Vinton County United Way Joins Chamber

A few weeks ago, I was assigned the task of signing up the United Way of Vinton County (UWVC) for membership in the Vinton County Chamber of Commerce.  The Chamber has a reputation for representing the best in our community—the best businesses, the best values, and the best attitudes—and the United Way is proud to participate.

One of the United Way’s goals for membership was to let more people know about our local United Way. We are small, but committed to sustaining the work of non-profits in our community. Recent recipients of funding include:

·         Shepherd’s House domestic violence shelter

·         Care Outreach food pantry

·         Truth food pantry

·         Sojourners Family Development foster care day camp

·         The American Red Cross of Athens County,  which serves Vinton County

·         Big Brothers/Big Sisters’ school mentoring program in Vinton County

·         Vinton County Senior Citizens

·         RSVP Vinton County activities

·         Last summer’s summer feeding program administered by Sojourners

UWVC’s board of directors is committed to investing its money in Vinton County. We keep our overhead costs low (we don’t even have a physical location), paying less than 3% of our earnings in administrative costs. Our income arrives, for the most part, from outside the county. UWVC’s main goal is to change the ratio of where the money comes from to reflect stronger support from the county for the county. Toward that end, we have successfully signed up many county employees and school employees to contribute through payroll deduction.

The decisions about who will receive the $18,000 in investments UWVC made this year involved many tough decisions for the board of directors. They received nine excellently prepared proposals and worked with thoughtful consideration.

The investment committee works with Maslow’s Hierarchy in mind. Maslow devised a pyramid of human needs, with the most basic needs—food, shelter, clothing, safety—on the bottom. He said that unless the needs at the bottom are met, a person (or community) cannot move up to the next level (which might include education, meaningful work, and so on). UWVC invests mostly in that bottom level of Maslow’s pyramid. Our people need food and shelter and safety—especially the youngest and oldest among us. When we funded school mentoring last year, we were aware that for the first time in a long time we were investing in a “next level up” activity.

If you are interested in the work of the United Way of Vinton County, please give me a call at 740-591-6279. I’d be glad to talk with you about our investment priorities, how to make a donation, or how to set up payroll deduction so your employees may contribute that way if they wish—at our suggested pledge level of $1.00 per week. A dollar at time is how we’ll make a difference.

Live from the Wild Turkey Festival 1

The significance of this photo will become clear by the end of this post.

Ridin' the rides at McArthur, Ohio's
Wild Turkey Festival, May, 2012;
more photos at end of post

Hot and muggy...banks of clouds rolling in with rumblings...but passing over our little street festival here in the metropolis (population 1300) of McArthur, Ohio. The United Way of Vinton County is having its first event in more than a decade as we wake the sleeping beauty organization and get her up and walking. In short, we have a booth at McArthur's annual Wild Turkey Festival (and yes, the initials are WTF), which coincides not with breaking out bottles of Wild Turkey liquor, but with wild turkey hunting season. There's not much meat on them, but they're apparently fun to hunt.



          Our booth is in the "craft tent," although no crafts are being sold there this year. The booth next to us is selling fanatically pro-gun t-shirts, catty-cornered to us is the rifle raffle booth, and just down the way is hunter's paradise bed'n'breakfast and the mildly vigilante Community Crime Watch. United Way and the local community college are strange bedfellows with these neighbors, but true to the spirit of this place, we all just get along anyway.


          Good-heartedness is part of the nature of this underpopulated rural county. The local pro-gun secret-KKK-member redneck will still stop and change your tire for you, or pull over to the side of the road to help you carry a piece of furniture up the porch steps, or chip in a quarter for your cup of coffee at the Quick Stop if your're short on change. That's the side I focus on. That's the side I'm depending on for United Way of Vinton County.
          Everyone's been a client at some point in their lives...gotten food from a pantry, spent a night or two with the domestic violence shelter, had a ride from the RSVP volunteers, or had kids in the mentoring program at school, or had a mom or dad get Meals on Wheels from the Senior Center. This is the United Way. These are the non-profits we fund, serving the young, the old, the sick, the hungry, the scared, the needy in our community. I am counting on local good-heartedness to establish a tradition of local funding for the United Way.
          The Wild Turkey Festival is hot, loud, countrified, well-gunned, cammo-clad, confederate flagged, stroller pushing, corn-dog eating, country music listening, karaoke singing, pick the dropped sucker up off the ground and give it back to your kid doing, rides whirling, political glad-handing, neighbor greeting, good old fashioned fun. The media is different from 100 years ago, when people came in by rail from neighboring towns and the parades featured horses instead of SUVs, and we have the illusion of Little-House-on-the-Prairie wholesomeness, but I bet the feeling and mood are more similar than different.
          I suggested a booth at the festival two months ago at a board meeting, wondering which way they would go. The UWVC board is pretty genteel, but also pragmatic. The support for the booth was enthusiastic (if not unanimous) and every single board member who committed to something for the booth carried through with it. As I write, the booth is being staffed by board members--there will be a board member there for every hour of the festival (working either in pairs or with me). And they are selling split-the-pot tickets and chatting with old friends and new and chucking little babies under the chin, and ignoring tattoos, and actually having a good time.
          The support of the board has been wonderful. I am struck again and again by how badly they really do want to wake Sleeping Beauty with a big old smack on the lips and get our little local United Way on everyone's agenda. Their support makes it fun for me, too, and completely removes the sense of martyrdom with which I anticipated the project.
          We may make some money from our split-the-pot raffle, but the real goal is to talk to people about what we do. To switch children's literature references for the third time, we are the littlest Who from Horton Hears a Who. We're shouting strong and together: "We are HERE! United Way of Vinton County is HERE!"

Rifle Raffle

French fries by the bucket.

My friend Mindy, representing
both the pregnant women and
the stroller-pushers--you rock,
Mindy

Karaoke contestant
on the main stage

Examples of shirts sold next to us

New CEO Training

New United Way of Vinton County
CEO and blogger Joy E. Dickerson

OK. Ready...set...go (crazy). I took on a 1/4-time job several months ago, sort of a 16-hours a month job, sort of a few hours on Saturday and a meeting or two job. Turns out that I am classified as a Chief Executive Officer--the CEO of the teeny-weeny United Way of Vinton County (UWVC). Woot! This is a huge promotion from my paper-pushing day job. I'm a CEO. Does a BMW and golf culbs come with that?

I went to training...New CEO training...last Friday in Columbus, Ohio, at the attractively utilitarian offices of the Ohio United Way. There was a clutch of us hatchlings, some of us raw and new and a few United Way "lifers." The staff at Ohio United Way were terrific--professional, knowledgable, encouraging, and sympathetic. Thank you, Barbara, Cheryl, Char, Tim, and Nick.The material gave me whiplash. I either knew it already or was totally terrified by it. I alternated between giddy-up and WHOA.

The inner workings of the United Way are intricate, labyrinthine, roccoco, roccokookoo. I felt myself envisioning a tangled web of mammalian DNA, pi to the 10-millionths place. The great mysteries of the universe floated by and then paled in comparison. And I'm supposed to know this stuff. Abstractions littered the landscape. Acronyms crazied the cranium. My brain stretched and groaned as I told it to stay open, just stay open. We can control the cataclysm by and by, lord, by and by.

I love my brain. It is flexible and responsive. It holds a monstrous big storehouse of information and is networked not just by topic, but also by sounds and sound-alikes, history, images, strange co-vibrations of the gray matter with the sensory array. My brain (and most brains) makes the internet look clumsy. But it just wasn't enough to cope with this avalanche of information. New tracks must be laid down above the drum track, horns, bass, and strings--tracks for instruments undreamed.

I was glad to know that even the most experienced United Way directors (oops--CEOs) are still peeling back the rose petals of policy, still peeling leaves off the lettuce of the law. Knowledge of United Way habits and practices, policies and paperwork, campaigns and categories is like an old LAN--more knowledge in the group than in the the sum of the individuals. No one person can possibly know everything and shouldn't, but even in the room of newbies, we were quite a powerhouse of information. I was greatly reassured when an experienced CEO came in to speak to us and got some of her questions answered even as she answered ours.

So, I'm still in. I'm still swimming (in deeper water) in the oceanic United Way. The staff at Ohio United Way are my water wings; my CEO colleagues are my lighthouse; and seeing the good done by my tiny local chapter fuels my muscles. The wave has crashed over me and I am still afloat, still dog-paddling.

Thanks for tolerating my multitudinous metaphors. See you in the bloggy papers!