Does Your United Way Inspire Passion?

Growing up as a preacher’s kid, my weeks were tracked not by school days or weekends, but by church. You see, in my family, it was expected that any time the church doors were open, you were supposed to be there. Preferably 15 minutes early to help set up and 15 minutes after to clean up. 

The ringleader making sure we were always at church when expected was not, however, my father. It was my mother. My mother is so committed to being at church that she even goes to events my father, the preacher, won’t bother with.

That means my siblings and I were in church for three hours Sunday morning, another hour and a half on Sunday evenings for the later service (yes, we were expected to be at both), two hours on Wednesday for the weekly pot luck and mid-week bible study, another two to four hours on Friday for fellowship, and my mother would then spend another three to five hours during the week cleaning the church building, preparing communion, and preparing materials for the children’s classes she taught. This was the average week, although I had seen her dedicate as much as twenty hours during the week to material preparations for larger scale projects.

My mother, and father, worked themselves into the ground for their congregation with almost no thanks. You may wonder what would drive a person to commit so much time and out-of-pocket money for something that they get little to no recognition for. The answer: Passion for the cause.

You have never met a more passionate person than my mother. She works hard because she knows what she is working towards, and it is a goal she is passionate about achieving.

Many United Ways wonder where their donors are going and why volunteering is down. It’s because many United Ways don’t inspire the type of passion necessary to mobilize people. I doubt my mother would dedicate so much of her time and resources if all she was told was that these things were simply “good to do.” My mother does it because she sees the impact she’s having on a group of people that she cares passionately about.

If you want donors and volunteers who are passionate about United Way, you need to give them something to be passionate about. Your donors will not be passionate about how much money you raised or the simple concept of doing good. Your United Way needs to give them an issue to be passionate about, give them ways to connect and help reach the goal, and show them the impact they are having on those in the community that they care about.

In our free webinar, United Way Survival Guide: How to Keep Your United Way from Dying, we talk more in-depth about how to select an issue to rally your community around and how the change to an issue focus will impact your United Way beyond simply bringing in more donors.

There are so many people in your community just like my mother, willing to give of themselves constantly to a cause they believe in. Your United Way just needs to give them something to be passionate about.