United Way To Other Charitable Federations: "We Are The Deciders"

Here's yet another example United Way's arrogant, short-sighted, treat-givers-like-sheep "Take Back The United Way" movement -- the systematic effort to eliminate giver choice in employee workplace charitable fund drives and replace it with the United Way being the sole decision-maker for determining which charities get the money.

This one's from Illinois, a hot spot of the movement.  Illinois has a law that requires municipal employee fund drives, like cities, counties, or school districts to allow all the charitable federated groups the state recognizes to participate.  For example, if a county government lets United Way participate in its employee fund drive it has to let Independent Charities of America participate, too, as well as the other federated groups the state recognizes.  As a result, most of these campaigns are jointly managed by the federations, with one of them being selected to take the "coordination" role. 

In Lake County that coordinator is the local United Way.  Here's an email from the coordinator to the other participating federations, followed by one federation's response:

Hi,

I am the United Way coordinator for the Lake County Federated Campaign for this year.   

To help save the cost of printing a large volume of booklets this year we are trying something different this year which we feel will help all federations.  This year we are going to print on the back of the pledge card a listing all the federations with their number and logo. If an individual wants to designate to a specific agency within the federation they will have the option to pledge on line with a searchable database with all agencies or they can go to their team leaders who will have a printed booklet with the federations and agencies in it. 

Our thoughts on this were that the employee does not need to go any further than their pledge card to donate to a federation.  As a federation we of course would like to have the monies come to the federation directly so we can put the dollars to the most needed places. 

I hope this is in agreement with all of you.  Hopefully all federations will see more income directly to them. 

We still need your list of agencies for the online pledge and to print a minimal number of booklets for the team captains and departments.  I would like these as soon as possible so we can start getting what we need printed and setup on the web.

Any questions please feel free to contact me.  We are planning the campaign to run from October 2nd through October 19th.

A Response:

Community Shares of Illinois is STRONGLY opposed to the changes you are proposing.  The campaign materials should be about giving donors the opportunity to choose the charities they wish to support not so that "federations will see more income directly to them."  That may be what United Way wants, but we are committed to giving donors more control over where their dollars are directed.

In terms of costs,  I believe that the charities can provide a donor guide that includes all of  the state certified charities at little or no cost to the campaign.  The materials you are proposing are both biased to United Way and unfair to the donors in that it makes it difficult for donors to find out which charities they have the right to choose from. 

Thanks for the opportunity to comment on your suggestions.

I have no idea whether this coordinator is a true believer in the all-money-to-the-federations philosophy or if she was merely following orders.  Probably both.  But it's one thing to give donors an opportunity to direct their gifts to an institution to re-distribute among charities as the institution sees fit.  It's quite another to propose a system that is deliberately designed to make it harder for a donor to exercise his or her own choice of which charities to support. 

This United Way proposal is analogous to your being given an election ballot that only lists the political parties, not their respective candidates.  You have to go online if you want to select which candidates get your votes, or go to a campaign official to get a special form.  Sound like a good idea to you?

Earth To United Way:  You are not smarter than the people, and your choices are not somehow inherently better than their choices.  Get over yourself.