United Way of Southwest Michigan announces its 2022-2025 Agenda for Change to guide its impact work
While UWSM will continue to do the important programmatic work it has always done, there will be increased emphasis on systems change and through an equity lens.
United Way of Southwest Michigan is proud to share its new 2022-2025 Agenda for Change. This agenda has been years in the making, and it reflects an approach to community impact that is focused on issues, grounded in community, and acknowledges the diverse realities of people in Berrien, Cass, and Van Buren counties.
The release of the Agenda for Change is a call to action for nonprofits to apply for funding for the next three-year cycle that starts next year. Letters of intent are due by the end of September. The application process begins in October.
This announcement also serves to educate the community at large about the underpinnings of United Way’s impact work.
“As our community lived through everything that 2020 threw at us, our organizational mantra became ‘I don’t want to go back to normal,’ because enduring a global pandemic, systemic inequity and oppression, and extreme political divisiveness reminded us that life before 2020 wasn’t really all that great for a lot of people in Southwest Michigan,” said Amanda Drew, UWSM’s Senior Director of Impact Strategies.
With that in mind, United Way aimed to accomplish four objectives with this new agenda:
1. Create a better, more intentional mechanism to support projects that create change at the systems, policy, and environmental level.
2. Streamline and simplify the application and reporting process for all programs and projects.
3. Incorporate the results of Turning Outward efforts and design the who/what/where/when/why/how of United Way’s work around the community’s aspirations for connection and inclusion.
4. Make equity the foundation that the agenda was built on.
“Through United Way’s Turning Outward work, the people of Southwest Michigan said they want more equitable communities, and the data shows racial disparities in United Way’s focus areas—therefore, the agenda was crafted to focus on equity, and the funding application process has been made more accessible to partners in a way that addresses equity,” said Leatrice Fullerton, a member of UWSM’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee and Advocacy & Community Education Director for Disability Network Southwest Michigan.
“The importance of the agenda is that it guides United Way’s impact work for the next three years,” said Barbara Craig, Chair of UWSM’s Impact Cabinet and Executive Director of Community Impact and Resource Development at Lake Michigan College. “The Impact Cabinet started working on this at the beginning of the last three-year cycle and learned from the challenges and successes of our current partners along the way.”
Anna Murphy, UWSM’s President and CEO, stressed the importance of community involvement in the whole of United Way’s work. “United Way of Southwest Michigan can’t do this in isolation. Just creating this agenda took the commitment of our board and committee members, the expertise of our staff, the input and feedback from our current partners, the needs of our donors, and the aspirations of our community. Bringing this work to life will require continued dedication from all of those people and more,” Murphy said.
“You, the community, make our funding decisions,” Murphy continued. “We want community members to come along with us and help us in our choices, so we are actively recruiting new members to join our Investment Team.”
If you’re interested in applying for United Way funding, volunteering to join the UWSM Investment Team, or want to read the entire UWSM Agenda for Change, visit uwsm.org/agenda.