Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record. Home addresses that residents give are left out of this page.
[5:25] Susan Hawes: Use the word, I think it's spelled a little bit, oh yeah, I don't think we have everybody.
[5:36] Unidentified speaker (Director of Community): I'm assuming, yeah, there were a couple people that said they were going to zoom in, but we can get started anyway, just so everybody knows everybody in the room, why don't we just go around and introduce ourselves, I'll start them and creek, I'm the director of community.
[5:53] Wayne Mallar: And economic development for the city, Wayne Mallar, resident of Bangalore.
[6:00] Susan Hawes: Suzette Pearl, resident of Bangor, Mike Pearl, retired military, worked for the VA 40 years in government service, resident of Bangalore, hey Emily Thomas, I am the director.
[6:11] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): Of city impact at Heart of Manhattan Way, and I'm also a resident of Bangor, downtown Bangor.
[6:15] Unidentified speaker (Director of Community): Specifically, so I love living here, all right, so our guest today is Elaine, and I'm gonna just turn it right over to you, and I go over what's happening at United Way, sweet, let me do anything.
[6:53] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): Well, oh, I'll give a little overview, just, you know, I think probably most of you are familiar one way or another with the work that we do at United Way, but just a little overview of what our general scope is, and then specifically what we're doing with our new non-profit hub, and kind of the ways that there are synergies with what you all are trying to accomplish at Livable Communities, with the work that we're trying to do there, and also selfishly solicit some feedback from all of you about ways. That we can align our work and make sure we're all pulling the train in the same direction. So we serve six counties in Maine, we're based in Bangor, we serve a region that's pretty large, pretty rural for the most part, Hancock, Penobscot, Piscataqua, Somerset, Walden, Washington County, so we go all the way out, Somerset, Piscataqua County, all the way out to Washington and Hancock, and our mission is to mobilize communities to action so all complies. We have some priority areas that were developed in 2018 based on community surveys and opportunities to listen to our nonprofit community and just residents in general about their priorities and areas of need that they felt were most pressing for our communities, that developed the three, the first three, so supporting basic needs including food, shelter, and heat. We do a lot of work particularly around this time of year with heating assistance. We support a collective approach to treating friendship substitute disorders. So we work in concert with lots of different community organizations through funding and through other collaborations to address substance use disorder. And then supporting early childhood development education in our communities. And that is includes lots of different things. And it's actually expanded a little bit beyond early childhood. And into youth as we look at initiatives around youth mattering and mentoring and making sure that we're supporting youth throughout their lives. And then we've added this fourth goal area in the past handful of years around supporting the nonprofit sector and specifically nonprofit staff members helping them to upskill and helping board members to support their organizations effectively and increase collaboration reduce duplication kind of all the things that we're all hoping to do coalescing. It around a particular goal area so I'll talk most about that goal as it comes slides. We do a lot of different things at UI Way. I think that sometimes it's a both an asset and a downfall that folks maybe don't have a sense of exactly what we do because we're doing a whole bunch of different things. But it can kind of be split up in programs and funding. So of course folks know us for our funding. We fund non-profit partners on a three-year grant cycle which is great because it allows them to have. That stable funding for those three years and not have to worry about reapplying every year. Some United Ways have a two-year cycle some have a one-year cycle. We're proud of our three-year cycle. We have a couple of different funds that support non-profits off cycle and then of course our fuel assistance fund and a crisis just response button that gets activated during times like the pandemic. We have programs though too. We also operate a few different programs we operate lots of drives so food. Drives baby supply drives any sort of other basic needs drives that arise needs in our partners. We try to address those pretty swiftly. We also have a volunteer matching website we support 211 Maine. We raised awareness around Alice and populations that are above the poverty level, but still struggling to make ends meet. And then, of course, the Community Hub and Bundle, which is our early childhood program that started in Wisconsin County and expanding to Waldo, Washington, and Hancock counties and just rolled out earlier this year. So that's an exciting new thing as well. Getting into the nonprofit capacity building piece, we've been listening to the sector for a number of years now. now. Of course, we are lucky that we have some familiarity with our partners and talk with them really regularly about their challenges and have for since we started because we've always had a great nonprofit network. But as we've been listening, we've kind of realized that there are things that we are poised to address. So these are a couple examples. There are quite a few capacity gaps for our sector not only in the Bangor region but also more broadly in our rural regions so you know affordable training is limited can be limited especially for meetings you get a lot of non-profits running meetings that are hybrid out of a room with like laptop and they don't really have that set up they need to run those effectively, and the lack of board pipelines. So pipelines of trained, effective, willing board members who are going to support their organization, whether that's in a working board position or in a governance board position. Staffing-wise for nonprofits, it's a fair amount of burnout and turnover. I think we all see this regularly in a variety of sectors, but I think not the nonprofit sector struggles with this, especially in direct service positions or middle management positions where folks are dealing with the goals of the board and also trying to support their staff that are doing really oftentimes demanding hard, kind of emotionally challenging work and having struggle supporting them. Also, if folks are budgets are tightened, oftentimes staff are let go and then other staff are taking on enhanced responsibilities, disabilities, perhaps without the support they need to do that. And then key leadership positions when they're vacated in our region, there's often a void of others to then take their place and then organizations struggle after those transitions. And then, of course, just general infrastructure barriers like expensive office space. You need to rent a boardroom and have that square footage all the time when really you only need it maybe a couple of times a month. And then volunteer matching being pretty scattered across our region, limited opportunities for folks to use their volunteer time off in their corporate positions, unsure of where to plug in to do that, really missing out on a key mass of volunteers that would be really useful for these nonprofits that need some extra hands. On the flip side of impact of the nonprofit sector, certainly we all are familiar with impact on a kind of human level. They're they're doing really important work in our communities, but on an economic level they contribute a lot to our economy. People often don't think about that. They think of them as just kind of the helping sector and not that they're contributing back to this general ecosystem, lots of jobs in our region. And our region alone 17.8 percent of the workforce is employed by a non-profit. That's a lot of our folks in our community that are relying on non-profits to be successful and to support them as employees. And then of course, wages come along.
[14:16] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): When you say the region, are we talking about Greater Bangor or is that?
[14:20] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): That region is our six county region. So yeah, we serve Hancock, Washington, Penobscot, Piscataquos.
[14:29] Wayne Mallar: Yeah, absolutely. Kim, while we're talking about that, do we have a breakdown of by county?
[14:35] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): For the number of, I don't have that right in front of me, but it's all the data is taken, I can send a follow-up from the Maine Association of Nonprofits. They do a really excellent report every year about the economic impact of nonprofits, so I'll share that with Ann and she can share that out to myself. There we go. Okay, so that's kind of where the hub came to be. We looked at a lot of different spaces in Bangor. We were very grateful to have some generous support from arpa funding to acquire and renovate a space. And we ended up finding our home in the Evergreen Woods Complex across the street from the Humane Society. It's been wonderful. We moved in last October. And the goal of this, of course, is a space. What building are you in? It's 101. So you turn in, you turn left, and then you're kind of on your way out there. There we are. Tyler Tech used to be in this building. So we're fortunate to get it at a good price, able to renovate it fairly quickly. Of course, this space is, you know, physical in nature and has all those components to it that I'll talk about in a second, but it's also the programming side is very hybrid to make sure that we're serving our six county region and our partners that are, you know, out in Somerset County and Pacific County at Washington County. So it's both a space and a set of programming strategies. This is a little gives you a little sense of the floor plan. I just like to show this, not the, not that it's means a whole lot if you're not kind of physically in this space, but just gives you a sense of the flow of the space. So we have our lobby and then this whole wing, both floors, is rental office space. Four of them on the patio level have been rented already, so that's exciting, and we're just getting ready to actually start advertising in earnest and get some folks in this space, prioritizing people who are interested in being part of a non-profit, a community like this, so not just wanting space but wanting to contribute to a really vibrant collaborative setting that is mutually supportive. Of course we have our board room and we have our offices kind of along this hallway here. We have a pretty large room off this hallway as well that we, this was kind of two separate rooms and we renovated to be one larger space that can host 34 people training style, it can also host 64 people kind of lecture style, so it can host a fair amount of folks and have different configurations, which has been really fun. It's been very highly used so far, several times a week, folks in here. Yeah, I can
[17:25] Unidentified speaker (Director of Community): course and then I can grab that, sorry, and I want to keep it open so people knew where to go
[17:34] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): and then some other little things, meeting rooms too, and also a volunteer center will be kind of off the lobby here. I'll talk about the goal behind that. Our second level, of course, we have a training center, which has been great. We'll have a patio, so some indoor outdoor space, co-working space, a lot of storage, a little wellness room for staff too, which has been fun, kind of having this space has allowed us to have some of those extras that oftentimes non-profit staff are not used to having any sort of amenities of any kind for their work. So it's nice to be able to add those for staff that are working really hard. This is what the space looked like before, so we had to use our imagination as far as what it could become. It has been renovated in quite some time. This was our training room, our lobby, this was half of the event center and our board room, and then I said all these spaces are renovated. So our lobby, our training room, our event space is kind of set up with high top tables, and then our courtroom. We're really lucky to have some great partners on renovation and able to do that pretty quickly, and the whole building which was of awesome more spaces, wellness rooms, one of the office spaces, one of our hybrid meeting rooms and
[18:56] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): then some co-working space. So
[19:01] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): as far as the strategies that we're using to kind of guide our programmatic work, we have six of them. So I'll go through those fairly briefly, and certainly if there are questions, happy to expand on them. Our goal is to strengthen the skills of the folks who work in our nonprofit sector. So how do we strengthen their skills, resilience, build their capacity as professionals, whether they're experienced or emerging, help non-profit interns really gain the experience they need to possibly pursue a career in the sector. I think that's a mission that's pretty near and dear to my heart, especially as a business student. I interned at united way and went off and did other economic development work and then came back. So I think it's really important to be supporting our interns so they have a chance and a pathway at nonprofit work and not thinking of it as kind of a lesser than other types of work. Of course, the shared space and services, so high quality meeting rooms, office space, infrastructure, the goal of which being to reduce costs. So nonprofits are paying a subsidized rate for their own office space and not having to pay for other square footage than they're able to use, which has been great so far. With the non-profit that we have that moved into the space in early january has really appreciated that. They've used the training room, they've used the meeting rooms, they've used the event center for different trains, they have cpr trainings and other things for their staff that they've just been able to have right on site in This space and those relationships that are being built too between kind of our staff and their staff as we sort of navigate what it's like to be under the same roof with different missions but sort of a similar overall role. Down the line we'll be doing more programming related to non-profit incubation, so that's something. And not incubation, I say that because certainly we want to incubate non-profits that are, have a new idea that's going to create impact in our communities, but at the same time I used to work in the kind of business advising world and I used to kind of joke that I feel like I advise people not to start businesses more than I advise them to start them because oftentimes there's an idea that can be combined with another organization or you're kind of need to steer another direction. So helping folks who have ideas either plug in to folks who are already working on that particular idea with, you know, and bringing their own ideas to that, or generally the new idea, helping support them in starting the right way, making sure they have all of their financials in order, making sure that they have a strategic plan and a business plan for their organization. So they actually be successful. That'll be down the line. Something that's coming up a little more eminently is board leadership and development. So we're going to have a cohort. I think the date for that will be there later this summer, early this fall. A cohort of folks who are either in newer in their work positions or they would like to join a board and are just not really sure where to start. So taking them through it in a cohort style with a different topic and speakers every week, allowing them to a figure out what it is they'd like to do. They what kind of board do they want to serve on? Do they want to serve on a governance board, a working board? Do they want to take a particular role on a board like a treasurer, a secretary? What kind of organization would they like to work with? How do you evaluate an organization when you're deciding to join their board? And then helping board Members understand their responsibilities. So what is a, you know, how do you supervise an executive director? What does that look like? What are some things that you can watch out for? How do you read financial statements when they're put in front of you to make sure that you are evaluating your nation's finances to the degree that you need to in your work position? So we're very excited for that. I think there's a lot of interest in it. Lots of professionals in our area are interested in serving on boards, and their organizations are supportive of their serving on a board, but it's just a question of how and where. Our volunteer center too, that will be launching in the next six months or so. We have always done a lot of volunteer navigation and connected folks with volunteer opportunities, but this will be a more concerted effort to ensure that is as accessible as possible. A couple of different audiences we're looking at targeting. One is companies that have BTO. We hear from a lot of organizations who have employees that are not sure how to use their BTO. They get to the end of the year and they have a bunch of hours they need to volunteer, and then we try to schedule a whole day for them so they could use those hours. But trying to get them plugged into more regular opportunities so they become an asset to an organization. That's one. The other one is retirees. So, hence the physical space dedication in our hub, trying to make it so that folks can come in person if they want to talk to a real person and not just search for opportunities online. And then, of course, with some possible new work requirements for folks on benefits, how can we make sure these opportunities are accessible to them, that we're guiding them and helping them track hours in the way that they need to track hours? So we're thinking about these couple relevant areas as we launch this center, and then of course just in general big picture helping build strategic partnerships. We've always done that as a united way. I think that's kind of a staple of our role in the Community especially organizing around issues like Alice any general community-wide issues but continuing to do that in the context of the hub particularly facilitating that collaboration across sectors. So how do we bring together a non-profit sector the corporate sector municipal education making sure that we're facilitating that cross-sector collaboration in the way that we can and we're fortunate to have some of those cross-sector relationships. So making sure we're utilizing those to the best of our ability those are the kind of six things that we're focusing on more broadly with the hub. We have a couple upcoming events the first one is in a couple of weeks it's about understanding financial statements for program staff and for board members who maybe are looking at financial reports and thinking I think I'm supposed to know what this means about this organization but I'm not sure that I actually do which is so many of us like so many times. So it we're excited for that one and we'll continue to host some training in the finance area that's an area that lots of staff and board members feel
[25:55] Unidentified speaker (Director of Community): not as confident so let's kind of that's so great because so many people that start something you know because they want to do something right and they don't have that
[26:07] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): background yes right yeah lots of us don't have any sort of finance background and we're then being asked to either approve or create these records. So I'm very excited for that I think we've got a good group for that too so I'm excited to yeah but definitely there's still more space so it's and it's a free training so please if you're interested or if any folks in your network are interested please register for that. Are you are you saying that anyone can go to that yeah anyone or yeah any community member who is you know at all adjacent to the sector and wants to learn how to read these statements it's absolutely welcome to go. We're going to have personal interests and think maybe you know you might be in and around those statements at some point and want to have a better sense of what's going on and then we're hosting one in early March our marketing contractor and I are doing that one it's about Canva so it's pretty powerful graphic design free for non-profits platform lots of Nonprofits are using it, but we're going to talk about kind of start from the basics. How do you create your brand kit in Canva to make sure your materials look consistent and professional, and how do you utilize your own created templates in Canva so you know again the consistency across the board? It's really great for your donors, for the people you serve, to kind of have a clear sense of who you are as an organization, and your visual identity is a huge part of that. So we're excited to host that. As well, and both of these, they say they're at the hub, which is true, but if folks are interested in a link to those and having them be hybrid too, we're open to that. We're just kind of trying to see what folks are most interested in, but really to accommodate that. Okay, and this gets me into the actual back here, kind of connection to this group and wanting some certainly feedback and questions and ideas around all of that. So some connections that I was thinking of right off the bat are in fact the. Run of classroom that was really important to us when selecting a location, so we were able to reach that goal through this space. Of course having gathering space both indoor, outdoor, this is a rendering, those will be created sometime in the spring, a nice patio space for staff but also for community members to enjoy and events and their work and collaborations, and of course in general enhancing thing organizational collaboration and the reduced duplication piece is a priority of this group as I. Understand it, an improving environment for non-profit employees which represent a lot of the folks in our community and the folks that they work with. Another thing that's important to us in the creation of this space is that our space and programming are co-created with participants, so a lot of peer learning opportunities will be coming to the hub. I think as much as I love bringing experts to the hub as well. On certain things, in conversations with our partners, I realized that so many of them, of our nonprofit partners, have staff with expertise in multiple areas, and I want to highlight that and bring that out. It's been interesting. This has coincided a little bit with our six-month partner check-ins, so I have a meeting with each of our – we have 32 partners now. Have new numbers this cycle. So I haven't committed to never yet, but they have been talking about the work they're doing. And I've been kind of planting the seed for them to feel perhaps comfortable sharing some of that with a wider audience and an effort to educate, inspire folks across the network. And then of course, the civic participation piece with the volunteer center, particularly focusing on in-person navigation for that. So these are the, my brainstorming of things, ways this kind of committee dovetails with the work we're trying to do, but certainly yeah this is kind of the point where I love thoughts questions feedback ideas.
[30:05] Susan Hawes: So how many employees do you have currently working? We have seven. So yep in our
[30:11] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): organization and then here in Bangladesh. Yep seven here in Bangor. Yep I anyway and then folks that'll rent our building we'll kind of expand our presence in our building but our staff
[30:22] Susan Hawes: is seven. So you said you do the food shelter and heat. How much how much money do you guys will we spend annually for each one of those?
[30:33] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): For heat, I have that off the top of my head because I've just been doing that lately. Usually we, through our heat assistance fund, we're distributing around $20,000, but this year we're able to distribute $108,000 of generous gifts. So very fortunate, especially with the colder temps and the kind of continuation of the
[30:54] Susan Hawes: and that's throughout all of all the counties. Through all the counties. Yep so we're kind
[30:59] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): of distributing out to local organizations whether that be general assistance or in small towns or sometimes it's school sometimes it's faith communities and they're kind of able to then network that out but as far as things like food I mean we have a our biggest event related to food is the National Association Letter Carriers Stamp Out Hunger food drive and that typically I'm trying to think of either dollar amount or pound. It's been a minute since I've done that.
[31:30] Susan Hawes: It was last spring. And that's donated to you. That's donated. But you guys distribute it. We do.
[31:35] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): A lot of our, so a lot of the physical goods, we are taking them in and distributing them out, feels the same way. We're taking in funds and then distributing them out. Our campaign mainly funds our community fund, which is the fund that we then distribute through our grant-making cycle. And that's regular funding to nonprofits throughout our three-year cycle.
[31:58] Susan Hawes: So for every dollar you take in, what's your overhead cost?
[32:03] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): I'm going to have to look up the new percentage, so I will send that.
[32:12] Susan Hawes: So your overhead cost, because there is an operating cost. Absolutely. And then the cost that you donate. Sure. That you donate out.
[32:19] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): And the thing about United Way is often I think that percentage is maybe somewhere around, and I'll get the real number for this year, it's higher than some nonprofits. So it's, I think, around 20-ish more percent. I don't know if you know, Anne. Yeah, I guess they're not. But you've probably seen that percentage too. But we, because we're a fundraising organization, all of our efforts in fundraising and our staff time in fundraising is considered kind of overhead in that way, because we're technically fundraising for other non-profits. So because we're distributing so much money, I think it was 2.3 million over the three years was going to go out to our non-profit partners, that money has to be has to be raised through community campaigns, so that is included in the overhead. But I'll find some of those numbers, so it's good to have those in mind. But also understanding that I watched a great documentary, actually it's called Uncharitable, and it's about non-profit overhead and fundraising and the kind of mindset shifts that can be really useful in that we kind of talk a lot about overhead and think a lot about overhead, but things like marketing and fundraising and awareness building are often deemed overhead, when in reality those are actually expanding the, making your dollar go farther in raising other dollars and expanding impact. So yeah, I'd recommend to watch that documentary, because it kind of shifted my own, it was actually recommended to me by one of our major donors, because it affects how she contributes to organizations in our community and so of course when you're major donors documentary uncharitable uncharted it's based on a ted talk by dan palotta he also wrote a book of this by the same name and it's just kind of a mindset shift in yeah it's really interesting i 've watched it now i think three times i watched it myself i watched it with our staff i watched it with some family members just that yeah it's food for thought in that department but i digress yeah thank you quick question of your would you say 30, how many partners do you have now? Yeah, 32. Yeah, something like that. Yes. What's your potential
[34:45] Wayne Mallar: partnership for all units? How many non-profits are there out there? Oh yeah, they're over a thousand
[34:52] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): nonprofits in Bangor. Is that the number right? Yeah, you check me if I'm getting my number.
[34:57] Unidentified speaker (Director of Community): No, that's right. I don't know the exact number.
[34:59] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): Over a thousand in just Bangor. And then of course across our region even more. I don't have the exact count on that. A lot of non-food serving organizations.
[35:09] Wayne Mallar: I guess the question we have in the Bangor area, we were looking for coordination for the homeless and things like that. So how many partners do you have in the Bangor area that would be doing something like that? Yeah, so we have the
[35:23] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): homeless shelter of course, we have Hope House, we fund Hope House. We wish I had the list of parties in front of me because I could go down through, well actually who they are, but what's the partnership piece? Yes, so lots of folks, many of our partners in Bangor. So what are your 32, half of them from the Bangor area? No, well some of them might be based but serving a wider geography, I'd have to look at the actual stats on that. But lots of them and like I said, we have a kind of a new group of funded partners so kind of getting committing those to memory in the in the way that I do throughout the cycle, but we. We, many are based in Bangor, many are not though, many are based in other parts of our region. We try to fund pretty equitably across our region because there's great need in Washington County, great need in Somerset County, Piscataquis County. Yeah, so our goal is to, we're funding nonprofit partners, we're providing opportunities for networking and collaboration, but we're not, our goal is not to organize around a particular issue solely. So I'm a little confused because I thought that was the
[36:37] Wayne Mallar: presentation that was made to the to the council in funding the amount from opera that you were going to coordinate the non-profits in the area that dealt with the homeless, that dealt with drug addiction. So basically what you're telling me is that's not part of your strategy. That was
[36:57] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): was not part of the original proposal. It was to create a hub which certainly is providing networking opportunities across our non-profit region and also Bang for but not particularly
[37:08] Wayne Mallar: organizing around that. Okay, so then I guess I'm disappointed and I need to know what are you doing for us with the homeless and addiction? Sure, coordination, anything or? Yeah, I mean we so our
[37:25] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): Our goal is to organize any number of non-profit partners. So not particularly, substance use is one of our goals, and we do have partnerships around substance use and do fund nonprofits addressing that. But our original ARPA goal, and I think Matt made a presentation. I don't know if you were there.
[37:42] Wayne Mallar: Yeah, I did. I saw it basically last week.
[37:44] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): Yeah, sure, the similar focus. And that was our original goal.
[37:50] Wayne Mallar: So basically if we asked for what the results were for dealing with addiction or homelessness in the Bangor area you would not have that information
[38:01] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): that was not our specific that's what I just wanted to know the non-profits that are dealing
[38:07] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): with those issues might be part of your hub absolutely but that's not in your ballpark I mean it's yes those figures aren't part of your job they're correct they belong to the non-profits that are working on those yeah i understand what you're saying but the object
[38:28] Wayne Mallar: that we were looking at is that we don't want duplication of effort you can't tell us if there is duplication basically with what you're doing now is that correct we're working to provide
[38:41] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): opportunities for collaboration we i certainly duplication is a constant problem and certainly we don't propose to be the you know lords of the non-profit sector where we can necessarily reduce that based on our own activities but we can provide opportunities for collaboration and partnership we fund these non-profits on a volunteer basis from them you i mean yeah i
[39:09] Unidentified speaker (Director of Community): understand what you're saying basically you have i mean they fund existing non-profits that's their
[39:15] Wayne Mallar: right that's what they do yeah i understand that but that wasn't what was told to the council at one point in time about what the hub was going to be the object was to have a place where we would have the non-profits and we would prevent having overlap of work not having three non-profits doing the same project so there would be cooperation i don't see that i have an example
[39:40] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): many of our partners are working certainly a similar issue, but a good example is we fund three programs that provide shelter. One is the homeless shelter, one is the Hope House, and one is a transitional housing program. And if you don't have all three of those programs, one is a low barrier shelter, one is a shelter that welcomes different clientele, and the other is a transitional housing program for folks kind of trying to transition out of shelter and housing, right? So by funding these three nonprofits, we're not funding duplication, we're funding a couple of different angles addressing the same issue. They're all really important, and I was just talking to Prebble Street, they were, they operate Full House and they said that they could not do the work that they do without the homeless shelter and vice. They meet each other doing their particular type of work, and they're, they collaborate, like if the homeless shelter has additional beds open, folks from Hope Us may come over and vice versa. So they're really, they are working in concert and collaboration. I think there's a lot more collaboration that's happening. Then, you know, folks are giving the nonprofit sector credit for, there's a lot of really good relationships that are built, especially in the Banger area, that are creating some strong community infrastructure. Structure around things like treaty and substance use, preventing homelessness. So do you have a list of the partners, or is it, I do, yeah, it's available on our website, but I can also send the list and
[41:15] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): then the, when you say like you fund the homeless shelters, what persons that, like you don't fund 100 of, no, so what percent, so where do they get funding from, you know, I mean like
[41:30] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): sure, other sources, they get fun for lots of other sources, yes, both private donations, they get state funding as well. So we fund programs, not organizations, so they have to apply under particular program. So for the homeless shelter, I believe, I think we fund either one or two of their programs, and one of them at least is their diversion program. So they have a staff member dedicated to diverting folks away from a situation of homelessness, so that's the program of theirs that we have at hand in funding. We never fund more than 35 of a program's budget because of sustainability. So then the next cycle they reapply and are not funded, then we are not the reason, and our process is volunteer-led. So we get about 80 volunteers, they read the score applications, us as staff don't make the decisions, we ratify them, and so does our board, but they're led by volunteers. So the reason why we don't find more than 45 percent is because we don't want our funding to be the reason that a program entirely Crumbles, especially as so many of them are vital to the folks that are utilizing the programs into our community. Yeah, so you're
[42:43] Susan Hawes: funding, your funding sources, what are they? What's your biggest one? Yeah, we so our biggest
[42:49] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): one's our community campaign, so our campaigns with local businesses and other, yes, so right, private donations. We also receive, you know, large private donations from our leader circle donors. We receive sponsorships from particular initiatives, like a sponsor for a fuel assistant sponsor for a kind of particular, it depends on the donor. Sometimes they want to fund programs from our tier two funding that didn't make it into funding, they want to bring them into funding, so that's we receive funds through those. What percent is that private donations? Oh, I don't know that off the top of my head. I am I am a community impact staff member, I am not a our in our finance department or resource development. It's pretty high, it's pretty high, yes, it's pretty high. And then our because our campaign every year, I think our campaign goal this year was 1.6 million, so that's a good amount of our revenue. And then we this we've We also received funding specifically for our bundle project. And that it's been state and federal funding that is applied to that. But generally speaking, we don't receive those 2 grants. This the federal grant was, I think, 350 375,000 dollars, and then the state grant was 300 ish $1,000, and that was to expand our program to 3 more counties that serves every family with an important
[44:11] Susan Hawes: in those four. Yes, so you're a 401 c3 c4 501 c501, so
[44:21] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): the gathering space indoor and outdoor, how do you who gets to is it do they have to pay to rent it or who is it like can church groups can
[44:32] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): political groups or is it like what's the yes it depends. So as far as I'll answer your second question and then I'll kind of circle back to the first question, because we're a non-religious non-partisan organization, we do ask for the purpose of the gathering being non-partisan, non-religious, and not providing medical services. Those are kind of our three stipulations for the use of the space. But certainly if it were a religious organization that, you know, were hosting a board meeting like a business meeting or something that was not explicitly religious in purpose or explicitly, you know, certainly partisan is something that we both hold pretty carefully, because United Way is a nonpartisan organization. And then for the revenue generation piece, we have a couple of different tiers. So we have the cost if it's just, say it's a corporation and they want to rent it for their staff party or something, we have a rate for that. We have a significantly discounted nonprofit rate, then a significantly discounted below that rate for nonprofits with less than 10 employees or smaller nonprofits. And then another thing that will it comes up with conversation sometimes is if an event happens to be open to the general nonprofit community or the public, in which case, if it's a mission alignment for us, we'll actually partner on the event and then write that space for free to the organization.
[45:54] Susan Hawes: Yeah. So you mentioned that 17.8% are employed by nonprofits. Is that Bangor or is that county
[46:01] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): region? Yeah. And how many employees is that total? Oh, does it say I think it might be
[46:07] Susan Hawes: that. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. 27,000 jobs.
[46:23] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): So can you do that math in your head? 17.8% of 27,000
[46:30] Susan Hawes: and 759. So that well that's the percentage yeah 27,000. So that's that's the number of
[46:37] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): jobs that's the 17 that's some of our jobs that yeah and the payroll is one what's oh that's the
[46:45] Susan Hawes: 17 percent yes that number 27,000. So what is your payroll like month or annual is that one point
[46:54] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): no okay our no this is general in the region this is not us you know what the payroll is pretty out of way payroll for all you know 17.8 percent oh but I think that's the 1.4 billion [Susan Hawes: that's annually can] we get the telephone yeah okay absolutely yeah I can follow up with some of the map data around the economic impact is very fascinating and the map does a really good job bullying that every single year it's kind of like but how do you know
[47:31] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): who's providing what out of all the like what's the difference between Penguins providing heating assistance and United Way providing like how do you
[47:40] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): how do you not overlap I don't know how to yeah I know I know exactly what you mean yeah and we're going through this process right now so we don't directly provide so if you get the people that need heating assistance and you've got the organization's right we are up here we're not providing the heating people we're providing it to the organization so Panquist does receive say each example of project heat which is the new center main telethon that happened in January that money gets Distributed out to United Ways in Maine, all of the different United Ways, and then to all the community action programs in the state. So the United Ways, what they'll do with the money is they will solicit applications for that money from local organizations, municipalities, for supplemental general assistance, faith communities, other non-profits, non-profits serving people in other ways, but they also have clients who have needs of feeding assistance, and it should read out that way to them. The cap agencies will use it to support their fuel assistance program. So they administer LIHEAP, and they'll also use it to supplement LIHEAP or to provide funding to folks who don't qualify under LIHEAP. They maybe make a little too much, and then they'll use it for emergencies and crisis situations for them. So no duplication in that. Like it's just basically like, how do we, how do we make sure that anyone who is in need of this assistance distance is able to access it in the way that works across our region. Another question, I so how
[49:14] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): much space is rented out right now, or you know, on your building? Yeah, we have 13 office spaces
[49:21] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): available for rent. Actually, it's more like 12, because we're using one for some interns, and then four of those offices are rented right now. We haven't advertised it yet. It's just only been informal conversations, because we're kind of waiting until we were settled in the space and had a good handle on kind of our own operation there, because we went from renting the space to now owning the space and wanted to get a good handle and just do kind of one tenant at a time to get a sense of anything that we missed as far as our in our documentation or our
[49:55] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): structure. You I know, like there's been a lot of publicity about what happened in Lewiston. Like Gateway Services, is there any way you can make sure that someone that rents isn't like a home health agency that actually is not really providing? Oh yes, we're very, you know, yeah, we're
[50:11] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): very, we're careful in the same way that we're pretty used to being careful with our funded partners. So we're kind of taking some of the same measures we do with them with our tenants, in that we, you know, want to make sure they're financially sold them too and all of that. I mean, you certainly can't prevent something from happening kind of after the fact or, but we do our due diligence in vetting any sort of partner, and that includes tenants just
[50:42] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): A general question and probably comment after that, how long has the United Way in general been around, not just here in Maine?
[50:49] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): But oh, in general, yeah, so our United Way since 1937, the United Way in general, oh yeah, we're we're
[50:56] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): Yeah, coming up on our country, sorry to interrupt, but I just remember as a child riding the subways and always seeing a little signage about the United Way, always thinking all the wonderful things that the organization does, so it's been around since the 1930s, yes, it's I think honestly
[51:13] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): So I think that the story of how you anyway started was is interesting one, it kind of sounds like a beginning of a bad joke, but it was a rabbi, a clergy member, and then a woman, she's they all started this together, so I kind of I enjoy making that in that sometimes, but they started this as a way to and also United Way to Bangor started a similar way of like community chest, so you know how do you and anyway in general started, I think it was basically pennies off the paychecks of labor union Workers and have a way for them to contribute that kind of the cool part about anyways, it makes philanthropy really accessible and to lots of different people, so a lot of our donors get a couple of dollars from their paycheck and that's how they contribute to campaign, they're just as much a part of campaign than any other major donor, yeah, thank you, did you have the date October 16, 1887 in Denver, Colorado, yes, but yeah, was it a priest, a rabbi, and a
[52:19] Unidentified speaker (Director of Community): She's a school teacher or something, yeah, exactly, a priest, two ministers, and a rabbi, yeah, that's
[52:27] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): Great, yeah, how many counties is it that the heart of the name United We Serve, six counties, did you get, I know you got some funding from Panama County, did you get funding from those other
[52:43] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): Other counties? No, we didn't receive it because our project was going to be based in Bangor. And certainly they could have, but we only got funding from that county.
[52:55] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): And you're in Bangor because why? Why is that? Because? Because it's a hub, right? Because the population
[53:05] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): We also started in Bangor. And it makes sense for us to be here. A lot of our partners are here and but we certainly do a fair amount of travel across our
[53:15] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): Region, so the other counties didn't contribute anything really, so no, that's correct, yeah, they
[53:21] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): Receive, they don't contribute, right, then they do contribute lots, we have folks in other counties who contribute through campaigns, so it seems unfair for Provost County, I mean, seems unfair
[53:33] Susan Hawes: For our county that we contribute the most and the others contribute nothing seems a little unfair.
[53:39] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): There? Sure. I think you could think of it that way. I think a possible way to think about it is that we are because we serve such a rural region. Just the resources aren't there. And that just because you know, someone is a single mom in Washington County doesn't mean that we want to kind of forget about their needs. It's still made right. It's still like, it's certainly we want to take care of our community and our immediate community which is really important but also taking care of our state is important and some of these communities are really rural and you have donation campaigns in those all across yeah all across the six counties yeah actually one of our major donors are contributing to the
[54:22] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): hub she lives in Waldo County do they have so the people that work at the hub here in Bangor do they travel or do they have do they have any kind of satellite office or no satellite office oh well
[54:34] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): the folks who are tenants they are based in different parts of the state and have offices and staff as far as us our seven folks we do a fair amount of travel I mean our some of our programs are in these counties when we are you know operating them we make sure that we connect with our partners in other counties it's important I think because we serve a pretty wide geography we really prioritize serving our rural regions to it just as much you know certainly Bangor we're here we do a lot in Bangor but we also have partnerships and really strong relationships across our region so the list of partners is online yes it is on our website so if you go to what we do and then I think it's like who we fund or something and that's you can see the partners and the programs and which counties they serve sometimes they serve multiple counties I
[55:37] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): do think it is confusing though over there's so many non-profits and how do they sure I don't seem to know what you know what I mean if they're not
[55:44] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): receiving services or you know yeah some type of coordination absolutely and duplication is an issue I think it's certainly something that we have on our minds in the way that we organize opportunities to come together so you know around particular issues we try to organize among our partners they love the chance to have partner convenings we host a breakfast for all of our new partners they can kind of get to know each other we do and I know I personally do a fair amount of like connect you With you like the other day, I are we're funding a coalition called the Waldo Alliance for Mentorship that is serving youth in Waldo County, and they are trying to look for training opportunities for their mentors. And they 're another one of our programs is through the Pen Bay Y, and they have funding from us available for training education around harm reduction and substance disorder. And I connected those two last week because then she can provide training for that you know coalition, so lots Of many all the time. We're making these connecting these dots. We can't do everything, we can't you know reduce all the duplication and connect all the dots, but we can do as much as we can within our networks.
[57:04] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): Yeah, because that's something I wonder too is how much is being done for to prevent substance
[57:10] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): Sense of use. Yes, that's a lot of our yeah, that's a lot of our funding. Thank you Wayne, it's good to see you. Yeah, I have another meeting at 12. Yeah, no worries, thank you, take care. Yeah, we a lot of our programs are prevention harm reduction education. No, in schools or lots of different places. The one Pen Bay one is in schools and just general community-wide education. [Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): Anything in Bangalore.] I'm sure there is, I can't say on the top of my head.
[57:54] Susan Hawes: One point of clarification, so 27,159 jobs, is that just for the 32 nonprofits that you guys oversee? Because you're like- Oh, no,, no. This is-
[58:05] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): That covers them all. Correct. All the nonprofits. Yeah,. Perfect. Yeah. That's just me, the association of nonprofits. Yeah, that's- It's all of it. Yeah,.
[58:18] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): Great, yeah. I just want to thank you for this presentation, and I did watch Matt's presentation the other night as well, and I really appreciate all the questions that you all have because this is a learn. Yeah, I mean, I like I said, I had a real always had a wonderful warm spot for the thought of United Way because it always helped people leave, but I never got into the details of knowing and you're doing in your presentation, your answers are relevant and they may you know that you're able to in most cases and you're able to get the information you know that might be needed in the future to answer you know other questions that maybe you weren't so as a resident of bangor i just want to say i'm very thankful for the united way i mean i'm not using any of the services but i may you never know and i certainly appreciate the fact that as a resident that some of the opera money went to you because i 'm looking at and hearing the results and we couldn't ask for a better way to use money that's helping so many people in so many different ways overseeing things. So thank you so much. Thank you, Matt, and thank you United West. Yay. Thank you very
[59:31] Unidentified speaker (Director of Community): much. Thank you. Yeah, all right, well, thank you. Yes, yeah, thanks for coming, and yeah, it was great to
[59:38] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): connect with this group. Any time any questions folks have, we're really, yeah, open dialogue about this is great, and I'll send some follow-ups around some of those to Ann, and she
[59:47] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): can, and if you think of any way that members of this committee could be useful, yeah, in either spreading the word about what you're doing or volunteering to do something for you,
[1:00:05] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): let us know. Absolutely, thank you for that. It's absolutely, I certainly take you up on that. I think something we're looking at right now and something I'm just, I was kind of in building mode and now I'm switching pretty much entirely, aside from obviously managing the building's existence, to programming. So I'm really a sponge lately for any ideas about programming and things. Like I basically took feedback from our partners and directly I'm like going down through the list and scheduling out trainings to address each specific thing. So you know, grant writing for small non-profits and volunteers, like de-escalation, like supervision training for new supervisors, like all these things that we've gained as feedback. So any ideas or ways that this committee can be of use and either providing training or kind of connecting us with folks who can provide training, if you know, think of, kind of think of folks in the community, in the nonprofit sector or adjacent, or in the corporate sector who have expertise in certain areas and
[1:01:06] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): Send them along my way because I want to, you know, I'm such a, I'm, I'm so uneducated in the structure of, you know, who's a non-profit and who's a corporate entity. The first thing I would really look forward to seeing is the list of your partners that you're going to send. Sure, yeah, absolutely, because I don't know, you know, when I think of something like the Bangor Public Library, I don't, I have no idea what their business structure is, right? And it's a really interesting
[1:01:42] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): Point too, actually, was having a conversation with one of our partners who said he actually thinks that having a just a non-profit one-on-one training would be really useful, like how do they work, how are they funded, what kind of staffing do they need, and who are they, who are they in our community, right? Exactly, like let's meet some of them and talk with them and have connections so if we have questions or want to give back or anything like that, we know who to go to. I think we take, we assume that Everyone has that information and I think it's an incorrect assumption.
[1:02:12] Susan Hawes: So yeah, that's good, it's a really good point. I want to say one more thing, more thanks, but it's interesting feedback. We're almost 33,000 people, look at the amount of people which will show up five months, yeah, count you six, do the math on that, it's like point zero.
[1:02:37] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): And even if you said 33 of what percent of those 33,000 people would be considered seniors, which this committee supposedly is, or primarily, way over 50 percent, probably 65, so we're five out of, oh my god, 20,000 or 15,000. There used to be a, they used to be a large crowd That, you know, sometimes it'd be 20 to 50 people around, still lots of small numbers, that is still a small number, but once they opened up the, gosh, I used to get the name of the, center And Brewer, the senior center, you know what's the name of it, during the center, once that was Is developed, that's the majority what people wanted, yeah, so yeah, we lost, and I think, and are they most of these people still on the mailing list? Yeah, they are getting what we all get, so but you're right, I think that's this in general, there's always not just this group but a lot of
[1:03:42] Unidentified speaker (Director of Community): They complain but they don't show up, right? Yeah, I know, and my goal for this committee is to give people a way to come in and be able to find out what's going on, right, you know, without having to run for council or get on a regulatory, right, like it can still be lower your way, yeah, figure
[1:04:03] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): out what's going on and be able to ask questions. Yeah, so the key, a lot of organizations are stuck
[1:04:08] Susan Hawes: with this is, how do you advertise to get people to come to your group? And that's something we struggle with. I know you guys are starting a little bit, because it shows by the number of people that are actually here, which is, it's not a good representation of Angela. It's like
[1:04:26] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): they don't care. Yeah, it's hard. Well, you know, people are, I think a lot of people have no idea we exist. A lot of people have no idea, right? Yeah, that we exist. They don't even know that we're supposed to be a livable community. What does that mean? What is that? We're trying, right? I
[1:04:46] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): know it's hard. Lots of folks organizing around really important things, and kind of elevating all those together, I think is, you know, like a good, a good way to approach, right? And thank you.
[1:04:59] Unidentified speaker (Public Commenter): Yeah, thank you, man. As always, focus, trying, getting our focus kind of narrowed down to inviting people I've heard to come. Yeah, we'll be talking to us about what you're doing so that we
[1:05:12] Unidentified speaker (Director of Community): can feel more connected to the well, and let me know if there's somebody you want me to get to come in and speak. Like, I want to know how this went, right? You know, just for these meetings. Yeah,
[1:05:24] Unidentified speaker (United Way Representative): you know, yeah, great, yeah. We were just having a fusion meeting, and they were talking about economic development, and like the work you do, and someone's like, what is that like? And someone, I had some background info, and some had coffee with a member of your team, and she's able to then share like, oh, actually these are the different elements of that type of work. So yeah, even things like economic development, like knowing what is that work. Yeah, what does that mean? Yeah, it was super useful. Thank you all. Thank you very much, everyone. Yes.