have to adapt to be in sync.
• Transform – After defining community goals, developing strategies to bring about positive change, and aligning our work, we will begin to make long-term investments with a focus on lasting change. The story below might help bring to life the ideas surrounding “lasting change in community conditions.”

A young man is walking by the river one morning when he looks out into the water and sees a baby floating by. Horrified, he races to the water, grabs the baby, and brings the baby to shore. Thankfully, the baby is fine. Relieved, the man looks back to the water, only to see another baby floating down the river. Again, he dives in and rescues the baby. He saves this baby as well. Once more, the man looks into the water, but this time he sees dozens of babies. He calls out to the community for help. The community is mobilized. They jump right in and begin helping him to save babies. This community is improving lives. Many of the babies are saved. But the babies keep coming...no one is going upstream to tackle the ogre who’s throwing them in.

United Way will always fund programs that improve lives, but we have to do more.

We must gather a contingent of volunteers and head upstream...that’s Community Impact

Community Impact Update   Check out the new SCIP website: www.strategicwashingtoncounty.org

So where is United Way of Washington County in the transformation process to this new model?

United Way and the Community Foundation have teamed up with a group of community leaders to formulate a Strategic Community Impact Plan, also known as SCIP. Knowing that our organizations and many others needed such an assessment to make decisions about donor investments, we decided to work together to begin creating an impact agenda for Washington County.

A volunteer force of 200 have been divided into focus groups and are charged with looking at issues, prioritizing the most immediate concerns and establishing specific, measurable indicators and attainable goals to improve lives. They have been equipped with updated data, which was originally outlined in a Community Report Card published by the Hagerstown-Washington County Industrial Foundation, also know as CHIEF, in 2007. New community indicators, beyond what was covered in the Community Report Card, will also be examined, including vulnerable populations of the disabled and elderly, homelessness and hunger. The Focus Groups will meet monthly from March to November and will recommend goals and strategies to address the prioritized issues. An Impact Council will select from these goals and strategies to establish a published plan by September 2011. United Way will pick several areas from the plan and will focus and align its work to achieving those goals and strategies.

The community-wide SCIP process has been modeled after a similar project in Spartanburg, S.C., which also included a partnership by a local foundation and United Way.