Building Blocks for a Better Community

In August 2010, United Way of Southwest Alabama’s Board of Directors approved a new and exciting community impact mission dedicated to:

• Enhancing accountability and transparency
• Proactively targeting and addressing the major human service issues facing our region – Education, Essentials, Financial Stability and Health,
• Aligning our allocation process with our stated goals for the community.

We call the mission the Building Blocks for a Better Community.

How did we arrive at the Building Blocks for a Better Community?

In late 2009, the Board of Directors appointed an ad-hoc committee to review, critique and, if necessary, modify, UWSWA’s community investment process. At their first meeting, the committee members adopted the following mission statement:

“We have a responsibility, both to the stakeholders and the community at large, to ensure that dollars
entrusted to our care are invested in a manner that will produce the greatest impact on our community.”

Working with United Way volunteers, community and agency partners, other service funders and providers and key community stakeholders, the committee developed the Building Blocks for a Better Community presented here, which we hope will serve as a call to collective, focused action that will produce what matters most to our region - results that change people’s lives and better our community.

Our goal throughout this effort has been to foster discussion and seek input from the community at large. Like any strategic effort, we anticipate the Agenda to be fluid and ever-evolving. We hope that the committee’s efforts will continue to be refined using new observations, studying community conditions and establishing measurable impacts at the agency level.

We would like to thank the many caring individuals that helped guide this process. Their considerable dedication to UWSWA and the community made the process enjoyable and rewarding. We hope you’ll join us in what we believe is a bright future for UWSWA and our community.

To learn more about the Community Impact, click here.