No, it just seems to be that at least around here, 20 years ago it was a lot MORE shakedown like. And that a lot of the complaints that I hear are for activities that happened YEARS ago.
We dropped our United Way drive probably eight years ago and don’t even participate in one any longer. Friends and families drives have gotten less arm twisty.
At my last job it was like that now… or nearly two years ago, before I was laid off. 
I’m sure there are lots of people who have old stories, but there are plenty who have contemporary ones too.
:rolleyes: Your strawman actually set up a strawman - impressive. Your post doesn’t address a single point I raised. In fact, I specifically pointed out that United Way doesn’t directly serve individuals - but there are countless non-profits out there that also don’t serve individuals but provide essential services. I’ve seen first hand the good that my United Way does, and there simply isn’t a way for someone to twist the facts around to disprove that. It’s sucks that your United Way isn’t as effective. Or, more likely, that you have absolutely no fucking idea what your United Way does - you just like to gnash and wail about a disservice you think is occurring.
I get the high pressure treatment at my current job every single year. Bastards. 
I’m going to be interested to see how much pressure I get at my new job. We are a United Way agency (we receive funds from them, so we’re required). Our CEO decreed several years ago that he doesn’t want to solicit our employees twice a year with a separate appeal, so every donation that comes from a pledge will have a chunk taken out to United Way. Plus, there’s the chance that someone designates a different organization for their donation. How hard of a push will they give - I’m interested.
Re-read your cite; it actually says the opposite. The one charity in that area that was able to get more money pledged than UW budgeted for them was the **only **one that got their allocation adjusted.
That would inspire me to find a good employment lawyer. I respond poorly to unwarranted, assumed authority.
If you give directly to organizations, good for you.
But as I keep having to point out time after time, it’s not about you. Your individual behavior doesn’t matter a hill of beans. It’s the collective behavior of everyone that matters.
In the real world that we both live in, many people do not give to individual charities. They don’t think of it, or they don’t get around to it, or they would but didn’t have the money at that time. As many excuses as there are people. And even those who do give directly may not know of some small but worthy organizations that can’t afford the horrendously expensive business of professional fundraising.
And that’s where middlemen organizations come in. Yeah, they collect at work but in return they offer the opportunity for direct payroll deductions. People like that. It’s mostly invisible and they don’t have to think about making 52 (or 26 or 12) individual donations. And they don’t get bothered by junk mail every week. It works the best for the most people.
Yes, workplace pressure is bad. I said that myself. Yes, giving directly is good. I do that too, in addition to giving to United Way. Both ways are necessary to get the money where it needs to go because I can’t research every organization in the area personally.
If you don’t like UW, don’t give. But don’t say that the concept is wrong in and of itself, because it’s not. Your individual UW may be unworthy, but that doesn’t carry over to mine, or his or hers.
Yes - there are. However, it needs to be noted that the vast majority of organizations misreport their numbers because it’s a bullshit and mostly-arbitrary standard. An organization getting to 85% is about as meaningless as a company getting to 100% United Way participation.
Would you be able to expand on this concept a little for me? I’m trying to understand why an organization who financially assists NPO’s, prohibit all fundraising activities during certain periods as a stipulation to their assistance. I tried to consider the dollar amount of the contribution, if it was greater than what your organization would have raised during the 2.5 months. However, at this moment it doesn’t hold water for me because of the negative impact your organization could have from the potential lost revenue, and perhaps the indirect results. I’ve never heard of something like this before, but then again I’ve only worked for two nonprofits in my career. I’m currently working on a nonprofit graduate degree, and have yet to come across a scenario like this. Thanks in advance!!
Sure thing. Simply put, there’s no possible way we could raise as much money as the United Way does for us during that period of time. There are plenty of other things we can be doing during that time to prepare for our year-end appeal, cleaning up our databases, gathering information, etc. And since we don’t send out appeals any more frequently than quarterly, we time them so that the blackout period doesn’t majorly interrupt that.
Let me make this clear - I absolutely do not buy in to the United Way’s claim that bombarding their potential donors with multiple appeals is going to decrease the amount of donations they receive. People will donate to organizations they believe in that ask them to donate. United Way has a leg up because they get to ask personally (sort of - addressing a luncheon/staff meeting is certainly better than a letter).
Frankly, I was surprised my organization receives UW money. We’re a nationally-recognized name, with extremely consistent revenue. But the UW money fills a gap that we would have to hire another fundraiser on for, increasing our risk.
Hope that helps. Where are you in school?
My current company dropped the UW five years ago. Now we have a charity drive. There are tables set up in the cafeteria and local charities are invited to show up. Most of the charities are invited by employees. I believe that the local UW is one of them, in fact. No pressure. Just an email or two and whomever wants to show up is allowed to do so.
The company matches all employee charitable donations 1:1 up to a certain percentage of their salary so long as the money goes to a non-profit. It can be any charity, not necessarily one of the local ones. They also give grants above and beyond employee matching to a few of the local charities who present at the drive. A friend of mine runs a wonderful local charity and the majority of his yearly funding comes from our charity drive.
This is superior to the hounding I got during the UW drive at a previous company a few years back. I was totally harassed because I refused to fill out that stupid blue card. Everyone had to fill out a card, even if they weren’t donating, in order to get their precious 100% participation. They spammed my email and voicemail and even contacted the woman in the cube next to me to have her bug me. Finally the head of the drive showed up in my cube a literally blocked the entrance with a blue card in hand and then lied to me and said that filling out the card was a payroll requirement. I asked her to take a walk with me to HR to sort the whole thing out and she finally backed off.
Thanks Munch, I appreciate you taking the time! Your response was in line with my initial thoughts. The aspect of nonprofits that is most foreign to me is fundraising, but I’m doing my best to ‘self educate’ and learn within my current courses and from others, as the employees in my current organization always seem to be on the defense when I ask questions and unwilling to help. It’s frustrating working for an organization that doesn’t foster a learning environment. I predict it will bite them in the butt soon, since the majority of the directors are already of retirement age. For now it works, until another opportunity becomes available where someone recognizes my potential outside of the accounting world. To answer your question, I’m taking my courses online from Capella.
Sometimes, however, it IS the United Way that’s the problem. Here’s a previous post of mine, covering some of the more well-known scandals (Aramony, Chao, Suer, Taylor, Dickerson, etc.)