The United Way on a national, regional and local level have been working together to further refine and focus our community impact work on three key areas that are the basic building blocks of a good life: Education, Income and Health. UWEWH is currently in the planning stages of designing collaboratives in each area that will meet the specific needs of the communities we serve. This is not simply funding programs or agencies, but rather developing innovative strategies, re-thinking partnerships and leveraging new resources in an effort to position UWEWH as a leader rather than conduit for funds. As such, we are transitioning from our focus on assessing program success to one that will achieve measurable community outcomes. Our ultimate goal is to solve community problems, not just manage them. We also endeavor to exemplify good business practice.

The benefits of United Way's new focus on community outcomes include a stronger alignment of our mission, board, staff, community stakeholders and resources around achieving specific community outcomes. This alignment will allow us to identify impact strategies and to redirect our resources to achieve measurable results. Our new work will involve not only professionals in education, income and health, but also current United Way volunteers and other community stakeholders that will help to identify and implement priority areas. This approach will guarantee enhanced engagement that will aid us in our efforts to develop community-oriented collaborations.

Program outcomes are measures used to evaluate the effectiveness of specific programs; where as community outcomes are measures used to assess change, over time, within a particular service area and/or amongst a specific population within a community. By focusing on community outcomes, UWEWH is committed to ensuring that we utilize our resources to produce positive and long-lasting change in our service area. As a result, we are committed to remaining accountable to our donors by assessing UWEWH's impact within our community.

All programs receiving expanded funding during the July-December 2009 period will be required to complete a modified program report. This report will seek to gather data that more succinctly captures community outcomes as opposed to program outcomes. UWEWH is currently working with the regional United Way office to modify its reporting protocols.

UWEWH, in partnership with the national United Way system, seeks to invest its resources on innovative and best-practice oriented collaboratives that will enable UWEWH to more efficiently and effectively achieve community outcomes, measure its impact on community change, as well as bring more resources to bear on community problems within the next ten years. As a national system, we aim to develop collaboratives that will:

• Education: Increase the number of children entering school on track with literacy, social, emotional and intellectual skills; boost the number of fourth-graders reading at grade level; and help more young adults transition from school to work, whether that's college, training or a job
• Income: Cut in half the number of lower-income families who are financially unstable. If we're successful, by 2018 1.9 million working families will be on the road to economic independence.
• Health: Increase by one-third the number of youth and adults who are healthy and avoid risky behaviors.

In addition to the data collected from our Community Needs Assessment as well as secondary data collected from the State of NJ and other sources, UWEWH is convening a series of focus groups in the areas of education, income and health. Comprised of varied community stakeholders, the focus groups will provide additional input into identifying core community problems in each of the three areas. The focus groups will set forth recommendations that will be presented to UWEWH's Resource Investment Committee, which in turn will make a final recommendation to UWEWH's Board of Trustees regarding the specific projects United Way will undertake in each of the focus areas. These recommendations will form the basis for developing collaboratives to address education, income and health in our service area.

UWEWH realizes that while some critical services will be covered under the areas of Health, Education and Income, there may be other needed "safety net" services that will qualify under our new funding focus. We are currently in the process of identifying those programs and developing an efficient means to ensure support our community's safety net.

Some of our organizations may fit as part of the ongoing strategies developed around our new focus on education, income and health. The UWEWH Board has also decided to continue funding for current funded programs through the end of 2009, allowing the agencies a full year to research and apply for funding from other sources.

The Center for Excellence will play a key role both in supporting our currently funded agencies through the end of 2009 as well as engaging in capacity building and other best-practice training for the newly-created collaboratives. Courses such as grant writing, collaborative development, IT, financials, marketing and outcomes measurement are among the anticipated offerings that will benefit our current grantees as well as the collaborative members.