Kudos to Reporter Kerry Hall and her colleagues at the Charlotte Observer for their expose on one of the most mismanaged United Ways in the country. That they had the journalistic courage to do so is good news. The bad news is that the Charlotte United Way was just doing what United Way of America told it to do. That doesn't bode well for the rest of the UW system, but don't say we didn't warn them.
Details of the newspaper's reports are available at www.charlotteobserver.com, but here's the gist of it. Charlotte has a number of large corporations that haven't gotten the word that coerced giving to United Way is not OK. United Way is (was) a sacred cow in this town. Then, a few months back, somebody leaked the details of the incredibly generous pension plan given to the UW CEO, along with her equally magnanimous salary, and the pledge cards hit the fan.
Next, the United Way board of directors, the same board that had authorized the pension payments, fired the CEO for accepting them. (The excuse they gave was that with all the uproar over her salary and benefits she could no longer be effective.)
So the Charlotte Observer started taking a closer look at United Way's numbers, and that's how they discovered a total lack of accountability and transparency within the United Way itself. It turned out that the fastest growing "program" funding was spending on four mysterious UW inhouse programs. This is money that would otherwise have been allocated to community charities. United Way allocated the funds to itself instead. Only problem was, nobody at UW, execs or board, could explain what these programs do or what the UW employees that were hired to work on them do. On the face of it, they appear to be a complete waste of money. Or, as some have suggested, perhaps they were shells used to disguise overhead administrative costs as program costs.
As the newspaper pointed out, United Way is a stickler for vetting other charities' programs before it gives them your money but when it comes to their own programs it's a whole different story. Who knew?
The tie-in with United Way of America? The Charlotte UW was simply adopting the new operating paradigm UWA is pushing so hard -- increase UW infrastructure at the expense of outside charities and use the added capacity to "convene," "track trends in government funding," "study," and "advocate." In other words, to turn United Way into a lobbying organization to push for more tax dollars for the social programs its "experts" favor. Of course, the United Way system has no such policy expertise, but this approach will enable it to buy it. The reason this is a good thing, UWA contends, is that it keeps the United Way "relevant" and "focused on the community" rather than being "a mere pass-through organization."
As I've said before, United Way's arrogant hubris is unbelieveable.
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