United Way makes changes in how they allocate funds

At its June 23 board meeting, the United Way of Cowlitz County made a strategic change in the way it will allocate funds to local agencies. Contributions to agencies will now be distributed based on donations received rather than the past practice of distributing funds based on pledges. This change is intended to avoid the fiscal challenges that surfaced in the past year. According to Executive Director Dave Green, "Put simply, United Way of Cowlitz County will distribute the funds it has on hand rather than anticipating funds that are promised through pledges."

Green also shared that donations designated for a specific agency, or “designated funds” will be distributed on a quarterly basis after they are received. The first payout of the designated funds will occur shortly after the end of June. In order to implement the new practice described above, no funds other than those designated by donors to specific agencies will be distributed this year. All other funds will be held over for the next allocation period at the conclusion of the current campaign year which ends in March of 2016. At that time the allocated funds will be paid monthly to the various agencies.

Green has made it a point to share this change with every local United Way agency, in person to the degree possible. When asked about how the agencies responded, Green commented, "The leaders of these agencies understand the need for this change and their responses to this news have been positive. They recognize the need to think long term and to eliminate the speculation associated with distributing funds based on pledges."

Contributions to United Way come in basically two forms. Some funds are donated to United Way for general distribution to agencies in the community. Other funds, referred to as designated funds, are contributions made to United Way and the donor specifies the specific agencies to which the funds are intended.