Webinars

The 2020 Census is upon us. Why does it matter to the nonprofit sector? Why should it matter to you?

When our neighbors are not counted in the Census, critical funds needed to serve families may be diverted to other communities leaving nonprofits, often stretched thin, to cover the service gap.

With a commitment to a thriving community for all, Heart of West Michigan United Way stepped up to be the 2020 Census Hub for their county as part of a statewide collaborative effort to ensure even hard to reach community members are counted.

Carra Oteto, Community Impact Coordinator, and Mandy DeWilde, Senior Program Data Administrator of Community Impact, shares how Heart of West Michigan United Way is leveraging their partnerships and resources to:

• Identify their neighbors who are historically under-counted
• Engage the right community partners to increase awareness and reach
• Provide technical and funding support to community partners for innovative outreach
• Track their progress in e-CImpact

United Way of Greater Houston found itself at a crossroads. With a growing number of funding opportunities to manage and volunteers to engage in the evaluation process, the standard way of doing things wasn’t going to cut it.

It was time to take another step in the evolution from paper to an online evaluation process!

Doris Moran, Senior Program Manager, and Erin Trytten, Senior Program Manager, with United Way of Greater Houston share their journey from paper evaluations to sending applications to volunteers for review through USB flash drives in the mail, to emailing spreadsheets and finally to instant, online access and reviews for dozens of volunteers!

What does our data tell us? Do you find yourself in the same position year after year-spending hours analyzing (agonizing) over how long it takes you to figure out what your data can tell you?

What if you had a tool that offered a solution to quickly and accurately answer your organization’s most asked community impact questions? What if this tool was designed to help organizations, like yours, track and analyze shared measures, across programs, so you could get a true “apples to apples” comparison of data?

Three United Ways, of varying sizes, share how utilizing both e-CImpact and i-CResults provided them with the tools they needed for consistent, accurate and immediate data. They also share their knowledge of the system from the perspective related to the work they do at their organizations and how they’ve benefited from embracing a system that provided a solution to their data collection needs.

Recorded webinar hosted by:

• Brent Hill, CFO at United Way of Southwestern Indiana
• Jarid Brown, Director of Resource Development at United Way of Central Illinois
• Katrina Hayes, Director of Community Impact at United Way of Central Illinois
• Dawn Helmrich, Director of Research and Evaluation at United Way of Greater Milwaukee and Waukesha County

In September 2017, Hurricane Irma struck the Florida Keys, inflicting damage across the 120-mile island chain between Miami and Cuba. The Category 4 storm impacted over 75,000 residents of the Keys; devastating homes, roadways and businesses and leaving thousands homeless, jobless or both.

Irma also impacted the United Way of the Florida Keys staff at a time of critical community need, leaving an already small staff even smaller. Their office manager had evacuated and the CEO’s home was devastated, forcing their families to leave the community. Leah Stockton entered her role as the new CEO 63 days after Irma hit.

Still receiving paper applications and reports using spreadsheets for their round of Community Investment funding, staff spent hours organizing and compiling information even before disaster relief funding came in. It worked, but when the community turned to United Way of the Florida Keys for relief and funding became available from federal sources, they quickly realized they needed a more efficient way to track and manage data.

United Way of the Florida Keys quickly reached out to Seabrooks. A week later their board approved bringing on Seabrooks as the newest member of their team. Within two weeks their first application offering Hurricane Irma Relief Funding was live in e-CImpact.

Host Leah Stockton, President/CEO from United Way of the Florida Keys will share their disaster relief experience with Hurricane Irma and how e-CImpact created a continuous and innovative space for grant-making and data collection to support impact through community investment.

This webinar explores how the outcomes evaluation landscape has changed dramatically over the past 20 years, the effect it has had on non-profits and what you, as a funder can do.

Dawn Helmrich shares her experience and knowledge of helping non-profits increase their capacity for outcomes evaluation. Dawn also shares tips and tricks to help agencies increase their data collection capacity, move their data forward and help reduce the load on agencies to get quality level information back to donors.

Dawn Helmrich is the Director of Research and Evaluation at United Way of Greater Milwaukee and Waukesha County. During her tenure she has helped develop the Community Outcomes Project into a nationally recognized model and works directly with the community to ensure that funded programs are meeting their outcomes.

Dr. Stan Holt, a Senior Advisor with Partners for Impact, will share his experiences of how his local United Way moved from over 120 different program outcomes to 12 outcomes focusing on three strategic goals. He recently left United Way of the Greater Triangle after 12 years and is excited to share the rationale for making this organizational change, the process of this change, and lessons learned. As part of the discussion, he will talk about the important role partner agencies played in the process and the ways in which this process can improve a United Way’s marketing and resource development efforts.

In this half hour webinar presented by Abby Verdillo of United Way of Roanoke Valley, Abby explains their shift from traditional allocations to community impact using e-CImpact as a technology tool. She shares the challenges, successes, and lessons learned on their journey to more impactful grant making.

Is your organization either in the process or about to undertake the process of moving from programmatic outcomes to Collective or Community Outcomes and Indicators?

The CDBG program provides federal funding to assist government agencies, non-profit and for-profit organizations in meeting the housing, public facility, public service, and economic development needs of low and moderate income persons. Learn from one United Way Professional how they have administered the CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) program in their community and listen to a lively group discussion following the presentation.

The "Streamlining Your Evaluation Process" webinar highlights the processes that three United Ways have implemented to help streamline and improve efficiencies around some key areas of their particular Evaluation process.

The Managing a Letter of Intent webinar highlights the processes that three United Ways have implemented to screen the LOI and move the entity forward in the application process.

Learn how United Ways have added efficiencies to the certification of non-profit organizations, agency eligibility and all around "Vetting" of organizations, including documenting Patriot Act and Counter Terrorism Compliance.

Learn first hand about United Way of Greater Milwaukee's Community Outcomes Project, a progressive initiative designed to train staff of UWGM-funded program partners how to measure the impact of their health and human service programs.