MARION, OH (MARION COUNTY NOW)—Despite economic uncertainty, local donors are still helping to make a difference in their communities.
CEO of the United Way of North Central Ohio, Amber Wertman, leads the efforts to secure charitable funds for those who need them.
“We are very excited to be in the home stretch of our 2024-2025 annual campaign for our communities,” said Wertman. “We raised money to help people in the areas of success, children, healthy families, and self-sufficient residents.”
Wertman’s branch of the United Way serves a five-county area: Crawford, Marion, Morrow, Seneca and Wyandot.
“We currently are at 75% of our goal. We have until June 30th to raise our total amount needed, which is 1.2 million dollars,” Wertman said. “With that, we will be able to fully fund over 60 different programs, through partner agencies across our whole region.”
Although some may feel apprehensive about donating, Wertman emphasizes aspects of accountability and local dedication that should alleviate concerns.
“We have a whole process with a community cabinet of volunteers,” she explained. “We have a scoring rubric that is based on Collective Impact Framework and Results Based Accountability.
We’re trying to show our donors, whether it be individuals or businesses or industries that invest in United Way, we’re showing them that we are trying to track how these performance measures are actually making a difference in the community.
Who to fund and what to fund and if it’s working. It’s really just continuous improvement so that we can move the needle on some big issues in the community.”
The volunteers that help United Way come from all age groups, demographics, and workplaces, Wertman continued.
“It’s actually a quick, easy way to volunteer. There are no in-person meetings. We do a couple virtual [meetings] at the beginning and at the end as a wrap-up, but other than that, it’s on your own time.
It’s all online. So, you can do it at midnight if you want. It’s super easy.
We mobilize people and we raise resources, whether it be money or volunteers. We kick off the campaign every July … and we see how much we can make in a fiscal year, for our communities. And the volunteers are a big part of that.”
As part of their next campaign, volunteers will be mobilizing around a new initiative.
“We’re adding a new focus area,” Wertman explained, “which is about strong communities. So, besides successful children, healthy families, and self-sufficient residents, we’re adding strong communities this coming campaign year.
And that’s really because we’ve seen such an uptick in natural disasters, whether it be tornadoes, flooding, which we’ve experienced here in our region pretty significantly, but it’s also about structural fires.
Of course, we’ve seen the [wildfires] out west and hurricanes, tornadoes, whatever it might be. There’s just been an uptick in all of these things. So, we want to be prepared if a disaster strikes.
We have a fund that we can work with whichever county that’s happening in. We can work with our local community foundations too, to help the victims who suffer from these things.”
In addition to disaster relief, the United Way of North Central Ohio is also focused on community service.
“There are some projects that our communities are working on,” Wertman said, “main street initiatives to revitalize and bring business into town. Anything that builds strong communities, we’re all about that.”
Wertman addressed the organization’s commitment to local dollars funding local needs.
“United Way is all over the world,” she explained. “Then there’s United Way of America and a lot of people ask about ours locally.
We are not beholden to United Way of America … we have our own governing board. We make all of our own choices locally; we have representation from all five of our counties on that governing board.”
“When we make a decision, it is based on the need here at home,” Wertman continued.
“Our operations director literally enters every single dollar. So, at any time, if a volunteer or donor were to say, ‘I’m in Crawford County, I want to make sure this is where my money’s allocated to.’ I can run a report from our donation tracking system and tell you who’s giving in this County; here’s how much has come in.
So, in each of our counties, we make sure to take very detailed information, down to the penny, and we are audited annually by a local auditing firm. We’re really proud of the transparency.
We’re always happy to sit down with someone considering donating or running a workplace campaign, there’s still time to do that … And even if they don’t run it right now, at least there’s some clarity around how that actually happens.”
To find out more about how you can support these local initiatives, visit unitedwaynco.org.