United Way of the Ozarks

UWO aims to support programs that prepare children and youth to succeed and move adults to stand on their own. The community investment strategy is structured in three categories:

- Upstream – funding that supports long-term plans to address the community’s core social challenges by:
Eliminating achievement gaps to under-resourced and under-represented students.
Providing access to education and workforce training.
Preventing and responding to domestic violence.
Helping improve parenting skills.
- Safety Net – services that support families and individuals in crisis.
- Innovation – fresh approaches to address persistent community needs or emerging challenges.

By focusing our investment in three newly established categories, we are addressing the future and present needs in our community. Self-sufficient individuals will not need safety net services. By encouraging non-profits in our community to be innovative in addressing existing needs and emerging needs we will be able to uniquely meet neds in our community.

In order to complete our mission, we have established the Community Investment process to determine how to financially address the critical needs in our community. In the orientation, volunteers learn about and discuss the issues with experts to gain a more clear understanding of how our communities are affected. Through agency presentations, panel members hear how United Way partner agencies are addressing those issues at the root and working to create positive change. Our three councils, comprised of more than 125 donor/volunteers, have the opportunity to ask questions, evaluate each agency’s request and make recommendations based on the impact of their work.

As we have recently reinvented our community investment process to focus on 3 main areas: Upstream (Root Causes of Poverty), Safety Net and Innovation, we will have more to report after the first year.