Welcome everybody to Midday magazine for this Tuesday October 15th, 2024.
Have your host James J. Mail off here welcoming into the studio.
Our great friends from the United Way of Southwood and Amps counties.
We have of course CEO of the United Way Terry Johns with us.
Terry, good to have you with us.
Good afternoon. Great to be here.
Thank you for being here.
And we have campaign chair Shalina with us.
It's good to have you with us.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Appreciate you being here.
Appreciate being able to not only focus on the campaign,
but to highlight the events and different things going on with the United Way.
Terry, when it comes to campaign season,
where do you start with something like this?
Where do we begin?
That's loaded.
Maybe really.
We begin in May.
So right now, we are, I would say, mid-swing of campaign.
So back in in August, we had an event where we distributed campaign materials
and that's flyers, pledge forms, all kinds of support things
that local businesses can use when they are encouraging
and soliciting their employees to donate.
And so those were all distributed in August.
And then each company kind of sets their own pace.
So some did their campaign in September.
Some are running now.
I'll let Shalina talk about their campaign at West Rock
because that's actually going to kick off later this week.
And so everybody's just kind of on their own schedule.
But with a couple of important things to remember,
we officially kind of started on September 1.
And then we will have our most of it wrapped up,
about 90% wrapped up by the Friday before Thanksgiving,
because that's our sweepstakes deadline.
And so we'll certainly circle into sweepstakes
sometime during this conversation.
But that's when we see a lot of pledge forms come in.
And then we're not just working with companies and workplaces.
There's also just the general population of the communities that we serve.
So most of those we connect with via mail.
So those who have already given, we certainly appreciate that.
And we thank you for being on top of the mailing you received
from us early September.
If it's kind of just been sitting there on your pile,
don't say you don't have a pile because we all have a pile.
That pile might be in a different spot in everybody's house,
but everybody has a pile.
And so we have now sent a reminder to the pile,
to the item that's on the pile.
So now I guess from a staff standpoint,
we're kind of starting to get into follow-up mode.
But understanding that there's a lot of companies still running.
And so each year we ask somebody to volunteer
to be a campaign chair with us.
And come on out mostly with me, sometimes with other staff,
but usually with me to talk about why give to United Way?
Why be involved?
Why engage?
And so this year, Shalina, who's been serving on our board for a while,
said, hey, I'd love to step in and do this.
And as a reminder to listeners,
we serve Southwick County and Adams County.
And so it's great to have a volunteer
from the Adams County part of our service area
because that just doesn't always often happen.
And a lot of it is just proximity.
Like I'm calling on Shalina a lot to come spend 10 minutes
in Wisconsin Rapids and then go back or whatever.
So there's definitely a commitment,
a serious commitment to a short period of time,
which can sometimes be tough on a schedule.
So Shalina is with us from Smurf at West Rock
and aside from them being her employer
and also the greatest or the largest workplace campaign
in Adams County.
Shalina is also just a very strong personal supporter.
So great fit.
So I'll let her talk a little bit about the role
and what's been happening so far
and what's happening with her company.
Shalina, before we get to that,
we have talked a little bit with you before
and I appreciate you joining us again.
But as long as the topic is out there,
why did you choose to do this?
Why take your free time to be a part of something like this
and to drive here for 10 minutes and all those things?
Well, again, thanks for having us today.
I think volunteering is very important.
Obviously as an individual,
you want to do what you can for the community
and for people that need assistance.
And again, like I said before in our interview,
I think it's just important for my children
to kind of see that, hey, you need to volunteer,
you need to help others.
And you may have a very tight schedule
but there is always time to fit in other things
when you're trying to do good.
You find the time, you know,
when it comes to certain topics and everything.
You really do, a well set.
And as we're talking about the campaign season,
how has it been going for you in your position so far?
Very well. So I've really, very much enjoyed seeing new faces
and going to the different places of employment
and I just really appreciate everybody
who is able to donate, who is able to volunteer and help.
Yeah, this Thursday we kick off our campaign
on Miss Murphy West Rock.
We have three shifts.
So we have to have, you know, our employee meetings
are, you know, third shift, second and third.
And we make it all work.
And yet, another thing that we're doing too
is for people that are able to donate and help us,
we kind of have a raffle going on.
So we typically do 50-50 raffles.
We have some prizes that people can win,
depending on how much they donate.
I'm trying to think what else.
We're having a chili feed.
We have like a whole different slew of events
and we're going to wrap everything up.
I believe it's November 22nd, is that?
That's the sweepstakes deadline.
Yeah.
So we're going to go basically the month,
pretty much the month of November,
to try to get as many donations as what we can.
You know you have a big event when it takes you a second.
They're like, well, we got this and this.
Yeah, there's a lot.
No, that's a cool event.
You know it's a good event, what it's at.
And we're talking about this.
It's certainly great to hear about you guys
in a great organization and really a tip of the hat
to all of you for this.
We also want to encourage other businesses.
Certainly this time of the year to be a part of this.
When it came to getting the ball rolling with this
with the company and everything,
how did that happen and how has the company responded to this?
How has the employees been responding to this?
The more employees that we can get involved, the better.
So a lot of times we have meetings at work
and we kind of ask like, you know,
what do you guys see as a good fit?
You know, what do you guys want to do in order to help
kind of raise money for United Way?
And we have some really, really great folks
that kind of step up to the plate.
And they're like, yeah, let's do this.
Let's do whatever we can.
And we have a very, very good group at Smurf at Westrak.
Have you had people reach out other businesses
or anything reach out about how to,
hey, I would like to get the start of that my business.
How do I even begin?
So what's kind of neat is when United Way
has the campaign training,
a lot of us kind of brainstorm different ideas
on what we can do.
And there's so many workplaces.
I think it was prevailed bank.
They do some really neat fundraising.
And yeah, you have to seal ideas from other places
because I mean, you need fresh ideas.
Yeah, yeah.
And well done.
Well done.
She's good.
She said that was exactly where I wanted you to be.
Perfect.
Because we do like to send a shout out
to all the businesses out there.
We have some amazing, wonderful individuals out there
that step up.
We know you guys step up because you do.
Every time United Way does have an event,
United Weekend, or so many of these others,
a great book giveaway,
so many other things that you guys do,
the community steps up and so do businesses Terry.
And it is not too late.
I mean, if you're listening, you're going,
oh, we should have done an employee campaign
or we're a small business, right?
Like maybe it's just a couple of people
and so they don't really have an employee campaign.
But we also have a program called Business 365.
And so we encourage small businesses
and entrepreneurial shops in our community
that are maybe just getting started,
building their business.
So it's small business 365 basically asking
those businesses to give a dollar a day,
or the equivalent of a dollar a day,
to support their community.
And so we've got some cool little window clings
that they can put on their window or door of their building.
So we have the 365 and then we also have
the small business leadership,
which is 500 or more per year.
So just thinking about it a little bit differently
than just doing an employee campaign.
But there is no wrong time, right?
We talked about, I talked about,
materials were already distributed,
but not in a, we can't backtrack to you
because we can't.
And we also can, we can accommodate any time of year
because we do have occasion where we'll have a local business
say, gosh, we're on board, we love this,
we'll make a corporate gift,
but we can't gather our employees in October.
Whatever, it's too busy, we have this going on,
we have that going on.
And they say, April would be better.
Well, we can, we can come in April.
You know, I mean, like we can be as accommodating
as somebody needs us to be, we just need to know that.
So that's the big thing is, you know,
if you're, if you're listening or you've thought about it
or you're just not sure, you know,
this is the time to reach out, of course.
And you can, you can get in touch with me by email
if that's what you prefer.
You also can give us a call at 715-421-0390.
You can talk to myself for Stephanie
and we can just kind of get the ball rolling
and get things started.
And we'll get that information out again
before we wrap up today and they give it that Terry.
You know, when we're talking about businesses large
or small, all can help, all can contribute
and all contributions count and matter, it all adds up.
It's the same as an individual out there listening.
While there may be people out there listening
that can donate a good sum or whatever that might be
to you and your household, there are people listening
that they worry.
Well, I want to put it in my community.
I want to be able to give, but I can only give a dollar.
I can only give five dollars.
I don't know, is that how much does that help?
It helps a lot.
It makes that major impact.
I mean, so just look at three of us in this room.
What if we all said, yeah, we'll do the, you know,
kind of the baseline that we promote is to give a dollar a week.
So we try to get individuals to start out at $52 a year.
But imagine if each of us did that, right?
And now we're funding, you know,
we're making a pretty big impact.
The amount of $2 per week.
So that only be two of the three of us, right?
We can fund a backpack full of food for a family
for the entire school year.
So every weekend.
So I mean, if you think about it that way, $104 can do that.
That's how far we can stretch it.
And that's in, you know, for a variety of reasons, right?
Sometimes it's just sheer volume of how programs are delivered.
But it's also with the understanding that, you know,
100% of your donor dollar impacts the community
that you want it to impact.
And I think that that's important too is that, you know,
if you give here in Southwood County,
but you say, I live in Portage County,
I want my dollars to go there.
That's where they'll go.
If you say, you know, I live in Adams County,
I work in Wood County, but I want my dollars to be split in half.
You know, I mean, we make whatever happen
that you want to have happen.
But really those, you know, those impacts,
whether you, whether in your mind, $52 is a large donation
or a small donation, doesn't matter.
But if you come on board at the dollar, at the dollar a week,
you're making great impact.
And even greater than you, you know, give yourself credit for,
but then also than that you realize how that, you know,
how that makes an impact in the community.
If people have already been a donor
or are currently donating at a higher amount,
I am not encouraging you to reduce your donation.
I'm encouraging you to say the same.
Or increase.
You know, that's another facet of our sweepstakes
is that if you give a dollar a week,
you get into the sweepstakes.
But if you increase your donation by $26,
so by half that amount, you get double entry into the sweepstakes.
So that's really cool.
We have five local businesses that have put $4,000 each
for us to use for these prizes.
And I always think it's really important to call that out
because I'm not taking, you know,
Shalina's donation and putting it towards a prize
to someone else.
Shalina's donation is impacting her community directly
in the programs that we fund.
But then we have Aspirus, Gunderson, Mountain View,
Privil Bank, next-home partners in Williams Plumbing,
that all gave $1,000 for us to use for the sweepstakes.
So that's pretty cool too.
You can win $1,000.
It speaks so highly of these businesses.
And I hope the audience noted something out there.
And especially to the businesses out there,
you noted something.
Those great companies or a Shalina's company
or any of these have not paid us for advertising.
But we're talking about them.
And we're spreading the word about them.
And we're talking very highly about them.
That is PR, you can't buy.
You can't purchase that kind of thing.
You can buy time on the airwaves here.
You can buy an article in a newspaper,
some of those things, but you cannot buy this kind of PR.
You cannot buy what this means to the community.
So if I can't reach your heart, maybe I can reach your mind
and some of the economic impact you can make with this
and for your business.
It is a win-win situation like no other.
And along with all of this, again,
the feel good that you mentioned,
the commentary of being able to do this.
There is few things in life that can give you more.
Well, I want to return on my investment.
Done, done.
I don't care what you're donating out there.
It is done with the United Way.
You can feel that through this process.
You mentioned a sweepstakes, Terry.
I want to dive into those for everybody.
Yeah, so we do have, again, $5,000 cash prizes.
We do those drawings just shortly before Christmas.
So that's super fun, to be going out with $1,000 checks.
And here's a little fun tip, probably about 10 years ago.
We had a big, dry erase check that we would go in
and we'd present the prize.
And then people would be like, well, I want to keep the big check.
I mean, of course they want the real check,
but they want the big check just because it's fun.
You know what I mean to take home or to put their office
or whatever.
And so one of the specialties of Shalina's company
is making corrugated signboards and different stands.
So we were able to partner with them to say,
I'm like, can you make me some big cardboard checks
so that when I go in to present a prize,
I can leave them with their big check.
And it's just kind of fun.
So just another sideline thing that relationships, right?
And I think that's what this is all about,
is to say, oh, they're like, yeah, absolutely.
We can make those for you.
We can donate them, you know, that kind of thing.
So that's really cool.
But for a donation of $1 a week, $52 a year,
or an increased donation, if you've already
been a donor of $26 or more, you get into the sweepstakes.
And again, sponsored by five companies
within our service area.
And they give us the $1,000 to help us attract new donors
and to build the amount of the donations that we are receiving.
So without those companies, you know,
there's definitely an impact.
Sweep $6 alone, typically represent about $50,000
of the campaign.
So just increased, you know, giving.
And of course, like any nonprofit organization,
we also see, you know, donor, we call it donor churn,
but we see where some donors drop off.
You know, someone leaves the area.
Maybe they were working here and now they moved
and they work somewhere else.
Well, they're probably giving to that United Way, right?
So we do see some donor loss.
We every year have donors who pass away.
You know, they gave all through their working years.
They gave us retirees and they, you know, they pass away.
So we, you know, we do experience donor loss.
And so our goal is to pick up as many donors,
new donors as we lose, because that's, I mean,
that's just the reality and it's part of,
part of doing business, the business that we do.
But there also has to sometimes be for some an appeal, right?
So it might be an incentive like I have the ability
to win something.
It also might be because you hear a story
that tugs at your heart.
And I really love this, the story that Shalina shares
about why she decided to be a donor.
So, you know, maybe you share that with everybody.
So when I first started donating to United Way,
I didn't have a lot of money.
And I said to my coworker, I said,
hey, do you donate to United Way?
Because Terry was there giving her a spiel,
like, you know, she does it.
I employee meetings and stuff.
And she's like, well, yeah, I donate to United Way.
And I said, well, why?
And she said, well, when I was younger,
she said, our family had a house fire.
And she said, we lost nearly everything.
And it was United Way that helped us get back
on our feet, learning how to function like, as we knew it.
And so hearing her personal story and knowing that,
like, she's one of my good friends.
I was like, oh my gosh, like, I had no idea
that that happened.
And it was from that moment, I was a supporter
of United Way.
You know, and you always hear these stories like,
well, does the money actually stay in the community
or where does it go?
And being on the United Way board,
I have seen firsthand all the different programs
that we support and the whole process behind it.
And I'm really, really glad to be a part
of this organization.
That's, thank you so much for sharing that.
That's a great story.
I really do appreciate you sharing that.
And it's one that I think the audience could take,
felt parallels to.
They have their own United Way stories
that it might be similar to that whether the United Way
directly helped their family or a neighbor
or somebody like that.
I want to shout out Ben being with us
last week talking over the else report a little bit.
We know how close those numbers are.
We know how close these families are
to being one of these families of being a person.
The needs of the United Way are, or is, you know,
somebody that is highlighting the United Way
sometimes at both.
I know my come from a family like that,
where we receive benefits and also
gave benefits to the United Way and continue to.
My mom's story is very similar to yours.
And why I learned about the United Way and stuff
as a knucklehead kid.
We learned about them and everything
from my mother and such.
There are so many good stories like that
in the community, Terry, and a lot of those stem
from the United Way doing things individually
or on a kind of case-by-case thing
of helping a community member out.
And then there are big things that you guys do
like day of caring.
And so many of these other events that really hit on these
oftentimes gray areas in our society
that we don't have enough resources for and everything.
It's part of the reason for the campaign and so much else.
Doing a remind people about day of caring coming up.
Yeah, so day of caring is coming up on Saturday, October 26th.
We are no longer taking registrations for yards
that ended last week Friday.
But we are still taking registration for volunteers.
So as of Friday, we had 81 yards signed up.
So our goal is to get all 81 yards
ranked on the morning of October 26th.
I'm going to be a month off in my wrong direction.
It's being around me.
October 26th.
But what we are looking for, additional volunteers,
I will say it's really awesome.
We have 370 volunteers registered.
But we typically are at like 450.
So I mean, nothing to sneeze at.
That's really good and we can get that done.
But if you're still kind of on the fence
or you know you're going to do it,
but you just haven't registered, we encourage you to register.
We do have t-shirts for the first 450 volunteers
that that sign up.
So that's really fun.
Those were delivered on Friday.
So they're in house.
We've got them ready to roll.
And just as a reminder to people, 8 a.m. free hot breakfast
at the Grand Rapids Lions Club, that's kind of where
the groups convene.
Some groups don't be alarmed.
If you've already made other arrangements with Ben,
you don't have to call.
We know that.
But sometimes I say that out here like, you don't meet
over there.
The people are like, wait a minute.
So sometimes there are other arrangements.
But in general, volunteers are gathered at 8 a.m.
on that Saturday morning, free hot breakfast
in partnership with the Grand Rapids Lions Club.
9 a.m. send everybody out with their ricking assignments.
And honestly, by noon, typically everybody's wrapped up
and done.
So there's a great process in place.
You get assigned your addresses and locations.
We have you go out and rake, encourage you to send us photos
when you're done with the yard.
You send us a text and say, hey, this address is done.
And then we can check it off the list and move on.
But the goal is, again, to get all 81 done that morning.
So that's exciting.
It's definitely doable with the amount of volunteers
that we have.
But we still have space.
And of course, we would never turn away volunteers ever.
So if we topped that 450, that would be just fine too.
If you're interested in registering to volunteer,
you can go on our website at uwac.org
and click on the banner, or you certainly
can contact Ben, who is our community engagement director,
who coordinates all volunteers.
Ben can be reached at 715-421-0390.
And as far as the sweepstakes go, Terry,
or finding out other information, send them to the same places?
Absolutely.
You should definitely check out the website.
If that's what you're comfortable with,
you can always give us a call, or we love visitors.
We are in the office till 4 p.m. each day at 351 Oak Street
here in Wisconsin Rapids.
So if you'd like to stop by, we had a lot of foot traffic
this morning.
It's kind of funny.
Because sometimes we see nobody all day, other than each other.
And today, there's been, but I think maybe
because we sent out the reminder campaign stuff,
but we had some people dropping in with their donations.
And we had volunteers in assembling our newsletter.
And just a whole lot of fun things going on.
So that's certainly appreciated.
And we always like to chat with people.
If you are in need of resources or programming,
then you should call 2-1-1.
And that is literally just dial 2-1-1.
And you will be connected with a resource specialist
who can help you out with any program needs
that you might have.
Shalena, thank you again for the time.
Appreciate you.
Always good to hang out with you, Terry.
Thanks for the time.
See you soon.
See you tomorrow.
See you tomorrow.
Yeah.
And I started out this interview asking, Terry,
about where do we start?
Where do we begin with such a big topic?
The campaign starts with you.
It starts with you out there, everybody.
Find out more at uwac.org.
Be sure to follow the United Way on social media.
It's great.
Follow great way to keep up to date on everything
going on in your community.
Share things on your social media.
You just don't know who might see it otherwise.
It wouldn't otherwise.
Again, uwac.org.
Here at 97-5 FM 13-20 AM, WFHR, we are locally grown radio.
