Together, We Can Help Families Through Crisis
Dear Friends,
In challenging times, it’s natural to ask, “Who is leading in crisis? What is United Way doing to help?” These are the questions many are asking as our community faces continued uncertainty and families experience growing hardships.
Right now, people are turning to United Way’s 211, the most comprehensive health and human resource emergency line – many for the first time – seeking help for basic needs: food and shelter. Our calls to 211 have increased 39% and our partner agencies are seeing the same steep rise in requests for support. Starting in November, benefits for FoodShare members will be delayed, which will significantly harm the roughly 65,000 Dane County residents that rely on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to put food on the table. This includes children, seniors, veterans, disabled persons & others struggling to meet their essential food needs.
For over a century, United Way has brought our community together to address our toughest issues and most urgent needs. As a volunteer-led organization, we are now gathering a delegation of community leaders to help us shape the community response and ensure that local families receive the help they need.
While we continue raising critical dollars through our campaign, we know this is both a time when our families need us to step up – and a time when our community is looking for opportunities to respond to the mounting needs in ways that are effective and thoughtful.
To meet this growing demand, we have launched a Major Gifts Taskforce to invite those who can give significant gifts to support the increased needs. We are asking everyone in our community to consider giving an additional gift to help. Our goal is to raise $600,000 by the end of 2025, and continue raising more in 2026 based on the greatest needs at that time.
If you’d like to talk about the options for an additional gift, please reach out to Maggie Porter Kratz at Maggie.porterkratz@uwdc.org or 608-246-4344.
We promise to report back on the ways that we mobilize every single dollar entrusted to us.
With deep gratitude,
Jay Sekelsky
Community Resiliency Taskforce Chair
Renee Moe,
President & CEO, United Way of Dane County
P.S. This comes with another advantage – The Dan & Patti Rashke (TASC) Family Foundation covers the administrative costs for all individual gifts directly to United Way. That means 100% of your gift will go right into community work.