When I moved to Columbus 20 years ago, I felt that I had stepped into a fairy tale land, a Mayberry of the Midwest. Everywhere I turned were delightful moments: Philharmonic concerts, neighborhood street festivals, extensive family free events and wonderful access to architecture, parks and clean, friendly shops and streets.
The Midwestern friendliness and neighborly, generous spirits of the people who live in Columbus made it an ideal place for my family to establish our long-term home.
Over the years, I have grown to love this community even more. I have also grown to see that while our community is indeed very Mayberry-like, there is also a lot of need in our community and are many people in our city that are dealing with crisis. One shocking fact I have learned is that more than 40 percent of the kids in our community qualify for free or reduced-lunch programs. So while our community is filled with industry and wealth, many families are still struggling to meet basic needs.
For this fairly significant part of our community dealing with financial crisis, legal crisis, opioid crisis, aging parent crisis, things may not always feel very“Mayberry-like.
During the past few months that I have become more involved with United Way Planning and the board, I have come to understand at a much deeper level how United Way is really helping to holistically, with the help industry and community partners, draw in funding and then utilize this funding to support many organizations throughout the community by careful and thoughtful planning.
Things are so much more interlinked than what I had naively understood in the past. For instance, a woman struggling to try to escape an abusive relationship needs multi-level support through the community. Organizations like Turning Point will help with resources, but she may need legal help from organizations such as Legal Aid. She may need support from Foundation for Youth to help with afternoon support for her kids as she works to provide an income for the family. She may need help from Just Friends if she has elderly parents she is trying to care for as well. The list of organizations this one woman may need to turn to in order to truly make it out of the abusive situation can encompass a long list, with one organization not able to provide specialized support for all the needs.
Without a holistic network of support, it makes it increasingly difficult — maybe even impossible — to get the support needed to break from the abusive relationship. Nearly every crisis situation is multi-pronged in terms of the support needed to get life back on the right track.
United Way helps to galvanize community business partners to pool together resources and assists in allocating the funding for holistic community support to insure that the community support can be maximized. These dynamics do shift in time in terms of needs of the community (as an example the growth in the opioid crisis). Additionally, the ability of organizations to serve different needs changes over time, prompting a need to change the planning periodically. There is a need to work to maximize the support to insure the most people possible are served in the ways that are most needed in the moment. This is what United Way helps our community figure out.
One dynamic that has been changing is the way in which our society wants to and is energized to give. There is a slow growing shift from monthly deduction donations with an open designation for usage, toward wanting to give to a designated organization and at a designated time or moment of inspiration.
The trend of directed and in-the-moment giving is good in that it allows people to get energized and donate to their passion, however the trend makes it very challenging to plan for community needs holistically. It can result in less balance to the planning of the community and drives complexities to being able to maximize the networks of support required to assist community members out of crises situations. This new trend of how people are giving also poses an issue in less consistent/variable incoming funding, which can make it more difficult for support organizations to survive. This makes it increasingly complex to make a holistic community support plan. Luckily, there are still many that donate in monthly increments and with open funding platform which still allows, at this time, for a good amount of balance to be maintained.
The question of the quarter that I would like to pose to the community is how do you believe United Way should deal with the emerging trend changes in how people are donating? Do you have any ideas on how to achieve the balance for the community that is needed to provide sustainable, holistic support?
Ginger Lirette of Columbus is a member of the United Way of Bartholomew County board of directors. She is an account executive with Cummins, Inc. and has lived in Columbus for the past 20 years. She serves as a mentor for Columbus Robotics Team 4926. She will write about her United Way involvement on a quarterly basis. Reach her at ginger.lirette@team4926.org. Send comments to editorial@therepublic.com.
