The United Way of America (UWA), the national leadership organization for the United Way movement, provides training, research and other support services for over 1,350 local United Ways. These widely dispersed organizations are independent, separately incorporated and governed by local volunteers. United Ways across the nation leverage over $4 billion in resources and have mobilized more than a million volunteers, most notably for Hurricane Katrina.

Competition is fierce in the US nonprofit sector, where nearly 800,000 charitable organizations vie for dollars. To distinguish itself in this crowded field, UWA shifted its focus from fundraising to shaping communities and improving people’s lives. The strategy positions United Way as a leading community impact organization and not just a “pass through” for a wide range of nonprofits. 

Fig Leaf Software worked closely with the United Way of America to research and select Adobe Connect, a scalable, online conferencing tool to communicate its new business model to its diverse audiences.  Building upon the successful relationship serving the United Way and its affiliates for many years, Fig Leaf was selected to implement a new content management system for the United Way.

Based on a cost-benefit analysis and feature comparison of products from 10 software vendors, United Way chose Adobe Connect as an online communication tool. “Revising United Way’s traditional business model after so many years required a lot of dialogue, thought
leadership and best practice sharing,” says Jonathan Beekman, technology project manager in the Center for Community Leadership at United Way of America.

Adobe Connect facilitates ongoing communication with over 1,350 local United Ways and gives UWA a dedicated communication channel for cost-effective, media-rich online meetings that are more dynamic and interactive than a basic conference call. It also helps United Way attract high-end donors, manage partnerships, train and educate staff and steer the public to appropriate community resources.

For new United Way users, Adobe Connect integration with Adobe Flash®, Microsoft® PowerPoint® and Microsoft Outlook® shortens the learning curve. The Presenter module saves further preparation and training time by allowing users to add audio narrations to PowerPoint slide presentations and deliver them over the Web as Flash files. Since most computers connected to the Internet already have the Flash Player installed, people do not have to download a proprietary plugin to participate in an event.

Adobe Connect 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 Connect, UWA opted for a modular tool with Voice over IP (VoIP) to save teleconferencing costs, an instant audience survey and polling feature to keep attendees engaged, and a customized interface feature for branding online presentations with United Way logos and colors. The Connect environment also supports live video from participant locations, chat, screen sharing and automatic archiving of project resources.

With respect to the chosen content management system (CMS), Fig Leaf Software recommended CommonSpot, an easy to use, scalable CMS from PaperThin, Inc.  United Way of America's talented design team delivered designs for the new LiveUnited branded site and Fig Leaf programmed the new site using Adobe ColdFusion and the CommonSpot Content Server. 

An ongoing challenge for the United Way system is to keep its volunteers engaged and informed. Many of them are time-strapped executives from the for-profit world (FedEx, UPS, Deloitte, for example) who sit on United Way boards across the country.

Fig Leaf's solution for the United Way of America, based on the Adobe platform, ensures that non-technical staff can quickly and easily update Website content.  This is especially important as the United Way performs critical community services in the wake of human and natural disasters (such as in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ike, etc.).

The CommonSpot CMS also allows users to easily upload rich media files, quickly create online forms using the forms wizard (for volunteer sign-up, advocacy, donations, etc.), and integrate with back-end advocacy and donation tools. 

The United way presents two or three real-time webinars a week using Adobe Connect.  These webindars are recorded and easily archived for on-demand access so that the United Way can keep busy people in the loop.

The Adobe Connect archiving capability allows United Way to extend its reach beyond real-time meetings. “United Way receives almost twice as many hits for the recorded versions as they do for the live meetings. It’s a time and cost efficient way to triple the reach of a particular piece of content, share research and facilitate the exchange of ideas,” says Beekman.