United Way of America (UWA), the national leadership organization for the United Way movement headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, provides training, research, and other support services for over 1,300 local United Ways across the country—collectively forming the nation’s largest private charity. These widely dispersed organizations are independent, separately incorporated, and governed by local volunteers. Every year, United Ways leverage $4 billion in resources to mobilize more than a million volunteers in communities across the nation.

Competition is fierce in the United States non-profit sector, where nearly a million different charitable organizations vie for dollars. To distinguish itself in this highly competitive arena, UWA shifted its focus from fundraising to shaping communities and improving people’s lives—positioning United Way as a leading community impact organization and not just a “pass through” for a wide range of nonprofits. To succeed, UWA needed a scalable, online conferencing tool to communicate its new business model across its broad, decentralized organization.

Fig Leaf Software worked closely with the United Way of America during the evaluation process where they did a cost-benefit analysis and feature comparison of products from 10 software vendors.  United Way of America chose Adobe Connect as its primary online meeting and communication tool. “Revising United Way’s traditional business model after so many years required a lot of dialogue, leadership, and best-practice sharing,” says Michael Schreiber.

Adobe Connect facilitates ongoing dialogue with over 1,300 local United Ways through easy-to-use web meeting and reporting tools. UWA now has a dedicated communication channel for cost-effective, media-rich online meetings that are more dynamic and interactive than basic conference calls.

With Adobe Connect, the United Way can convey its revamped business model through customized web conferences aimed at specific audiences—from staff members to donors to board members to partner agencies. Participants can join up and collaborate instantly through easy-to-use and easy-to-access online meeting rooms.

By offering high-impact, multimedia content in its web meetings, United Way manages partnerships, trains and educates staff, and helps the public access vital community resources. Adobe Connect provides full support for animation, streaming video, Adobe Flash¨ Player movies and audio, and high-resolution graphics.

The scalability of Connect translates into substantial savings in cost and travel time and gives United Way the ability to hold its meetings—from a small, administrative get-together to a large public conference—online at any time.

For new users, Adobe Connect integration with Adobe Flash, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Outlook shortens the learning curve for United Way staff, volunteers, and the public. Meetings can be scheduled and joined from within an Outlook calendar. The integrated Adobe Presenter authoring tool saves further preparation and training time by allowing users to add audio narrations to PowerPoint presentations and deliver them over the web as Flash files. Since Adobe Flash Player is installed on nearly 98% of Internet-connected desktops, users do not have to download a proprietary plug-in or install additional software to participate in events.

The Adobe Connect Events feature is used to send automated reminders, accept pre-registrations, and obtain demographic information from the audience prior to registration. What was previously a manual process for UWA staff is now fully automated.

In choosing Adobe Connect, UWA opted for a modular tool with Voice over IP (VoIP) that results in huge teleconferencing cost savings. Interactive features such as instant audience survey and session polling keep attendees engaged. Session experts can conduct chat-based Q&A sessions, with complete control over question queue, visibility, and question delegation. Presenters can easily track real-time responses to polls, and download data for reporting and analysis after the meetings. Conference leaders and instructors can use registration feedback and meeting surveys to tweak content in future sessions.

The robust environment of Adobe Connect supports live video from participant locations, chat, screen sharing, and automatic archiving of project materials. Documents can be accessed instantly, without cumbersome software downloads. Consistency is maintained with a cust-omizable interface that ensures all online events are branded with United Way logos and colors.

An ongoing challenge for the United Way system is to keep its staff and volunteers engaged and informed. Many of these volunteers are time-strapped executives from the for-profit world who sit on United Way boards across the country. By presenting two or three real-time webinars a week and archiving them for 24-hour on-demand access, United Way keeps busy people in the loop.

The Adobe Connect archiving capability allows United Way to further extend its reach beyond real-time meetings. “United Way receives almost three times as many requests for the recorded versions as they do for the live meetings,” says Schreiber. “It’s a time-and cost-efficient way to maximize the reach of a particular piece of content, share research, and facilitate the exchange of ideas.” At United Way, any savings in costs means resources are better allocated to where they’re needed most—supporting the organization’s mission to improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities.

Adobe Connect has given the United Way of America great benefits:

• Improved system-wide communication
• Ensured that the organization’s key messages were conveyed to specific groups of staff members, volunteers, and donors
• Helped facilitate United Way’s transformation in the way it addresses community needs
• Allowed real-time collaboration online for geographically-dispersed work teams
• Reduced cost of travel and meeting time
• Automated demographic data collection