L.A. United Way Closes In on Goal, Predicts Success

With seven weeks remaining in what officials call the most important campaign in its history, the Los Angeles area United Way has raised 77.1% of its $85-million goal and is cautiously predicting that the drive will succeed.

With $65.5 million raised so far, and almost half of the 3,000 employee campaigns still under way, officials said their projections indicate they will have about $84.26 million in donations by the April 26 deadline.

To date, employee and corporate contributions are 8.4% higher than last year’s disappointing effort. The news is welcome for the troubled umbrella agency that fell $10 million short of its last goal after a series of questionable financial decisions was revealed in the summer of 1986.

The Los Angeles County counsel’s office and a citizens committee found that the officials had used poor judgment in lending donated money to agency executives but that there had been no dishonesty. Since then, the charity says, it has instituted measures suggested by the two groups to ensure accountability.

Employee and corporate donations make up 75% of United Way contributions. Employee giving is running 10.1% ahead of last year, and corporate giving, 6.5%. The apparent upsurge, officials said, is because of confidence in United Way’s new management team and a good economic climate.

‘Public opinion has changed and there is a new spirit of community support,” said George F. Moody, campaign co-chairman and president of Security Pacific Corp. And while United Way’s figures indicate that the goal is within grasp, campaigners are not leaving anything to chance during the next 50 days.

“We’re looking at the toughest seven weeks of the campaign,” Irwin Field, volunteer campaign co-chairman and president of Liberty Vegetable Oil Co., told a meeting of high-level campaign volunteers Tuesday. In a rousing talk in which he quoted former heavyweight boxing champion James (Gentleman Jim) Corbett, Field urged workers to “fight one more round.”

Among the 11th-hour projects will be a “war room” where executives of some of the area’s largest donor corporations will work with volunteers to “light a fire under the remaining companies to put something back into the community,” Moody said.

United Way has received a $250,000 matching grant from Southern California Community Foundation and several other groups, which they hope will spur individual contributors to give $10,000 or more.

Letters are also being sent to all United Way members and leaders to urge them to “look through their address books and call their “doctors, lawyers, dry cleaners,” Field said. “We aren’t just making a goal” he added. “We have agencies that need the support. They have had bad times and we need to turn that around.”

The Los Angeles-area region, which includes part of San Bernardino County, started with a campaign base of about $77 million from regular contributors and has raised about $5.5 million from new sources. It must raise an additional $2.5 million in new money in the next 50 days, plus maintain regular donations.

Last year, the charity raised $80.2 million, the second-highest amount ever, but $4.3 million less than in 1985. As a result, United Way had to use $3 million from a reserve fund to make sure the agencies were not severely harmed.

However, another group of 13 health organizations that were United Way’s “partners” in the campaign had to make do with $1.5 million less than anticipated.

GETTING THERE

77.1%

1988 Goal: $85 Million

Raised to Date: $65.5 Million

Deadline: April 26

‘Public opinion has changed and there is a new spirit of community support.’

George F. Moody,

campaign co-chairman