The Future is Bleak for United Ways. How Will You Survive? Adopt an Issue Focus.

If you want your United Way to survive, you need a new plan. Every day, workplace campaigns are declining, more donors are leaving United Way to directly support local charities using Guidestar, Giving Tuesday, Facebook, GoFundMe, online giving, and text-to-give. Doing things the way you always have no longer works. 

Adopting an Issue Focus is the solution. We developed the Issue Focused Model to help United Ways like yours succeed by growing and diversifying your resources, generating your own results that donors want to support, and sending a clear message that attracts donors and funders.

Based on over 20 years of donor research, the Issue Focus Model is grounded in this simple truth: donors no longer want to support a pass-through organization; they want to invest in impacting a critical issue in their community. Adopting an Issue Focus shifts the focus of your United Way from fundraising to impact, shifting the measure of success from how much money was raised to how many lives were changed.

The Issue Focus Model includes all the strategies necessary to transform your United Way’s resource development, community impact, and marketing/communication to make your United Way sustainable, relevant, and impactful for years to come.

Grow your resources. Create measurable impact. Send a clear message. Adopt an Issue Focus.


Helping United Ways Achieve Issue Focused Success

When you partner with Perspectives, you get access to over 30 years of United Way research and proven experience to become issue focused successfully.


We Offer Issue Focused Solutions, Tailored to Meet Your Needs and Goals   

We empower your board and staff with proven strategies and all the resources you need to implement an issue focus at your United Way.

  • Retreats – Our New Directions Retreat brings together your board and staff to understand your challenges and explore how an issue focus can move your efforts forward.

  • Strategic Planning – We can fully facilitate your strategic planning efforts with our Traditional Issue Focus Transformation or utilize our guidance to create your own strategic plan with our Guided Issue Focus Transformation.

  • Consultations – Through our consultations, we’ll partner with you and your team to find strategies and solutions for all your challenges as you adopt and implement an issue focus.

  • Training – Our webinars cover critical topics in resource development, marketing/communication, community impact, and governance to help you succeed as an issue focused United Way.


Three Easy Ways to Learn How an Issue Focus Will Transform Your United Way 

1. Read: Sign up for our blog and we’ll share information, ideas, tips, and guidance to help you and your United Way every two weeks

2. Watch: View our United Way Survival Guide webinar

3. Talk: Contact us and we’ll talk about how you can build a more relevant, sustainable, and impactful issue focused United Way


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