Tell Me About It: Looking for change

1. What is Community Impact, and what is its connection to Lima and the local United Way?

Community Impact actually is a national United Way initiative that focuses the service model of United Way on achieving community outcome, achieving changes in the lives of client populations we’re serving, as opposed to simply funding agencies or simply funding programs. The objective is a defined change in the life circumstances of an individual.

2. What have you done so far with implementing Community Impact?

We have established two primary areas of focus: One, childhood literacy and education preparation, and the other being issues of the working poor.

3. What led to this change of Community Impact, and why was it necessary?

A number of client populations have been left vulnerable. The United Way, when it looks at its entire contribution, recognizes that there needs to be someone who steps into some of the gaps we have in service and someone who does it in a way that mobilizes community energy to get things done.

4. How is that different from what you have done in the past?

In the past, really, we’ve been known as a funder of agencies. Money comes to us from the community; we define focus areas, and give the money to agencies. The process is focused on getting that outcome achieved.

5. What are you looking to accomplish?

The primary thing we’re looking to accomplish is community change. We believe within the Lima community, there are a lot of opportunities and a lot of energies out there. I found in the process there is a latent energy there to do these sorts of things that needs basically the focus and, to some degree, the funding.

6. How does Community Impact affect the beneficiaries of Untied Way services?

It affects them in a very, very positive way because the focus now is upon improvement in specific ways in their living, their life experience, as opposed to just giving to an agency that, in a general sense, helps them in a somewhat undefined way. Now we’re actually talking about that individual, and we measure the programs that we fund by whether that individual actually changes in some specific ways.

7. How do you actually gauge success?

Every program has its theory of change, in other words how it plans to impact the life of that person. So our measure of the program is the extent to which they have achieved that.

8. How will the agencies the United Way serve be affected?

The agencies have been encouraged to become more outcome-driven, so we really work with them to measure how people’s lives are improving. We actually continue to work with them and use the program information to improve.