United Way Plans Fund-Raising Shift

Touted as its most radical revamping in its 70-year history in Los Angeles, United Way on Wednesday unveiled sweeping new fund-raising and distribution goals to address the needs of the region’s quickly changing, multi-ethnic population.

Long criticized for underfunding minority programs, the agency is setting a priority on funding programs that serve the region’s growing ethnic mix, as well as addressing emerging issues such as AIDS, illiteracy, drug abuse and child care.

United Way will focus more on the issues it views as critical and timely, rather than on funding agencies, as it has in the past, said United Way spokesman Clarence Brown. But it will continue to support the programs it has traditionally funded such as boys’ clubs and the YWCA, he added.

To accomplish this, the agency plans to step up its fund raising and develop strategies for tapping into the region’s growing number of small businesses and foreign-owned companies. United Way, which raised a record $95 million this year for more than 350 social service agencies in Los Angeles, Kern and San Bernardino counties, has relied mostly on corporations and large companies for donations through payroll deductions.

United Way’s new focus follows an unprecedented two-year reassessment of the agency’s direction that included input from a broad range of community volunteers and service organizations. The organization also sponsored a number of surveys and dozens of public meetings, Brown said.

“We’ve seen United Way coming under enormous pressure in the last few years as a result of changes in the community,” Maurice J. DeWald, chairman of the United Way committee that developed the plan, said in the agency’s annual report released Wednesday. “Assessing our mission became essential. . . . Business as usual is no longer possible.”

Little opposition to the plan has surfaced so far. Because they were included in the planning, most agencies traditionally funded by United Way are optimistic that the agency’s new goals will provide for all, said Robert W. Monk, director of boys’ clubs in Pasadena and former chairman of a group that represents about 50 United Way-funded agencies in the San Gabriel Valley.

“Some agencies are concerned that, perhaps, new agencies may be funded at their expense,” he said. “But United Way has been open enough to convince me . . . that they’ll approach the old agencies to provide a service before bringing in a new agency.”

Anthony Folcarelli, president of United Way of California, recalled that similar changes 15 years ago in Fresno’s United Way were initially greeted with opposition from established organizations.

“There is going to be resistance, but the focus has to remain on what is good for the community,” he said.

Critics, however, question whether United Way can be all things to all people and how seriously committed the agency is to following through with the changes.

“I’ve been in this long enough to know that what people say they are going to do and what they actually do are two different things,” said Danny Bakewell Sr., president of the Brotherhood Crusade, a competing fund-raising agency serving the black community.

Bakewell said that his group and similar emerging groups in other minority communities were formed because United Way was not adequately serving their communities. Although pleased by United Way’s plans to increase funding of minority programs, Bakewell added that it will only work if the agency is willing to respect minorities’ sense of self-determination in serving their own community.

United Way’s plans call for collaborating with a broad range of grass-roots, ethnic, government and religious organizations to pool resources and address issues of common concern, Brown said.

The agency also plans to provide donors with more information about what their contributions are used for and to offer the option of specifying what social issues they want their money to be spent on.