Does a COVID-19 Relief Fund Make Your United Way Relevant?

We are frequently hearing United Ways say that their COVID-19 relief fund is attracting all sorts of new corporate and personal contributors. Companies that do not run workplace campaigns or engage with United Way are opening the corporate checkbook to support the local COVID-19 relief fund; community members that have no donation history with United Way are coming out of the woodwork to give to the local COVID-19 relief fund.

It was a comment from a United Way president last week that got me thinking – and worried. He said “Our COVID-19 relief fund has made our United Way relevant again.”

If you Google “COVID-19 relief funds,” you will find “About 375 million results,” which means if you do quick math, over 374 million of those COVID-19 relief funds are not run by a United Way.  Although United Way might seem to be the perfect organization to operate a COVID-19 relief fund, the reality is that plenty of organizations are capable of operating a relief fund for COVID-19.

If United Way was the only organization capable of operating a COVID-19 relief fund, that might make an argument for United Way being relevant, but with millions of other organizations operating COVID-19 relief funds, it hardly seems like United Way would be any more relevant than any of those other organizations.

Think back to all of the other relief funds United Ways have organized over the years. Relief funds have come and gone for natural disasters, like hurricanes, or for community tragedies and challenges, like school shootings. Years after these events, are people giving to United Way because United Way operated those relief funds? The simple answer is no; a one-time fund may give you an opportunity to start a new relationship, but a one-time fund is not what will keep donors around for the future.

It may be hard to imagine it now, but the challenges we are facing due to COVID-19 will pass one day. Will we ever forget COVID-19 – not hardly – but the relief fund will be a distant memory one of these days.

The relevance of your United Way does not come from operating a relief fund. What makes your United Way relevant is the work you do to make change in your community – to reduce poverty, increase the graduation rate, end homelessness, etc. Your relevance as a United Way comes from the work you were doing before COVID-19 and the work you will be doing after COVID-19. Quite simply, if your United Way was relevant before COVID-19, you will be relevant after COVID-19.

Keep this in mind as you approach the upcoming campaign season. Campaign cannot be solely about COVID-19 relief. Is it essential to acknowledge COVID-19 and its impact on the community? Absolutely! Should you talk about how your COVID-19 relief fund has helped the community? Probably. But, you cannot stop talking about what makes your United Way relevant. Connect your COVID-19 efforts to the important work you are doing to make change in the community. If your United Way was working on addressing issues like poverty, graduation rates, homelessness, etc. before COVID-19, your efforts will be needed even more after the current crisis has ended.

If you are interested in exploring the topic of relevance in more detail, check out How to Restore Relevance to Your United Way, our free, 60-minute webinar to introduce you to how other United Ways are successfully tackling the challenge of relevance.