Here is their rating for “United Way of the National Capital Area”.
They give it three stars!
Couple of good articles on the subject over at the Chronicle on Philanthropy. The articles are free and in their non-member area.
Malthus, three stars isn’t a very good ranking on Navigator. Their rating is pretty low, especially for such a large and well-known organization. Also, this fraudulent activity was just discovered, and isn’t likely to be reflected in anyone’s rankings as of yet. Regardless, Navigator is a great resource tool if you’re trying to decide on an organization to help out - they collect 990 forms, evaluate their efficiency, board participation, etc. I highly recommend using it more often.
I just don’t understand why people donate to the United Way. All they are is basically a clearing house for charitable gifts. Other than being in Zenster or Anthracite’s situation, donations to the United Way are just a lazy and irresponsible use of your donation dollar. People complain and complain about the sheer number of solicitations they receive in the mail from charities. You know why? Because large groups like the United Way create and sell those mailing lists, and when these small organizations don’t receive the direct support they need, they rely on the United Way to keep them going. Take the middle man out of the equation, and you’ve got less crap in your mailbox, plain and simple.
Whoops. Navigator doesn’t have 990 forms etc. http://www.guidestar.org/ does. Sorry!
(They require a registration, but it’s free. I constantly use it for school and job searching - and if I had any money I’d use it to research potential organizations to donate to. They track an organization’s mission, goals, contact info, financials, board members, 990 forms, etc.)
I have never understood how the United Way justifies its big executive salaries. Like others here have said, they are little more than a conduit.
A decade or so ago, when the Aramony scandal broke, I was living in South Carolina. They had three UWs in SC - one for the upstate, one for the capital area, and one for the coastal part of the state. The directors of each were drawing six-figure salaries. That doesn’t sound like much now, but that was (a) in a low-wage state, and (b) before executive compensation took off over the past decade.
As a Federal worker, I give through the Combined Federal Campaign, which is run by the UW (although the powers that be are looking for somebody else who can take it over). But I can (and do) specify exactly which charity is getting how much money, and it allows me to do the automatic payroll deduction.
My first job out of college was on the bond trading floor of Prudential Securities. Prudential had pledged a certain amount to the United Way and tried to bully the employees into donating so that the amount that Pru had to cough up was minimal. The head of bond trading would come around and ask us INDIFUCKINGVIDUALLY to donate. I was young and bold and said “The United Way are a bunch of thieves so I’ll donate twice the amount to Robinhood Foundation.” Everyone around me fell silent and gaped open-mouthed in disbelief. A week later I was promoted to trader. Always say your peace/piece.
I have stopped donating to the United Way after I read about one of the earlier scandals.
I’m glad I didn’t start again. Damn thieves.
Thanks for the info, Munch. 
I am adding this site to my bookmarks. I will check out if they list Canadian charities.
I blame myself (in part!) for my complacency. I am often simply too busy to check up on everything, and lazily just assumed the the United Way must be reputable. More fool I.
Of course, each regional charity is different. But still, I will be running a hairy eyeball over any before donating again.
Not much of a surprise really. Large contributions can and will attract unscrupulous people to try and fleece it. Look at congress.
These scandals are saddening and infuriating, but I’m not willing to write off United Way entirely. It does provide a very valuable service to charities that are unable to put the marketing power behind their drives that UW can and does. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of small charities in urban locations, and small charities spread out in rural areas (which can be even more impoverished than urban ones). There is simply no way that these charities can raise the funds they desperately need by relying on the teeming millions to education themselves – particularly in rural areas, where the “base” of potential donors is significantly smaller.
By being part of the United Way’s list of recipients, these charities get much-needed funding based on the amount of money they NEED to operate, not the amount of money that happened to be given by the relatively few people that knew they existed and bothered to write them a cheque.
I am a Big Sister, and was recently invited to be part of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization in in the Twin Cities. As such, I’ll be one of those schmucks that shows up at your companies’ UW campaigns, to talk about being a Big and what the experience has meant to me. Fully 1/3 of BBBS’s funding here comes from the United Way, which amounts to about $1,000,000. The organization stands roughly a snowball’s chance in hell of getting that much money from individual donations. It just wouldn’t happen, no matter how worthy the organization is (and it’s VERY worthy, in my opinion).
Extrapolate that to smaller, less-well-known charities that provide services much more vital to the daily lives of their clients. Homeless shelters, abuse shelters, soup kitchens, Meals on Wheels, whatever. Most of them you won’t have heard of.
Though I understand the dismay over the thieving bastards that do give UW a bad name, I can’t fathom just writing them off entirely and hoping that everyone else a) also stops giving to the UW to punish them, and b) magically remember on their own to give to charities that can’t afford to advertise. It simply won’t happen, and that will mean the slow demise of many, many wonderful organizations that provide services to the people who need them most.
Does the United Way need to be held accountable? Of course. Does it need a financial-oversight overhaul? Definitely. But I can’t understand this assumption that the world would be better off without them, cuz it just ain’t so.
I just want to say how glad I am to have bumped this thread. Its view count has doubled and new posters are being re-Neducated about what a scum ball operation The United Way is.
I think masonite may have hit the nail on the head. All of this 100% participation crap is more than likely one of the few brownie points a top executive can put on their resume. Few other organizations have the high profile of The United Way and therefore it looks really good to be a major donor to them.
The more I hear about the levels of coercion others have experienced, the more I’d like to see a Federal investigation into The United Way’s business practices. I think PBS’s Frontline needs to do an exposé of these rotters, right quick. Once again, thank you to all the other new contributors in this thread. I may have to bump this a second time once it falls off of the front page. It’s time these maggots were brought to light.
I believe it was supreme court justice John Jay who said;
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Wow, I should have proof-read. Sorry.
Educate. Obviously.
I meant that I was recently invited to be a part of the organization’s Speakers Bureau in the Twin Cities.
To add to masonite’s comment about the need for corporations to have high UW participation, I believe it stems from various Chamber of Commerce awards and other various recognitions. It’s very easy to compare corporations by one simple number, and the UW is more than willing to be that benchmark.
Beadlin’s right, though. There are a lot of excellent, necessary organizations that rely on the UW. (However, I believe a group like BBBS could definitely support themselves. If they’re looking for some good development officers, have them give me a call, I need a job!).
Good job, Zenster. It certainly opened my eyes!
My issue with it is not their donation directions, practices, internal scandals, etc. I don’t even have to know anything about that to know that I will never donate to them. All I have to know is - if I don’t donate, my company gives me a Black Mark on my “unofficial” record.
Someone else posted about an upper-level manager going person to person to collect. I forgot that that had happened to me once - a senior VP of the company, going cubicle to cubicle, saying essentially “Hi! How much are you going to donate to UW RIGHT NOW!?” You better believe he extorted a cubic buttload of money from us. :mad: :mad: :mad:
I blame the company, but I also blame United Way. In the past, I sent two anonymous mails to them, outlining exactly what was going on, who was doing it, and how it made their company appear. The result? Squat. Unless and until they back with force a “zero tolerance” policy towards intimidation and threats for collection of funds by their agents (agents in the legal sense, which are the company officers who are designated to be the UW collectors), they will not receive anything but ill-will from me.
We’re somewhere in the middle of the company’s annual UW extortion drive right now. The envelopes haven’t gone out yet but posters and shit are up. I objected to being included in the extortion drive the last time and got called a bad citizen by the VP of Human Resources. I plan to print out the articles linked here and send them to him. Anonymously of course.
I too have been coerced into donating to UW. The threats were there even though our names were not on the envelope. I don’t know if I believe them but they could have some bite.
I looked at it as a cost of my job and threw in $50 every time.
Word of warning…for those of you who think your envelope is anonymous…watch out! Get a co-workers envelope and look at every single square inch. Look for anything different between the two. Sure enough, there was a distinquishing item. In goes $50.
I hate that shit. People could donate 30% of their income to charity and they wouldn’t know but they pass judgement on people based on one incident. Bastards.
I hate that as much as people higher than you in the company hitting you up for their kids school or other charities. They know damn well that it could be dangerous for you to say no.
Bastards!
Back in the mid to late 80’s, when I found out that the United Way had a Director/VP/whatever for Minneapolis and one for St. Paul, who both made over $100k, I decided that I would never give these blood sucking leeches another dime.
Well surprise, surprise, fundraising comes through our (major downtown) company and our VPs demand 100% compliance. It came down to me being the last hold-out. I got visits from every Manager on the floor trying to convince me to donate. Then from every Director. Then the pressure started from my own Director and I got an unfriendly chat from the VP.
Stupidly, reluctantly, regrettably, I caved.
The next year they did the same thing. Again, I was the last hold-out. This time I refused to cave. I’m pretty sure that my Director secretly donated $10 in my name, because we somehow came out with 100% compliance.
The year after that, we were down to 97% and change. Seems a few other people finally got irritated at “forced donations”.
Now when they come at me, I have a laundry list of reasons for not giving a fucking dime to the United Way.
Why is it a bad thing that top execs get $100k? That’s a low-end figure for vice presidents to make, even right here in Minnesota. To draw top talent, as United Way and other agencies want and deserve to, they must pay competitive salaries. Otherwise, they’ll be stuck with people that do not have the background/education/marketplace savvy that’s needed at that high a level. Those people that are bright, driven and have great experience in running large organizations are going to be drawn to for-profit businesses if the salaries are significantly better. UW MUST compete.
Now. Unfortunately, UW has hired some people who have turned out to be decidedly unethical. Which happens all over the place! Enron! Arthur Andersen! WorldCom! The list goes on! Lots of money is too tempting for some assholes to resist, and some of those assholes get hired by charitable organizations. Shit, some religious figures embezzle from their own fucking churches! Yes, it’s too bad that such large-scale embezzlements happened, but that does not mean that the entire organization is necessarily corrupt.
As I said before, YES, UW needs strong financial oversight. YES, it should be held accountable. But to withhold donations and expect others to is unreasonable and punishes the many, many, many charities that benefit from the United Way.
Lets look at the likely outcome of United Way folding. Suddenly, all these small charities that have depended on it for funding are on their own. So, they have two options: cease operations, or conduct their own intensive fund-raising initiatives. If they go under, the people they help get screwed. If they try to raise their own funds, that means serious overhead. Suddenly they have to pay people to work the phones, go door-to-door, canvass neighborhoods, write the grant paperwork, etc. etc. purely to raise money. So if you do donate, what percentage of your donation do you suppose will reach the people you’re trying to help?
With the UW, 85% of your money gets to the charity. That’s damn good. Charities that must do their own fundraising, as there has already been an example given in this thread, get as little as 15% out of the deal, because they must pay people to ask for money. That’s just the way things are. The remaining 15% of your donation does go to the continuation of the UW, but I have no problem with that, because their entire raison d’etre is to save individual charities from having to fundraise.
Anyway, I do understand the resentment the strong-arming tactics many companies employ causes. I hate it too. I also work for a place that aims for 100% participation, and yes, it has to do with taxes and public image. But most companies also do things like donation-matching – last year, my $520 donation was 70% matched by my company, so I effectively gave $884. That’s pretty cool. My company also gives away merchandise, gift certificates, flights, cruises and hotel stays to employees who participate, to encourage people to give. And every year (I know this because my husband is saddled with coordinating the UW campaign for the company), some cheap fucks will demand their $5 dollars back because they didn’t win a prize. It blows me away.
I agree with Beadlin. Why is $100k such an unreasonable amount of money? As long as an organization’s salaries don’t constitute a large percentage of their operating budget, where’d the problem? Non-profit execs go through more continuing education programs than most other execs, and people schooled for that specific field are rare, qualified and worth every penny.
Plus, you’re probably comparing these salaries to similar positions in for-profit firms, who can give their employees profit-sharing incentives in the form of options and company stock. Since revenue sharing is federally prohibited in non-profits, base salaries are going to be relatively higher.
oh man. This is quite coincidental. I have just been put in charge of assembling our smallish company together for a United Way presentation. They came last Christmas and only TWO employees signed up. {NOT me - giving directly just makes more sense to me} If I can rah-rah people into giving 10% more, then I’ll be signed up for a chance to win two place tickets to New York City! Well golly-gee-whiz. You gotta BRIBE people to give? That’s pretty gross.
I’m going to have to take a LONG bath after I arrange this presentation. ::shudder::