On June 30, United Way completed our 60th fiscal year and we are excited to provide reports, highlighting our community investments. Over the coming months, our e-newsletters will include information on UWLC’s financial performance during FY18-19, information on our Community Impact, Basic Needs and Emergency Food & Shelter Program grants and reports that summarize our work in communities throughout Larimer County.

To begin this reporting series, we thought it might be interesting to summarize the results achieved through our newest grants – Innovation and Nonprofit Excellence. These grants debuted last summer and were specifically intended to allow United Way to be nimble and responsive to time-sensitive community needs, assist organizations with opportunities to leverage new dollars, and as a resource for capacity building expenses (an area that nonprofits often find hard to fund).

The results, after just one year, are impressive! We are very grateful to the nonprofits who applied for these new resources, and who place value on trying new solutions to increase their impact for children and families. We also want to express our gratitude to those who gave to our Innovation and Nonprofit Excellence funds, and to all who gave undesignated gifts to United Way through workplace campaigns, the Alexis de Tocqueville program, corporate gifts and individual donations. These undesignated gifts allow United Way staff and board members to evaluate community needs, combine resources from a variety of sources and provide funding where it will make the biggest impact, thus providing donors with the highest return on investment. Thank you ALL for trusting United Way with your philanthropic dollars – through you, we are making a real difference in Larimer County!

• A Little Help is a newer nonprofit to Northern Colorado that assists older adults by matching them with volunteers to help with household chores, transportation and social activities. UWLC’s support allowed A Little Help to purchase and roll out a smart phone app to connect volunteers with real-time needs.
• Emergency Coalition Meetings: United Way funded facilitation for a group of approximately 20 agencies to explore whether a community-wide emergency fund would be more effective than individual emergency response funds at multiple agencies. The result was the development of a collaborative resource guide and the realization that differences in eligibility and requirements for emergency support supported the continuance of agency-specific emergency funding.
• Foster Care Recruitment Campaign Management: United Way supported facilitation services that resulted in 10 foster care recruitment meetings to address the lack of available foster care families in Larimer County. This campaign was a success, with more than 30 families signing up to provide foster care locally
• Project Self Sufficiency Diversity Training: Thirty human service providers received advanced diversity training to improve direct service providers’ understanding and awareness of client issues through this grant from United Way. The results are better customer service, policy changes that have reduced barriers to services and an increased sensitivity to human service clients.
• Turning Point Suicide Prevention and EMDR Training: UW’s support provided advanced, evidence-based training and certification to two Turning Point therapist working with clients on suicide prevention and mental health issues.
• Neighbor to Neighbor Technology Enhancement: United Way helped increase efficiency within Neighbor to Neighbor’s new HomeShare program by funding a new module to their current CRM software. The HomeShare program matches lower income individuals looking for housing with seniors who have extra room in their home.

Summary of Results: With a United Way Innovation Grant…..

• Boys & Girls Club opened an additional Club, specifically for six and seven year olds, that provided 80 new summer care spots to decrease the 500 child waiting list they saw the previous summer. The program included academic enrichment to reduce “summer slide” and helped more low-income families maintain stable employment while their children were on summer vacation.
• Big Green was able to complete its goal of learning gardens in all Poudre School District low-income schools with support from the City of Fort Collins and a matching grant challenge from United Way’s Innovation Grant fund.
• Replicating a successful program from the Boulder area, Aspire 3D developed a place-based center to increase school achievement and provide parents withcareer path training and employment opportunities within a very low-income housing community in Loveland.
• One Community, One Family received almost $100,000 in local and state funding to provide short-term, rapid rehousing support to get individuals and families into stable housing.
• Homeward Alliance purchased a software tool that provides staff in multiple agencies housed at the Murphy Center with more and better data on clients that is being used to improve program offerings. Case Managers can now set and manage client goals and barriers to success, and also track referrals across organizations in a centralized spot. In addition, the adoption of this software positions Homeward Alliance for a regional role as a data center that includes federal funding that can be used to support future software costs.
• Estes Valley Investment in Childhood Success successfully applied to be a “Family Resource Center” – increasing their ability to provide wrap-around support to low-income families and access new sources of funding for their expanded operations.