When your donors think of your United Way, what words come to mind? We frequently ask donors this question, and the hundreds of words donors use to describe United Way reaffirm the fact that most donors do not understand what your United Way does.

Recently, I saw an interesting editorial from a United Way CEO about how their United Way is changing the way it addresses social issues in their community. What caught my attention in the editorial was not what the United Way is going to do to address the pressing local needs it has identified but how they are going to measure their success.

Why does your United Way hold workplace campaigns? At first, this will seem like an easy question to answer. But, I would ask you to think about it at a deeper level – beyond raising money or because United Ways have always held workplace campaigns.

The issue of designations can be controversial. While some United Ways promote designations as a way to encourage donors to give, others discourage designations by placing restrictions on which organizations can be designated to or by requiring a minimum designation amount.

To survive when Philanthropy Cloud is available to all nonprofits, United Ways will need to strengthen the products they have to sell. For many United Ways, this will be a significant challenge.

Back in the day, life was pretty good for United Ways. United Ways were able to raise increasing amounts of money year-after-year, and many donors would support United Way until retirement without giving it a second thought.

But the times have changed.