Support Your Local Company Town Charity Funding System

This column has been printed from The Cincinnati Beacon: Where Divergent Views Collide!
The Cincinnati Beacon

Support Your Local Company Town Charity Funding System
Sunday, August 30, 2009

Posted by komarek

I’m not surprised that Cincinnati’s 2009 United Way campaign was designed and delivered by P&G executives. United Way has depended on huge last-minute donations from wealthy givers to “top off” its campaigns for years. Once the economy tanked, those core donors could not close the 2008 campaign money gap. And so we have 2009’s new campaign, built by corporate marketing teams from P&G, combining Sunday coupons, online infomercials, billboards touting the 211 service, cell phone texting, and online appeals from your friends.

I hope the campaign succeeds in motivating millions of consumers to support charity work. But I also want to see some “truth in advertising.”

At a minimum, United Way should disclose the charities it no longer funds.

• ARC Hamilton County (Association of Retarded Citizens)
• Mental Health Association of the Cincinnati Area
• Seven Hills Neighborhood Houses
• Camp Washington Community Board
• CCHMC Postponing Sexual Involvement
• Clermont 20/20
• Fidelity Health Care
• OSU Extension - Brown County
• Winton Place Youth Center
• Social Health Education Inc.
• Renaissance New Richmond
• Comprehensive Counseling Service of Middletown
• Memorial Inc.
• Madisonville Child Care Center

And maybe United Way should disclose that its top two staffers earn a combined total of over half a million dollars. Perhaps even the list of its key donors whose political contributions helped dismantle our public safety net over the course of the past decade.

Cincinnati’s United Way has completed its evolution.

No longer serving needs identified by member charities, United Way is now a vertically-integrated, corporate-controlled charity funding mechanism, designed by experts to deliver workforce development solutions for the corporations that dominate its strategic planning, funding decisions and marketing campaigns.