Some 41 local nonprofit organizations will receive a total of $2.7 million a year for the next three years from the Capital Area United Way, which recently notified the organizations of how much they will receive and which of their specific programs the CAUW “impact grant” money will go to support.
That’s significantly less than CAUW has doled out in previous years and reflects the agency’s continued struggles with fundraising. Its 2018 workplace giving campaign, the success of which determines how much CAUW is able to spread throughout the community, raised $6.2 million—falling short of its $6.6 million goal. By comparison, its 2013 campaign, just five years ago, brought in more than $9 million.
“What we are experiencing is not unique to us,” CAUW CEO George Bell says. “This is a common scenario, not just for United Ways in the state of Louisiana but nationwide.”
In response to the challenges, which have been building for years, CAUW changed its funding model in 2016. Instead of handing out annual allocations to dozens of partner agencies, the agency began awarding three-year grants to specific programs within nonprofits that were able to demonstrate their impact in target areas and their ability to deliver the most bang for the philanthropic buck.
Those awards totaled $4.7 million the first year, but CAUW was unable to sustain that amount in the two subsequent years. The new awards, totaling $2.7 million, reflect the beginning of the next three-year cycle, which will continue through 2022. CAUW officials say $2.7 million is a conservative amount they are comfortable they will be able to honor for each of the three years of the grant cycle, though it is not guaranteed to any recipient.
As part of its new funding model, CAUW will also be awarding $300,000 in project-specific grants to local nonprofits, which will be able to apply for the grants beginning July 1.
“These project-based grants are a way for us to be able to help more of the smaller nonprofits in the community,” says CAUW Vice president for Community Impact Katie Pritchett. “They will be more short-term—to fund something like a summer camp or a support group. Whatever it is, there was not a lot of flexibility under the old model to respond to things as they came up.”
Organizations that will receive less funding than in previous years are adjusting their budgets accordingly and say they’re grateful for the grant money they will be getting.
“Regardless of our allocation, Baton Rouge is better with the data-driven award method United Way uses,” says David Aguillard, executive directors of Catholic Charities of Baton Rouge. “That said, of course it’s a disappointment to see our allocation decrease, but within the context of a declining campaign and more competition from a greater number of nonprofits, it’s understandable.”
Bell—who has seen the percentage of overhead at his agency climb to more than 23% last year, up from 15% in 2015, as giving has decreased—says CAUW is studying how to increase donations to its workplace giving campaign and how to meet the needs of both donors and the nonprofit organizations it supports.
“The headwinds we’re facing are the growing demands from the workforce, which is a younger workforce, and they want more control and choice and employers are having to respond to that,” he says. “So one of the challenges we’re facing is: How do you engage companies? We’re looking at strategies, meeting with donors, collecting information to do the kind of follow up necessary to make the changes we need to make.”
