THUNDER BAY -- The United Way of Thunder Bay is shifting gears.
After 60 years of raising money to allocated to funded agencies throughout the city and surrounding area, chief executive officer Albert Brulé on Thursday said the organization is turning its focus to larger ticket, impact projects, such as helping to end homelessness in Thunder Bay.
However, the United Way will still help local agencies raise money and find alternative sources of revenue to ensure they don’t fall through the cracks.
“In keeping with the theme of today’s breakfast, which is better is possible, the United Way of Thunder Bay is going to be working in collaboration with other funders, our community partners, the business sector and the government sector, to identify one or more very significant initiatives or projects to address some of our community’s most pressing challenges,” Brulé said.
“Whether it’s homelessness, it could be youth mental health, food insecurity, we’re going to identify those projects, in collaboration with our community partners, and we are going to single-mindedly make it happen.”
In past years, the United Way of Thunder Bay’s campaign breakfast would come with a fundraising goal, usually in the neighbourhood of $2.5 million. The organization stopped publicly announcing annual targets a few years ago, but Brulé said they will be announcing a goal in the coming months.
“We will be announcing, but because we’re in the process of consulting with our stakeholders, consulting our partners and identifying which of those major initiatives we’re going to launch in the new year, at that time we’ll know what the resources are required and we’ll make an announcement,” Brulé said.
Previously funded agencies won’t be left high and dry, he reiterated.
Brulé said he wants these organizations to be part of the solution to the bigger issues being tackled by the United Way of Thunder Bay.
“We want them to be a part of these community-wide collaboratives and to ensure their programs and their services are being delivered effectively, efficiently, and perhaps in coordination. We don’t want to leave any organization out in the cold, if you will, and we will be providing other forms of support – some capacity-building support, some specific fundraisers that might support one or more of their programs that we will assist with,” Brulé said.
“But our major focus for the campaign is to build up that community chest of significant funding so that we can really move the needle on poverty.”
Brulé said it’s been a tough go fundraising over the past half-decade or more, adding it also hasn’t been easy lining up as many volunteers as was previously the case.
“All of our partners have expressed how difficult it is, which is why we believe it makes sense for us to be focus on capacity building. Perhaps there are other ways we can collaborate and together we can create forms of partnerships, where we combine our resources to achieve certain goals, certain projects more effectively,” Brulé said.
“But we are optimistic that this inspirational challenge, the challenge to our communities to step up, to get behind these major initiatives, to partner with other organizations, other funders like the Thunder Bay Community Foundation or the City of Thunder Bay, we actually have been getting very favourable encouragement and interest from our partners to say, yes, let’s use our funds in a collective way.”
To kick-start the fundraising side of the campaign, Tbaytel will match donations, up to $10,000, through Oct. 6.
More information can be found at www.uwaytbay.ca.
