Our Work

Community Impact
 
Orange County United Way developed our Community Impact Fund to address the county’s most critical needs with a goal of maximum impact—improved lives and a stronger community. We believe that Education, Income, and Health are the Building Blocks for a good life. However, they are presently out of reach for far too many of our neighbors:

• More than 300,000 people in OUR community are living below poverty—that's more than 10% of OUR neighbors, coworkers, and friends.*
• Orange County’s 2011 dropout rate was 9.3%, with an additional 4.5% of students failing to graduate on time with their peers.**
• An estimated 400,000 people are at risk of hunger during the year in OUR community.***

People and nonprofits turn to Orange County United Way for efficient, large-scale solutions to problems like these. There are no quick fixes—but every day, Orange County United Way sets in motion a chain reaction of strategies that produce far-reaching results.

How We Work

• We convene and work side-by-side with individuals, nonprofits, government, businesses, and faith-based and other community partners.
• We create and fund initiatives, by mobilizing thousands of donor donations, to improve the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of individuals and families each year.
• We provide our partner agencies a host of quality capacity-building training and other forums to share best-practice approaches and models, which allows ongoing learning on how to provide services efficiently and effectively.
• We work with policy makers and advocate on important issues concerning education, income, and health.
• We are accountable for our efforts. We continually evaluate programs and public policies for effectiveness. We also submit to an annual independent audit to ensure continued financial responsibility and accountability to inspire trust and confidence in all our stakeholders.
   

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*Source: 2010 U.S. Census Bureau; **Source: 18th Annual Conditions of Children Report; ***Source: 2009 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS)