Paul Szmal: Good morning, it's 817, it's FLX Morning, the New Year's Eve Day edition, and we're Zooming from United Way of Cuyahoga County with Kathryn Dennis and Jalyssa Stone. Good morning to you both, welcome back. Thank you, good morning Ted. Now we're in the middle of campaign season and sometimes that can get forgotten in the middle of the holiday season, but bring us up to date on the latest campaign news.
Catherine Dennis, Jalissa Stone: The campaign is doing really well. We have 1,274 donors that we've already counted toward our goal of 2,000 donors this year. I know everyone's looking for that dollar figure, so that puts us at 476,958. And overall we're doing, we're doing great. So we're actually, we do have a campaign in-house, so when we count those numbers, we're only 135 donors away from the number of donors who gave last year, which puts us at about just under 700 donors away from our 2,000 goal, which is really great. We're well over halfway at 63% of our goal this year, and the campaign does continue until March 17th, so we still have quite a few months to reach our goal, so we're feeling really hopeful. But everything's been going really well.
We've got 43 of our expected 53 workplace drives that have wrapped up. We've got a couple that are like straddling the year, so we have a few that are doing, keeping their campaigns open into next year, and then I actually have a handful of campaigns that are launching in January, February, because one of the big things, like if your workplace is interested in hosting a drive, you know, we, we fundraise year-round, and if you want the gifts to count toward this year's campaign, we're still onboarding campaigns up until the end. So if you're listening and you think your employer wants to do it, give us a call at the United Way.
But looking at the donors themselves, one number that's really exciting for us in the office is the new donors. This year, so far, we have 192 new donors. That's 15% of those who have supported the campaign this year, and that's just a really incredible figure for us to look at, and just, we're just excited that more and more of our community is coming together to support one another. I can't remember, I'm sure we did mention it in previous chats, the 2,000, that accounts for about 5% of Cuyahoga County to support the campaign, which then, in terms, gives out all that funding to our member agencies, and from the dollars raised last year, we're currently supporting 55% of Cuyahoga County residents. So a little goes a long way, and we're just really excited about how we're, how we're doing.
Paul Szmal: Well, and that message is reinforced when you talk about these numbers of people, with thousands of donors and hundreds of new ones, that really every dollar does count, and like you said, it has to be very gratifying to see that widespread support, to see that so many people are getting that message that you keep hammering home about the importance of what you do.
Catherine Dennis, Jalissa Stone: It is, and it's so great, because this year and last year, we had those regional chairs that are out in their communities, so we are seeing a growth in the support that we're receiving from Northern and Southern Cuyahoga County, because we're able to bring that information down to them, and we're just, we're really excited, and because we are a countywide organization, and just sharing that information, making sure that, you know, as important as fundraising is, the other half of what we do is awareness, and a lot of people, until you need these programs, you don't know they exist. So by doing presentations, and workshops, and tabling events, people learn about those agencies, and it's like, oh, you know, my mom could use SCATVAN, you know, things like that. So it's been really great, and we're, you know, I, when I do some quick crunching, we're about knowing, you know, anticipating what usually comes in. I would say we're about 70 to 80 thousand away from what we raised last year, so that that sounds like a pretty manageable chunk to bite off in the coming year before we wrap up in March.
So we talk every year about the Tim Morrison Mini Golf Tournament. Tell us about the holiday raffle. Yes, so we're really excited this year. The mini golf raffle is something that we kind of started last year when we had an open house at our office. This year we've been selling raffle tickets as we've been doing those community events for the holidays, and we're wrapping up with a final online drive push for those raffle tickets. So you, for $5, you can win a team of four. That is a value of $100. That's going to be our registration fee for this year again, and if you want to buy more tickets, we are selling five tickets for $20, and it's online. It's on our website. I actually just made sure that it was up there this morning, and I'm going to pin the newsletter that went out yesterday with that information as well on our Facebook, but we're going to keep those online sales open until about 9 a.m. on Monday, July 13th, and we'll draw a winner via Facebook Live that afternoon.
And the mini golf, it's such a fun tournament. I believe this is going to be our 32nd year, and each year we have different themes. So this year we're doing Broadway, so we're working on some fun new things for this year's event, and we are going to hopefully have some early bird pricing going out soon, probably opening the platform by mid-February because the event's on April 24th, and we got a lot of fun things up our sleeves this year. This is an event for adults, so to win and to purchase raffle tickets, you have to be 18 because of the party-like atmosphere at the event. It's not really suitable for kids.
Paul Szmal: Now also, the window for funding is open now for applications for agencies who want to be United Way funded. That will run through February 21st, and you've changed to a two-year cycle now. So explain how this works and what an agency needs to know if they'd like to fill out that application and consider becoming funded by United Way.
Catherine Dennis, Jalissa Stone: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Ted. Yep, our window for applications opened on December 13th, and as you said, goes till February 21st. So our applications, it's really easy. You can find it, any agency can find it on our website, unitedwayofcucacounty.org, and then you will find the navigation bar, funding, and then it's the annual funding. So in order to apply, an agency has to be a nonprofit or registered 501c3 serving Cuca County residents. So that means the agency can be physically located in Cuca County or they can be headquartered elsewhere but serve Cuca County residents because all funding stays local. So listed on that page is the different programs and pillars of support that we look to support. So these have kind of changed, especially for agencies who applied before. They'll notice that they're a little bit different. So we have youth opportunity, financial security, healthy communities, and then community resiliency. So, you know, very similar to what we currently support with some added categories, and I think one of the most exciting ones that we see on here is environmental stewardship and sustainability. So, you know, which absolutely ties into the health of our community. So the application is a web form, so you know, agencies can create their own logins and then just go through the different pages, and if there's any questions, any agencies can always call the office.
Paul Szmal: And this is on the website, unitedwayofcucacounty.org slash apply, and again it takes you all through the process of logging in, creating an account, and importantly are those areas, you call them the pillars. So for an agency, you know, go on there, take a look at those and figure out where your agency best fits in with those pillars. And then it comes back around to the giving and the support. The more people support the campaign, the more of these agencies and the more money that you can give them.
Catherine Dennis, Jalissa Stone: Right, and the reason, I mean one of the reasons for reverting from a one- to two-year funding model is we hope it provides sustainability and, you know, just consistent support for our agencies. So we have our allocations run from July to June, so it's a monthly funding amount that gets sent to the agency so they can factor those amounts into their budgets when they're creating their yearly plan. So we hope it just provides, you know, a lot of stability for them when they're creating their program budgets.
Paul Szmal: All right, go to unitedwayofcucacounty.org slash apply for that. Don't forget about the Tim Morrison Golf Raffle and the tournament itself. We'll be talking about when that gets closer in April. Ladies, thanks as always. It's been a great year for you, and we've really appreciated being able to share the news.
Catherine Dennis, Jalissa Stone: Thank you, Ted. Happy New Year!
