Eastern Iowa United Way announces new focus for funding

CEDAR RAPIDS — United Way of East Central Iowa announced a new set of focus areas Wednesday that will determine how the organization’s funding is used over the next three years.

The new initiative is called Unite to Inspire.

United Way leaders encouraged nonprofit representatives to start preparing project proposals based on the Unite to Inspire’s new focus areas: economic mobility, childhood success, access to health care and other safety net services.

The proposals must be submitted to United Way in February 2023, and funding decisions will be announced in May. United Way’s next three-year funding cycle will begin in July 2023.

The new focus areas were decided based on a community impact assessment that the nonprofit conducted in 2021 to determine the greatest needs of Iowans in the five counties covered by the East Central Iowa office — Linn, Iowa, Cedar, Benton and Jones.

The assessment involved taking surveys and holding focus groups in the five counties, as well as looking at census data and data from United Way’s nonprofit partners, according to Kristin Roberts, the president and CEO of United Way.

Roberts said the assessment revealed three major areas of concern for East Central Iowans: housing difficulties — both with affordability and the safety of housing options; lack of child care, which can affect a parent’s ability to work and support their family; and safety net services, which are services that supply basic needs like food, shelter, transportation and health care in moments of crisis.

“Those were unanimously, across the five-county area, the top three needs,” Roberts said in the news conference.

Focus areas

The new focus areas were outlined by Karey Chase, United Way’s vice president of community impact.

Economic mobility, or providing a path from crisis to stability, can include creating more affordable housing and giving people the support they need to no longer rely on affordable housing options, she said.

Childhood success includes making sure parents have options for child care and making sure children have opportunities to learn and progress regardless of their background.

Health care and other safety net services are vital for ensuring that community members facing unforeseen obstacles in their lives can bounce back and keep moving forward.

“That’s what this unique new strategy is. It’s the community uplifting the needs, and it’s the community coming together to be able to provide solutions,” Chase said.

United Way is putting together an interactive website where community members can see the data that was collected during the impact assessment. The site will allow users to sort information based on county, race and other factors and create graphs that display that data. Chase said the website will be available within the next few months.

‘Not short term’

The Unite to Inspire campaign is also meant to encourage individual community members to participate in their communities via United Way.

“We know that these are not short-term issues that our community faces, but they are going to be an investment of short- and long-term goals that we have to work together to be able to navigate,” Chase said.

“And we know that we cannot do it alone. It’s going to take our nonprofits, our community based organizations, our government entities, but also every single community member.”

The word “via” is serving as an acronym for the campaign. It stands for volunteer, invest and advocate.

United Way leaders are encouraging community members to donate money and also look for ways to volunteer to support social services in their communities and advocate for any needed changes.

“Unite to Inspire is designed to mean whatever someone wants or needs it to mean,” Theresa Lewis, executive director of The Arc of East Central Iowa, said at the Wednesday news conference.

“It can mean, to a business, rallying their teams to unite and be inspired to increase campaign donations. It can mean, to an individual community member, to unite a cause and inspire friends and neighbors to make a difference.

”And it can mean, to nonprofits, uniting with others to inspire collaboration that will create the change benefiting the most vulnerable and at risk.”

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