Laura Gilliam, is the Executive Director for the Cabell County branch of the United Way. She was invited to speak at a Marshall University luncheon Thursday at noon by the SGA and Faculty Senate. The program was held at the student center in the John Marshall Room and about 100 people attended.
Gilliam kept the focus on what the United Way is and what it is they do. Gilliam gave an example story about an ogre on a river to help the audience better understand their purpose and goals.
Think about a man walking along the river, and he sees a baby floating by so he jumps in to grab it. Then after he gets out there are 2 babies floating in the river, so he jumps back in. Then he gets back out again and turns around and the river is full of babies, so he runs into town to get help. And when one townsman shows up and said well. . Where are all these babies coming from? So the townsman walks up the river to find an ogre that is throwing all the babies into the river.
Gilliam said that’s their goal now, to find that Ogre. Just because the United Way is able to pump money into the community and help people with their immediate needs that that is not the United Ways goal, they want to be able to find the root cause and create a long-term solution to be able to build a stable future.
The Cabell County United Way has three partnerships, financial stability partnership, Cabell County substance abuse and Success by six. Gilliam is also working on a fourth partnership to reduce and eliminate hunger in Cabell County.
The financial stability act’s goal is to help families learn to manage their money before they begin to have financial trouble. The Cabell County substance abuse act was put into place to educate young children and teens about the danger of using drugs, try find out why young children, teens and adults are turning to drugs and to turn that around by teaching them the dangers at a young age. Success by six is a program put in place to help ensure that children under the age of 6 are enrolled in school and are being prepared for a bright education.
While the United Way must have money and financial donors to be able to do what they do, “No money no mission”, Gilliam stressed 3 of the most important things that the audience or anyone is able to do to make the United Way successful. Give, Advocate and Volunteer. That while having people donate hundreds and thousands of dollars is great, not everyone and in fact most people aren’t able to do that. Volunteering is the number one thing that Gilliam preached, that without volunteers the United Way simply wouldn’t be able to function, volunteering is the backbone of what they do.
Gilliam try’s to encourage everyone into giving his or her time to volunteer. That just because you may not be able to make a monetary donation doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything to help the cause. Gilliam also explained that they try to help “fit” people into being able to help in the areas they feel most passionate about.
A question that most of the audience kept asking was, what is their fundraising goal for this year? Gilliam didn’t really want to give an actual dollar value because their goal “is a fifteen increase in the number of donor’s”, well what exactly does that mean?
The most common donor for the United Way gives about five to seven dollars per month, and most are under five hundred dollars a year. So by having a fifteen percent increase in the actual number of donors that would raise more money then just have a few donate a lot of money, that having a lot of people giving just a little or whatever they can is more important and more effective, because in tern you actually have a greater physical number of donors. As far as an actual dollar amount though their goal for this year is just around $1.25 million, which is just a little more then they were actual able to raise lat year ($1.1 million).
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