The United Way of Bartholomew County fund drive is at 85 percent to its goal of $4.1 million. And leaders hope to wrap up a successful campaign by April 30.
Leaders then hope to schedule a celebratory gathering sometime in June, pending the COVID-19 situation locally, according to Mark Stewart, United Way president.
The United Way campaign supports the wide-ranging social service work of 17 nonprofit agencies representing 32 programs that reach more than one-third of the county population of about 82,000 people.
Those programs range from youth sports to job training for the underemployed to efforts promoting emotional and physical well-being of retirees.
For a number of years, the local United Way’s use of funds has received the highest rating of such national watchdog agencies as Charity Navigator. All of the proceeds from the drive go to the cause, since United Way has other support covering its operating expenses and salaries.
Plus, local generosity is still record-setting, since the county campaign continues to rank No. 1 in Indiana in per-capita giving.
Several major local firms still have not completed their employee campaigns, which Stewart acknowledged bodes well to significantly help generate the approximate $75,000 still needed to reach the goal. Toyota Material Handling currently is in the midst of its annual drive. Plus, Stewart said that Columbus Regional Health and Faurecia each have campaigns slated for next month.
“First of all, any company is very generous to run a United Way campaign to begin with,” Stewart said. “We used to run all the campaigns in the fall. But it works much better for some companies today to do them in the spring.
“And actually, with the campaigns more spread out throughout the year, it allows our own United Way staff to give more attention to each campaign, since we can get spread pretty thin in the fall.”
Of the campaigns completed, Stewart especially lauded one corporate segment.
“The banking sector has been really strong,” he said.
Kim Bennett is a United Way board member, a member of its resource development committee and also vice president of treasury management for German-American Bank. She mentioned that she is happy to see banks that more recently located to Bartholomew County, including her own firm which arrived in 2012, carry the baton of generosity that previous institutions such as Irwin Union Bank made a community tradition.
“The banks here really seem to know that we need to find ways to help those that need it the most,” she said.
Bennett cautioned local residents about simply leaving a late financial push to the company campaigns.
“I think it definitely will take everyone for us to get there,” Bennett said. “So if there still are opportunities for others to give, I hope they would take advantage of that. I definitely wouldn’t want people to automatically think, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got reaching our goal already in the bag.’
“”With everything we’ve faced with COVID the past two years, I also think we have been very fortunate.”
Stewart agreed, especially in light of the fact that, because of the pandemic, 90 percent of the fund drive campaigns have had to be done virtually.
