United Way of Spokane County shutting down after century of giving
United Way of Spokane County shutting down after century of giving
United Way of Spokane County shutting down after century of giving
This is a local story, but then again it isn't. The same thing is playing out across WA state and no doubt across the country too. Weird how they (the people interviewed from the org) are tippy-toeing around the fact that Trump's and fElon's cuts are at the bottom of all this.
“United Way of Spokane County will be concluding its operations following a thoughtful evaluation by our board of directors,” she said as part of the statement. “This decision reflects the combined impact of ongoing economic challenges, affecting campaigns, donor giving and grant support, alongside an unexpected leadership transition.”
In April, AmeriCorps announced cuts to about 41% of its grant funding and placed 85% of its staff on leave. All told, Washington state officials expected to lose out on $21.6 million in program funding.
Included in that figure was a $50,000 grant to United Way of Spokane, which served as an intermediary agency for Volunteers in Service to America, or VISTA.
other United Way agencies in Washington also have decided to shutter, although they declined to say where.
One of the most popular recent programs was the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.
“We relied on state grants for that program,” Bluff said. “VISTA from AmeriCorps is going away. That was another big program. We just kept losing funding.”
United Way also supported Spokane Immigrants Rights, YWCA, YMCA, American Indian Community Center, Girl Scouts, SNAP Financial and Feast World Kitchen to name a few.
Ah, there you have it, the United Way was trying to help poor and darker-skinned people among other things. Naturally the Regime had to strangle them.
Maybe a dumb question, but what does UW actually do besides act as a charity franchise/middleman?
I thought the big strength was they basically invented paycheck deductions for charity, but then all the other charities got in on it too.
They are a middleman and do take a slight overhead, 1.1% last I saw, though it might have changed since then. The benefit is one of simplicity. Many people want to give to charity and aren't sure which one. UW let's them donate one place and it get distributed to many. They also have criteria that charities must meet to qualify. Also, like you mentioned, they do the paycheck deduction. All of what they do is about making it easier and hassle free as possible to donate, making it more likely that people will.
My only interaction with UW in Spokane has been through their volunteer portal. https://www.volunteerspokane.org/ This UW portal offers a one-stop dashboard for people who want to volunteer (anywhere in the region, not with UW specifically) to hook up with nonprofits/charities that need volunteers. A lot of local orgs use this portal for outreach and volunteer communications.
I've no idea if the local orgs are now going to get cut off from that service or if the national UW will keep it running and maintained. If the local orgs lose access it's going to cause a lot of pain I think - not many of them are going to have the IT skills available to replicate it or to migrate to a different volunteer platform and even if they did it will cost them money.