Group finds a new way to raise funds
Jacksonville Business Journal - by Paul Ivice
NORTHEAST FLORIDA — The United Way is using the Internet to help employees of larger companies make pledges.
The United Way of Northeast Florida is one of 65 United Way organizations around the nation that formed the consortium to develop the United-eWay pledging system.
Trying to keep pace with technology, United Way officials hope the Internet-based system will not only make it easier for people to pledge donations, but also eventually reduce United Way's overhead so more money can be funneled to recipient charities.
In Jacksonville, "it has given the companies that work with it a real sense of security and appreciation that we are being technologically attuned," said Linda Malloy, vice president for resource development for the United Way of Northeast Florida.
Among those companies are Alltel, CitiStreet and Zurich Insurance.
Nationwide, 700,000 people working for more than 500 companies in 65 United Way areas will pledge $12 million this year through the United-eWay system, said Merl Waschler, president of United-eWay and CEO of the Valley of the Sun United Way in Phoenix, where eWay originated.
A consortium of 50 United Ways was formed, and with technical assistance from Microsoft the prototype was developed.
United-eWay is spreading throughout the United Way network to more campaigns and deeper into campaigns where it already is being used, he said.
"There is a big demand to wring out as many administrative costs as possible while still maintaining a personal, high-touch campaign," Waschler said.
United Way officials are eager to make more and better use of the system, but want to be careful not to lose the personal touch that has made United Way drives successful.
"It's not a substitute for employee meetings, but an enhancement to the pledge process," Malloy said. "It's very user-friendly."
An eWay Web site is designed for each participating company, and employees are given the address and a password so they can access the site from anywhere, not only the office computer.
The vast majority of CitiStreet's nearly 1,000 employees in Jacksonville used eWay to make pledges, said Doug Knowles, a senior financial analyst who helped coordinate the pledge drive at CitiStreet, a benefits outsourcing firm for Fortune 500 companies.
At their convenience, employees go to their company's United-eWay Web site where they are greeted with a message from the company's CEO. Those that want to make a pledge can do so in a few minutes; those who want more information about United Way and charitable organizations it helps support can get that information at their fingertips.
Malloy could not say whether employees at CitiStreet and Alltel pledged more dollars because of the online pledging system, but United-eWay "simply makes it easier to reach that goal," she said.
"If nothing else, for me it saved hours of compilation and dealing with paper forms," Knowles said.
United Way campaign managers at Zurich Insurance echoed that opinion. It was "incredibly easy" from the perspective of the employees and the manager of the campaign, a spokeswoman said. The campaign manager spent a little more time at the front end to help develop the Web site, but overall the campaign manager's time investment was cut in half.
"Our need for temporary input, clerical people will be cut in half," Malloy said. Such costs will be 20 percent lower this year and 40 percent lower by the end of the 2004 campaign.
Paul Ivice is a correspondent with The Business Journal.
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