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Helping hands

UNITED WAY OF ASHEVILLE AND BUNCOMBE COUNTY

As a catalyst for real, tangible change in the community, the United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County aims at connecting the dots between local organizations, movers, and shakers for the greater good of all who call this area home.

“Right now, we’re an organization that’s in the middle of some big changes happening across several aspects of our work,” said Dan Leroy, president and CEO of the United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County. “For many years, we would raise money in a coordinated fashion and distribute those dollars to our nonprofit partners. These days, we’re moving towards more of a collective impact model.”

That collective impact model serves as a goal to help align the massive work done by the United Way with its nonprofit partners in a shared long-term vision for the community as a whole.

“The area where we’ve decided to really focus our efforts is ensuring that our youth — regardless of race, ethnicity, income level, or the neighborhood they grow up in — have the opportunity to graduate from high school and be college ready, to find a career, and to contribute to their community,” Leroy said.

Leroy noted that with the widening gap nationwide between people with a lot of resources and people without resources, there

is a strong need to nurture and champion academic achievement from the earliest stages of a child’s schooling.

“We have to make sure that opportunities exist here that are accessible to everyone, whether it be safety, access to health care, or a quality education,” Leroy said. “So, what we need is a more systemsoriented, holistic approach to how we solve these problems, which is something the United Way is really well-suited to do.”

These changes will emerge from the countless relationships the United Way already has with community members, local businesses, and other nonprofit entities working towards the same common goal of uplifting our youth.

“The United Way wants to be the backbone infrastructure of this targeted and strategic change by making investments in the community, both in terms of dollars and in terms of volunteers. It’s about having all the different parts working together,” Leroy said. “And the other side of this change is more accountability as an organization, where we hold ourselves and each other accountable and also adjust along the way in order to achieve those results.”

And with these intended results, the United Way wants to make sure everyone involved is not only on the same page, but also measuring the results by the same ways and means.

“Our partners operate on a full spectrum in our area — grassroots organizations, community leaders, people from the business, and the faith community,” Leroy said. “And one of our common strategies is creating community schools, where public schools are transformed into hubs of support for the surrounding community and its kids and families.”

Amid this wave of positive change and shifting initiatives in the United Way also comes the 100th anniversary celebration of its formation, something not lost on Leroy and his colleagues.

“We’re really proud of the history of the United Way and the impact we’ve had over many years. And we’re even more excited about where we’re heading in the future,” Leroy said. “A big part of that change is what we call ‘collective wisdom,’ which is bringing all aspects of our community to the same table to be part of the solution — we’re celebrating our past, but embracing the future.” n