United way of the river cities

Laura Gilliam and Cassey Bowden are leaders in the Cabell County branch of the United Way. They presented their goals and explained just what exactly it is they do to the JMC 201 class at Marshall University.

            Laura Gilliam is the Executive Director of the United Way of the River Cities and Cassey Bowden is the Director of Resource Development & Marketing of the United Way of the River Cities. Laura focused on the explanation of what the United Way is and what it is they do. While Cassey focused on explaining how it is they are able to do what they do through special events and fund raising.

            The Untied Way of the River Cities was founded in Cabell County in 1922, where they concentrated most of their efforts in the “work place campaign”. About 15 years ago the United Way felt that they needed to take a more direct approach in helping the community, that just because they were peddling money in and helping save people in distress it didn’t mean a promising future, which is the United Ways goal.

Laura gave an example story. 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.

            “Our goal now is to find that Ogre.” Laura explained that just because they are 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 build a stable future.

            The Cabell County United Way has 3 partnerships, financial stability partnership, Cabell County substance abuse and Success by 6. Laura is also working on a fourth partnership to reduce and eliminate hunger in Cabell County.

            The financial stability act’s goal is to try to help families be able to learn to manage their money before they begin to have financial trouble. The Cabell County substance abuse act is to try to help educate young children and teens about the danger of using drugs, trying to find out why young teens and adults are turning to drugs and to turn that around by teaching them the dangers at a younger age. And Success by 6 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 has to have money and financial donors to be able to do what they do, “No money no mission”, Laura and Cassey both stressed 3 of the most important things that are able to make the United Way so 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 they preached, that without volunteers the United Way simply wouldn’t be able to function, volunteering is the backbone of what they do.

            They try to encourage everyone they can into giving their 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. Laura and Cassey also explained that they try to help “fit” people into being able to help in the areas they feel most passionate about.

            Fundraising and special events are a key element in what Cassey does for the River Cities branch. The Put’n’Play event, Out on the Town, The West Virginia 5k Race, Super Kids Saturday, community basketball games and many more. Is all just a small glimpse of what Cassey does to try to raise funding for their community projects.

            A question that most of the students in the class were wanting to know was what is their fundraising goal for this year ? Cassey nor Laura didn’t really want to give an actual dollar value because their goal “is a 15% increase in the number of donor’s”, well what exactly does that mean?

            The most common donor for the United Way gives about 1 hours pay per month, and most are under 500 dollars a year. So by having a 15% increase in the actual number of voters 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 is more important and more effective. As far as a 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).