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United Way kicks off 2018 campaign

Posted at 9:28 PM, Sep 18, 2018
and last updated 2018-09-18 23:32:05-04

HELENA – The United Way of the Lewis & Clark Area launched their 2018 campaign on Tuesday, Sep. 18 at their annual Kick Off Breakfast event.

Instead of a traditional monetary goal, this year the United Way set a goal to change 3,000 lives throughout the community.

Lewis & Clark Area President and CEO Alison Munson says the new campaign reflects the organization’s commitment to helping to better the lives of people in the area through community strength.

“The United Way is not one organization, we are a partnership of 39 strong agencies actually moving the needle on root causes in our community, such as homelessness, poverty and hunger,” said Munson. “So by giving to the United Way community fund, you are giving to a partnership working together and we drive donor dollars further.”

The United Way will be working with organizations that better the Health, Education, Financial Stability or Basic Needs in the community.

“We’ve always had the four pillars of health, education, prosperity and basic needs, but this year we’ve really set some goals behind it,” said Munson, “Making sure every child is school-ready, making sure every family is mentally healthy, make every family prosperous and make homelessness rare, brief and non recurring.”

The United Way has set a benchmark of $258 for being what it costs to change the life of one person in the community which means it will take just over $770,000 to reach their goal of helping 3,000 people.

Just over $8,000 was raised at the event Tuesday, which United Way said is enough to truly change the lives of over 30 people.

“Now we only have 2,970 to go,” Munson added.

The United Way of the Lewis & Clark Area also updated their funding model for this year to require nonprofits to fill out a grant application.

The organization wants the public to know that the new application process is still being evaluated, and if they find that something doesn’t work they will change it.

“Our mission hasn’t changed,” said Munson, “We still focus on human and health services and organizations.”