A new vision

GREELEY — United Way of Weld County’s new six-year strategic plan not only redefines its role in the community but also changes its day-to-day work in the office.

The strategic plan, adopted in August 2024, shifts the nonprofit’s focus from direct service to being a convener of other nonprofits and agencies that serve the Weld County community. 

Beginning in 2025, United Way will streamline and facilitate conversations among nonprofits and other stakeholders, identify gaps in the services those nonprofits provide and prevent any duplication of efforts — that duplication increased significantly post-pandemic as more nonprofits launched to provide services. 

“We got to this point where we were doing too much,” said Melanie Woolman, president and CEO of United Way of Weld County. “Myself and the board started seeing that if we continue on this path, we’re not doing things the best that we could be. We wanted to be proactive and prevent that from happening and to be good stewards of the donor dollar.”

The board for United Way began meeting in July 2023 to evaluate the work of the nonprofit, including its areas of success and any areas where it “felt stretched thin as an organization,” Woolman said. The board contracted with Strategy Architect in Denver to draft both a strategic and an implementation plan. 

“It adds focus and clarity to our mission. It’s going to help us define things that are important and move the needle on the things we think are important,” said Clint Dudley, a board member and executive director of Thompson Rivers Parks & Recreation. “This will allow us to be more narrowly focused and go a lot deeper. … Historically for 30-plus years, we’ve been a backbone and convener. We’re going to be focused and that will be the only thing we’ll be doing.”

The strategic plan was finished in January, and the implementation plan is expected to be finished by June 30 to outline United Way’s new model of operating as an organization.

“This is the first time our organization has come through a strategic vetting process like this,” Woolman said. “We pulled together 75 different nonprofit partners and (several) donors who basically gave feedback about what we’re doing and where we should be going.”

Through stakeholder interviews of the donors, the staff, the board, and funded and community partners, the United Way identified that its biggest strength is its ability to make connections among nonprofits, businesses, donors, volunteers and those in need of services.

The United Way also faces a few challenges, including a lack of clear focus, declining community contributions and perceived competition with nonprofit partners. The nonprofit had become a competitor with other nonprofits by stepping into the direct service space, vying for grants to fund two key efforts. The nonprofit operates the Housing Navigation Center, an overnight shelter and day service in Greeley, at a cost of $3 million a year, with all but $55,000 of that funded by grants. It also oversees the coordination of regional homelessness efforts, the Northern Colorado Continuum of Care that’s funded through a federal government contract. 

By 2030, the United Way plans to divest of its direct service work and to find new partners to take over its two homelessness programs. The United Way is in the process of a request for proposal for the Continuum of Care but intentionally doesn’t have an immediate plan in place for the Navigation Center. 

The United Way originally made a five-year commitment to oversee the Continuum of Care that ends in 2025, aligning with the timing of the implementation of the strategic plan. But with the Navigation Center, the nonprofit needs more time to do due diligence to get community feedback and to identify the best regional nonprofit partner able to take over operations.  

“We are in the early exploratory phases regionally about what is feasible for that space and what the community thinks is best for the next phase of that work,” Woolman said. “We feel that regionally, we’re at a point where we can transition it to a new entity.”

The other half of United Way’s work is serving as a community convener, bringing nonprofits and other stakeholders to the table to discuss the community’s most pressing challenges, building powerful partnerships to address those challenges and encouraging volunteerism to have the manpower to do the necessary work.

“There’s really a desire for this to happen in the community and that United Way should be the one to pull the community together,” Woolman said. “We were trying to be two different organizations at once. We can’t keep being two different things.”

Through its strategic plan, the United Way identified two strategic priorities that it will carry out through 2030 to establish itself fully as a community conveyer. The first is to shift from a direct service and gap-filling organization to a collective impact organization and second, to support funding and capacity-building for childcare providers, the 211 Colorado resource center, and disaster preparedness and response. 

“We already have relationships with a lot of different entities in the community. We connect volunteers, businesses — from national corporations to small family businesses — nonprofits and donors that care,” Woolman said. “Because we have all those relationships, it sets up as to be a convener.”

Collective impact is a way to move beyond a partnership or collaboration by bringing together multiple stakeholders that are all working toward a common goal, since not any single organization can solve community issues and be able to bring about long-lasting change. By working together, nonprofits can better plan for the future of their local community and do more preventative type of work. 

“Focusing on collective impact will help the United Way leverage their unique role as a convener, bringing partners together to help impact greater change in Weld County,” said Diane Heldt, executive director of A Woman’s Place, a domestic violence shelter in Weld County and a long-time funded partner of United Way. “I’m excited about the clarified direction. As they worked on their new strategic goals and plans, the United Way of Weld County worked really hard to get feedback and input from a lot of different partners, nonprofit agencies and community leaders.”

United Way plans to facilitate collective impact by leveraging partnerships, resources and expertise, ensuring that the investments the nonprofits make are sound and that the work they do is carried out efficiently and effectively with a good ROI.

“We have a really strong, healthy, growing community,” Woolman said. “We want to stay on top of that.”

As part of carrying out its new strategic priorities, United Way’s operating model will bring more of the staff out into the community, convening community groups and facilitating community conversations to make sure the work they do is “meaningful,” Woolman said.

“We’ll see just the entire nonprofit sector and the community working together on effective, efficient investments that work. We’ll see the community solving problems together and not stepping on each other’s toes,” Woolman said. “For us all to come together and do this work together is going to be a really effective way to do things. Then we can be proactive and move upstream.”

United Way works with more than 100 nonprofits and childcare providers each year and is supported by $7 million annually, generated from a communitywide fundraising campaign, individual and corporate donations, grants and contracts. 

United Way has funding contracts with 53 nonprofits and anticipates requests from up to 20 new organizations for the next funding cycle, which will span one year instead of three until the strategic plan is fully underway. The regular three-year funding cycle will be implemented once again in 2026.

“My goal is to inspire generosity whether it is for us or for another nonprofit,” Woolman said. “The idea is, a rising tide lifts all boats.”

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