April 5, 2001 | Read Time: 3 minutes
By NICOLE WALLACE
A consortium of local United Ways has entered the electronic workplace-giving fray.
For the forthcoming fall campaign season, participating United Ways will be able to use the United eWay.org system to work with companies to design customized Web sites that employees can use to make their pledges online. The system is designed so that local United Ways and the companies where they solicit can select giving options for the campaigns and add text, audio, and video materials to the sites.
The system eliminates the need for pledge cards and the data entry and tabulation associated with a paper-based campaign. Campaign managers can keep track of the progress of their campaigns online, and at the end of the campaign, information about the pledges is sent electronically to both the company and the local United Way.
The United eWay consortium was founded by the Valley of the Sun United Way, in Phoenix.
Responding to the entry of a number of for-profit companies into the on-the-job giving arena, Valley of the Sun spent $100,000 to develop a prototype of the current system. But, says Brian T. Hassett, Valley of the Sun’s president, the organization realized that if it really wanted to compete with the commercial ventures, it couldn’t do it alone.
So Valley of the Sun created United eWay as a separate nonprofit entity and invited other local United Ways to join. The consortium now has 40 member United Ways that have contributed at least $20,000 each to the effort. These organizations will have a voice in decision making and the addition of new features as the system evolves. Within the next three weeks, United eWay expects to have between 35 and 40 additional member United Ways, mostly from smaller cities. They will not have to invest in the system’s development, but will be charged maintenance and upgrade fees to use the system.
Those United Ways will use the new technology in campaigns this fall. United eWay will reopen membership next year, applying what it learns from the fall campaigns.
Mr. Hassett believes that United eWay’s emphasis on the needs of local United Ways differentiates it from commercial offerings, which he says put the needs of the companies running workplace-giving campaigns first.
“This starts with the United Way as the customer. It allows the United Way to work with the company to tailor the campaign to meet both the United Way’s needs, in terms of the community need, and the company’s needs.”
United Way of America was not involved in the development of the system, and Mr. Hassett points out that United Way of America’s unsuccessful effort to develop an online campaign system (The Chronicle, December 16, 1999) several years ago took a very different approach from United eWay’s.
“They tried to build a system that didn’t start with the United Way as the key customer, but basically focused on the need of the national corporation, and they ran into some resistance from local United Ways.”
Chris Amundsen, interim president of United Way of America, says that the national organization supports United eWay’s efforts, but not to the exclusion of other software that is being tested by United Ways.
“Communities have different needs and different requirements for their donor companies, and they have to have a variety of tools to be able to address the needs in their communities.”
But Mr. Hassett has high expectations for United eWay: “We believe that this will be the industry standard and that we will be able to compete aggressively — if not dominate. We would like to think that we could eliminate the need for a national company to deal with a private corporation in this arena.”
For more information: Send a message to Brian T. Hassett at bhassett@vsuw.org.
