MINOT — Charities vary in many ways, some specializing in helping specific situations, while others, such as the Souris Valley United Way, specialize in backing up other non-profit organizations.
“United Way got its original start in Denver Colorado,” said Executive Director of the Souris Valley United Way Rich Berg. “There was a group that got together – it almost sounds like at old joke – there was a lady, a couple of pastors, a Jewish rabbi, and a Catholic priest that got together, and they decided that they needed to do something in the community. So what they did is raised about $27,000. That $27,000 is equal to about 600,000 some dollars in today’s world. Their goal was to help other non-profits make it. And that’s pretty much today what we still do, though we still do some programming.”
Minot’s United Way has two programs.
“One is Backpack Buddies. That’s weekend food for kids who might otherwise go hungry,” Berg explained. “And then we have the Dolly Parton Imagination Library that provides free books, once a month for children between birth and 5 years old. It's kind of a preschool jump start for reading, and then at the same time it allows families to spend some time together reading to and with the child. The program encourages them to read up to a thousand hours for kindergarten. We work with the Dolly Parton Foundation and they send books directly to the kids’ homes. A lot of kids that get into the program actually start reading before they get to kindergarten, which is a huge asset.”
Natalia Heck, director of the Dolly Parton Imagination Program, said that program covers five counties in the area. “It’s very fulfilling [to work with it],” she said.
“With Backpack Buddies, it almost funds itself. People are so excited about helping hungry children,” said Berg. He explained how Market Place does a summer food campaign for the Backpack Buddies program, where it raised $81,000 last year.
“The program itself costs $130,000, so the community funds the rest,” said Berg. “We got to be careful not to overdo it, because that’s one of our programs, and our goal is to help everybody. So we try to balance that out, but it never seems to be an issue with people giving money to support kids in hunger. We pack every Wednesday, and the food goes out on Thursdays. It’s meant to be a hand up. If we can teach people how to break that cycle and be self-sufficient.”
The Souris Valley United Way worked with around 20 programs from other charities last year, according to Berg, which included Community Action Partnership, Project BEE, Meals on Wheels, Men’s Winter Refuge, the Minot Area Homeless Coalition, and more.
“We’re not out there to duplicate and do what everybody else is doing. Our three premises that we work under are health, education, and financial stability,” Berg described. “Our grant round is open right now, and people are allowed to apply for funding from us. So this year we’re going to have just shy of $300,000 to give away in grants.”
Berg explained the process of giving to other non-profits, “What we do is we bring in a group of citizens together that have nothing to do with United Way other than they have probably donated or know of us, and they’re gonna sit down and interview the programs that come in, and then make a suggestion to our board of who should be funded, who shouldn’t be funded, how much they should be funded. And that process will take three days. Then the board of directors makes the final cut. And we vet those agencies. Those agencies have to report to us four times during that funding year.”
The reporting includes how the agencies used the money that was given for the year, as well as give a success story.
Berg said it is common for there to be more requests for money than money, “We don’t want programs to become dependent on us. We want to be out there selling their story and raising money, in hopes that people will also become enamored with them by volunteering or giving them some of their skills or expertise or cash. So United Way really means we’re united together, we can take care of these things.”
“Inclusion and equity or a big deal,” Berg continued. “We’ve always stood for everybody but we’re really taking a hard stance on everybody. Whether male or female, if you’re a U.S. citizen or not a U.S. citizen but you’re living here, you know, all should have access to the same things. With the world today, you know everything gets politized and real polarized. Our underserved groups are probably our Native American population and the elderly.”
Berg addressed the issue of whether poverty is a well-known issue or not in Minot, “A lot of people say we don’t have homeless people around here. Until you realize a lot of our homeless are teenagers who are couch surfing. They’re unseen. You don’t see them sleeping in the parks, but you do see the results of that. The kids are out of school, they’re involved in work so they can’t go to school, or they’re breaking the law to survive. And there’s adults in the same boat.”
Berg responded to the question of if it is better to donate to United Way, thus giving money to other non-profit organizations indirectly, or simply giving money to those organizations directly.
“Either one works,” Berg replied. “I’m excited if people give or volunteer. If someone gives directly to a program, and they feel good about that, that’s great. Where we’re a little different, they can give money to us and then a group of citizens get together and then when the board finalizes that, we release that money, and then it stays local. There’s no chance of it, a lot of times people say, ‘Well if I give my money to the American Red Cross, where’s it gonna go?’ So what we do is we make very sure that we give to the local Red Cross, and that it’s used locally.”
“They say when you buy a house or pay a rent, it should be no more than 30% of your income. We have families that are paying 60% or 70% percent, just for rent. So what does that leave for everyone else?” Berg asked. “We’re seeing people come to us, it’s their first time. The pandemic threw them out of work, their boss said I don’t have enough work for you. But there are a lot of programs stepping up.”
Berg said that while there are a lot people who may not have the money to donate, they have the time.
“Money is king,” said Berg. “You can do a lot more flexible things with money, but at the same time you can’t replace that physical body that’s there doing the job. We’re getting a lot smarter as non-profits about that and we’re saying, ‘You know we shouldn’t apologize for paying our employees. They’re doing just as hard of work.'”
Berg continued, “If people think of non-profits as, if the non-profit goes away, who’s going to do the job? Because again it is those things that most people don’t want to touch. Mac [McLeod, Minot Area Homeless Coalition] has always said, of the big four cities of North Dakota, Minot being the fourth biggest, we have never lost anybody to freezing to death, and we don’t want to. Other communities have.”
Berg explained what non-profit means, “Non-profit is not a budgeting analysis. It’s a tax status. It doesn’t mean we don’t want money left at the end of the year. It just means we function under different rules. We don’t have stock bonds where people can buy a company and own parts of it, and we give them part of the profits. It just means we don’t have money to share with other citizens if they buy into us. Non-profits are kind of learning that the hard way. We’re playing with people’s money as a non-profit. They’re trusting us to do the right thing.”
Christy Miller, director of the Outreach Program for United Way, said, “In my job position I get to deal with volunteers, and I also get to work with the non-profits that we work with, so I get the best of both worlds.”
