United Way of Southern Maine

For 90 years, United Way of Southern Maine (UWSM) has been at the center of mobilizing our community to improve people’s lives. Today, UWSM upholds this responsibility by uniting individuals and organizations around the community’s shared vision for the future, Thrive2027. Working to achieve this vision through three ten-year goals - created by and for the community - UWSM will:

1. Give kids a strong start
Headline Indicator: By 2027, 70% of children read proficiently at the end of third grade
Benchmark: 59% of children read proficiently at the end of third grade

2. Empower neighbors to thrive – not just survive
Headline Indicator: By 2027, 70% of households pay less than 30% of their income on housing
Benchmark: 65% of households pay less than 30% of their income on housing

3. Help us all live longer - better
Headline Indicator: By 2027, 10% reduction in preventable premature deaths (4,569 years of potential life lost/100,000 people)
Benchmark: 5,076 years of potential life are lost/100,000 people

Alone, we do good. Together, we do greater good. The deeply coordinated and collaborative work of Thrive2027, led by UWSM, seeks to achieve sustainable systems change through cross-sector collaboration leading to long-lasting, meaningful, measurable results in meeting these critical community needs.

Launched in 2016, Thrive2027 is our community’s shared vision for the future. Underpinning these efforts, UWSM invests in the community, advocates for change, and mobilizes volunteers; bringing to life the blueprint provided by Thrive2027. As the backbone organization driving this collective impact work, UWSM is aligning, activating, and partnering with stakeholders across all sectors of the community to achieve these goals.

Thrive2027 provides a wide range of actionable and relevant strategies and connects the dots between early learning, financial stability, and healthy lives in our community. These strategies are consistent with the needs and potential in the community as demonstrated by data and aspirations shared by the community. They were selected for their reach, scale, success probability, community fit, and capacity.

Because of the thorough and community-driven nature of the goal setting and strategy-selecting processes, UWSM and the Thrive2027 Council are confident in the strategies devised to achieve the goals of Thrive2027. These strategies are calls to action around which community partners develop proposals and collaborative efforts to make meaningful and measurable progress on Thrive2027 goals.

A full list of Thrive2027’s strategies by goal can be found here: https://www.thrive2027.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Thrive2027ConsolidatedGoalsFramework.pdf

As the backbone organization for Thrive2027, UWSM works to maintain streamlined goals and strategies, identify and share best practices and emerging trends, and support the aligned activities of Thrive2027 community partners. The collective expertise and experiences of UWSM staff and Thrive2027 volunteers provide a breadth of assets, ensuring the knowledge and relationships needed to lead this work.

Thrive2027 is overseen and guided by the Thrive2027 Council, comprised of cross-sector leaders from throughout Southern Maine. The Thrive2027 Council is supported by UWSM staff and three committees comprised of community members: Marketing, Communication, and Public Outreach Committee; Data, Measurement, and Evaluation Committee; and Public Policy Committee.

Each Goal is overseen by a Goal Cabinet, which is comprised of issue-area experts and cross-sector representatives. Goal Cabinets receive support from UWSM staff, including issue-area directors and evaluation, public policy, and volunteer engagement staff. Goal Cabinets are primarily responsible for ensuring the Thrive2027 Goal Framework – including result statements and associated indicators and strategies – is identified, adopted, and implemented. The Cabinets monitor progress on goals and employ various strategies to make progress toward achieving the goals.

The Goal Cabinets serve as a resource to both the Thrive2027 Council and UWSM Community Impact Steering Committee. Each Goal Cabinet recommends proposals for funding from Thrive2027 community partners that are working to achieve Thrive2027’s goals. Proposals recommended by Goal Cabinets then advance to the Community Impact Steering Committee, which makes final funding decisions to be approved by the Board of Directors. This process exists to ensure the transparency of UWSM’s investment process and its adherence to the needs and desires of the community.

UWSM partners drive the direct services in the community that align with, and bring to life, Thrive2027. UWSM’s role is in partnership with these organizations - through alignment and coordination of strategies, data and evaluation metrics, and investments through the community campaign. Additionally, UWSM is bringing more partners to the table and advocating for public policies that will advance our goals. UWSM will:
-Rally the support of individuals, corporations, and foundations to secure the resources needed to invest in partner-led programs that are directly providing services to advance Thrive2027
-Through volunteer and staff expertise, invest in aligned programs that are tackling the specific strategies deemed most important in moving the needle of progress towards achieving the goals
-Work with partners to rigorously evaluate progress – providing the technical assistance and supports needed to be successful in measurement
-Activate public policy advocates to communicate with legislators in support of bills that directly impact goal advancement.

UWSM continues to unite individuals and organizations around these goals and the framework of strategies designed to achieve them.  Underpinning this, UWSM has made significant strategic investments, advocated for public policy changes, and rallied volunteers.

While it is fundamental that UWSM invest in community programs, we also know that Thrive2027’s goals will not be met without the help of everyone in our community. In order to allow an opportunity for all to participate, UWSM is working to ensure that all our volunteer/ advocacy efforts are in support of Thrive2027 goals and provide opportunities for individuals and corporate partners to engage in the work. We continue to serve as a connector to a variety of general opportunities while adding more strategic and measurable opportunities to the mix. 

Day of Action, a long running annual day of service, where we see more than 1,000 community members volunteer across Southern Maine support organizations in cleaning, organizing, and capacity building projects. Over the past three years, we have added projects that directly support Thrive2027 goals including a reader training (resulting in dozens of trained volunteer readers); mock interview/resume review (resulting in dozens of people receiving job search assistance); and a Phone2Action pilot encouraging our volunteers to support an upcoming SNAP bill. 

At a strategic level, the success of Thrive2027 is rooted in the lasting, positive change achieved through purposefully collaborative work – changing how people, organizations, and systems work together at large-scale. There are several success stories of how cross-sector work is happening differently – in a more coordinated and aligned approach. To this focus, UWSM also attained the following:
-In working with our funded partners, UWSM implemented the adoption of shared performance measures – enabling the collection of measurement data needed to clearly demonstrate collective progress made towards specific strategies and goals
-Published a Thrive2027 resource document for employers highlighting the tangible actions they can take within their own workforce to move progress on Thrive2027 goals
-The Greater Portland Council of Governments (GPCOG) incorporated Thrive2027 into its Comprehensive Economic Development Strategies (CEDS) for 2018 - 2023
-The John T. Gorman Foundation aligned its funding work in Cumberland County with the Thrive2027 framework and gave the Thrive2027 Goal Cabinets latitude to make funding decisions

The community impact portion of UWSM’s strategic plan rests on the following foundational principle: UWSM can deliver results a) as backbone through its power to bring together the people, organizations, and resources necessary to achieve community-wide change and b) by intentionally and strategically using distinct but aligned strategies like grants, public policy, advocacy, volunteerism, and evaluation. If we do this well, the Thrive2027 goals will be met.