Last week, almost 500 companies and their leaders proved just how alive philanthropy is in Greater Austin at our 2014 Employee Campaign Awards. Our Employee Campaign Leader of the Year, Laura Seaton, said it best when describing how it feels to give back: “It is an almost indescribable feeling: it is not pride, it is not joy, it is not accomplishment. It is a warm knowing that despite your own life trials and dramas, and we all have them, you have given something of yourself that truly has helped another human being feel a little whole again and a little less lost.” Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy: H-E-B, 3M and Enterprise This award is given to UWATX’s top three campaigns, companies who make important investments with a commitment to making Austin Greater and where employees also give of their time, talent and treasure. Each of these companies implement UWATX’s best practices and do so in a way that represents “excellence” in all categories. They represent the heart of philanthropy in Greater Austin and we are so honored to work with them everyday to life up the working poor and ensure that every one in our community has the chance to thrive. Best Practices: HEB This award recognizes the company that implements UWATX’s best practices, which in clued Senior Officer involvement, access to employees and use of UWATX campaign materials among several others. HEB and its partners not only implement best practices into their campaign but they do it consistently and enthusiastically. […]
Read MoreKerbey Lane Cafe Celebrates 35 Years In Austin By Donating Proceeds to UWATX
This May marks 35 years that our friends at Kerbey Lane Café have made Austin greater with their delicious pancakes and queso! To commemorate their anniversary, Kerbey Lane Café will donate 100% of net proceeds from ALL Austin-area locations to UWATX on May 4th from 6 a.m. to May 5th at 6 a.m.! Additionally, there will be a festive birthday celebration at all locations from 6-8 p.m. on May 4th, complete with miniature horses, face painting and balloon animals. Kerbey Lane Café is also running a “35 Days Until 35” social media campaign with many exciting giveaways including pancake mix, gift cards and t-shirts. Learn more here. Kerbey Lane Café is currently running their second annual employee campaign with United Way for Greater Austin and their staff embodies the spirit of philanthropy by investing a portion of their paycheck and their time back into our community. Restaurant managers go by the title “Community Ambassador” and make corporate social responsibility a priority. By coordinating volunteer opportunities for their employees with our Hands on Central Texas volunteer center, they’ve been able to log hundreds of volunteer hours in service of Greater Austin! Kerbey Lane Café has been instrumental in supporting our work in early childhood education and dropout prevention by consistently volunteering to participate in beautification projects at our high-quality childcare centers and our target middle school campuses. It’s hard to imagine Austin with out Kerbey Lane Café, and we are so proud to call them community partners and advocates. You may have […]
Read MoreApril Face 2 Face Recap with Michael Hsu
Michael Hsu Office of Architecture, formerly Michael Hsu Design Office, was formed in 2005 with the goal of producing locally engaged, design-driven architecture and interiors in Austin. Hsu’s work has yielded head-turning structures for beloved brands such as Amy’s Ice Creams, Uchi and Uchiko, P. Terry’s Burger Stand and the ZACH Theater, leading to a 2013 ABJ cover story that deemed Hsu as the designer of Austin 2.0. We had the opportunity to hear from Hsu during this month’s Face 2 Face series at Whole Foods. United Way for Greater Austin is proud to serve as the nonprofit partner for this ongoing lecture series. One of our own Young Leaders Society Executive Members, Frances Jordan (pictured above) was onsite to explain our local presence and ways that the business community can become more involved on an individual or company level. According to Hsu, “We have such a fresh mindset in this [Austin] community and that gives a huge opportunity for designers to come up with new and changing ideas.” Hsu Office of Architecture practices contemporary or modern architecture and believes in modernism that is really accessible, designing inviting and warm spaces with an interesting experience that is fresh and warm. “We love to incorporate natural, raw materials in all of our designs because we feel that’s authentic. We pay attention to trends and we try to do them as well if not better than they are being done. If we can’t, then we stay away all together.” Hsu can be accredited with much of […]
Read MoreThe Best Of SXSW Interactive 2015
It’s that time of year again–happy SXSW everyone! Whether you fully immerse yourself in the madness, or purposely plan your vacation during the weeklong event each year, there’s no escaping the excitement and innovation that overflows from downtown Austin onto social media. We attended SXSW Interactive this year in hopes of learning better ways to share our mission, finding new supporters and thank existing ones, and learning about the latest tools to better engage the community. Here are some of our favorite things we saw at this year’s event: 1. DoSomething.org As part of our mission, we believe everyone can be a philanthropist and aim to create opportunities for locals to do so. DoSomething.org shares this mission, and offers extremely innovative ways to give back where you are, whether you are 8 or 80 years old. Check out DoSomething.org for easy ways to get inspired, whether it’s creating 5 minute shower playlists for your friends to encourage saving water or hosting a clothing recycling party. 2. The Social Good Hub The Social Good Hub, hosted by United Nations, was our favorite place to relax and mingle with nonprofit representatives from all over the world. We spoke to staff from Libraries Without Boarders about IdeaBox, portable multi-media educational kits to bring fun and learning to refugee and other vulnerable populations. Each box unfolds into a library, complete with its own power sources, internet, 15 tablets and 4 laptops, 5 HD cameras, 200 films and a projector, and more than 5,000 books. 3. The Global Happy Party […]
Read MoreAmplify Austin “Power Hour”
Amplify Austin is only two days away! What sets this online give-a-thon apart from others is the chance to win incentive prizes from sponsors. Hourly prizes: Awarded to nonprofits that raised the most dollars or had the most donors in a single hour on Amplify Austin Day: $1,000 awarded to nonprofit with the most unique donors every hour during Amplify Austin Day $1,000 awarded to the nonprofit that raises the most dollars every hour during Amplify Austin Day Grand prizes: Awarded to a nonprofit on Amplify Austin Day: $5,000 to nonprofit with most dollars raised in first six hours (6 p.m., March 5 – Midnight, March 6) $5,000 to nonprofit with most donations from unique donors $5,000 to nonprofit with most total dollars raised $5,000 to nonprofit with most individual fundraisers In attempt to maximize UWATX’s chance to win some of these prizes, we are designating 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on March 5 as the Amplify St. John’s Power Hour! Because St. John’s neighborhood is in the 78752 zip code, we felt this was an appropriate time to raise the most money possible during Amplify Austin. Unfortunately, if you are scheduling your donation in advance, you cannot select a specific time you would like your donation to go through. However, if you have a spare 5 minutes on March 5 from 7-8, we highly recommend making your donation during this time–and your donation could be AMPLIFIED! This blog entry is part of our “Amplify St. John’s” series leading up to […]
Read MoreWebb Students Lead Their Own Volunteer Project
It’s 4 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, and the halls of Webb Middle School are growing quiet. However, three students aren’t part of the stampede of their peers racing for the exits. They’re in a classroom on the second floor, making phone calls to local business owners to enlist help in putting on a St. Patrick’s Day pancake breakfast for families staying at the Ronald McDonald House. These are the students of United Way for Greater Austin’s Volunteer Project Leaders program, and this isn’t their first rodeo. The kids in the VPL program at Webb have been conducting volunteer projects to help out around their community since the program’s inception four years ago. They’ve organized and led campus cleanups, campaigns to gather thank you notes for school librarians, community needs assessments, and a host of other initiatives designed to encourage their classmates and neighbors to give back to their community in St. John’s. While the idea of middle school students dedicating so much of their free time to philanthropic projects may seem extraordinary to many, it’s a no-brainer to the VPL kids. “What would you do if you just saw someone throwing trash around your neighborhood?” says LaDascious, an 8th grader who’s been a part of the program since he arrived at Webb Middle School. He’s just left a voicemail for a manager at Kerbey Lane Cafe, a frequent UWATX collaborator, asking for pancake mix donations and any helping hands they could provide. Kids in the program get many opportunities to practice this sort of outreach, […]
Read MoreFebruary’s Face 2 Face Recap
The Austin Business Journal’s Face 2 Face speaker series creates a space for the exchange of ideas among Austin’s business community in a setting echoing TED Talks. It kicks off with a half-hour of breakfast and networking at 8:30 a.m., followed by a one-hour Q&A session with a featured guest and ABJ editor, Colin Pope. We are honored and delighted to be the 2015 Community Partner of the monthly series, which gives us the opportunity to share our work among the community’s business elite by highlighting various programs and partners each month. February’s speaker was Co-CEO of Whole Foods, Walter Robb, who emphasized culture, quality and marketing as strategic points in the development of the Whole Foods brand. He also discussed the delicate balance of driving rapid growth while still maintaining ties to the community at local and global levels. “Culture belongs on the balance sheet of the company.” – Walter Robb, Co-CEO of Whole Foods Robb shared his insights about building culture among employees and customers in order to ground the work and growth of Whole Foods in shared values that are broadly inclusive and clearly communicated. “Culture belongs on the balance sheet of the company,” Robb said. We agree–recent statistics show that more than half of millennials (the fastest growing group of employees) said a company’s involvement in philanthropic causes influenced whether or not they accepted a job in the past. We have seen firsthand the positive impact a philanthropic component can have on a company; just ask any of our generous business partners! The idea of […]
Read MoreAmplify St. John’s 2015
2015 marks the third year of Amplify Austin Day–a 24-hour virtual giving movement led by I Live Here, I Give Here. This year, United Way for Greater Austin is utilizing this day of awareness–and the weeks leading up to it–to highlight a community we care deeply about: St. John’s neighborhood in northeast Austin. We need your help to #AmplifyStJohns from March 5th at 6 p.m. to March 6th at 6 p.m. St. John’s is host to Webb Middle School in which a whopping 97% of students are economically disadvantaged. We invest $309,000 annually in Webb in order to better the lives of these students and their families through mentoring, tutoring, summer programs and case management, along with other services through our Target Graduation program. Last year, we provided these services to 76% of the students at Webb. Webb Middle School students are only a small portion of the economically disadvantaged youth in St. John’s. In fact, 60% of all children in the St. John’s neighborhood live in poverty. This percentage has an even greater impact when compared to the number of Austinites in general living in poverty: 38%. St. John’s residents of every age group are more likely to be living in poverty or to be low-income than overall City of Austin residents. The St. John’s community lacks many of the tools they need in order to help themselves. More than half of the residents in this neighborhood are Hispanic, and 48% of residences are headed up by a single parent. Many residents […]
Read MorePoverty Awareness Month
January is Poverty Awareness Month, and we have chosen to once again highlight one of the communities we serve—Dove Springs in southeast Austin. For the most part, the Dove Springs neighborhood has not changed significantly when you look at demographics data over the past three years with one key exception: poverty. According to the most recent data, one in five adults in Dove Springs live in poverty, while more than a third of children in this community also live in poverty. This means about 12,000 in Dove Springs alone are living in poverty. And, unfortunately, these numbers are only increasing each year. 20% of adults in Dove Springs live in poverty 36% of children in Dove Springs live in poverty 10% of seniors in Dove Springs live in poverty From 2011 to 2013, the Dove Springs population grew by 7%, but the number of residents in this community living in poverty grew by 15%. According to PovertyUSA, the number of Americans living in poverty today is higher now than in the last 50 years. As Austin continues to become more unaffordable, even for those living above the poverty level, the urgency of intervention and change becomes more crucial. The first step toward breaking the poverty cycle is promoting the understanding of poverty and its root causes. PovertyUSA produced an informative and interesting video that showcases how families living in poverty in the U.S. spend their money, and how easy it is to quickly fall behind while debt continues to […]
Read MoreSummer Programs Provide More Than Learning
Though the temperature outside continues to drop rapidly (30 degrees–really Austin?!), the Target Graduation team at United Way for Greater Austin has summer on the mind. Our Navigation Center is starting to receive an influx of calls related to open enrollment for affordable health insurance, and the Target Graduation team is attending the National Summer Learning Association’s conference in San Antonio this week. Therefore, we’ve been reflecting on how our community’s needs change year-round and what we can anticipate when summer brings different challenges. Afterschool Alliance recently released a national report on out-of-school time programs. It highlights how participation in a structured summer program keeps kids physically active while also providing a measure of food security that is sorely missed when school breakfasts and lunches disappear. Food access continues to be a key concern in the Greater Austin area. Fortunately, more out-of-school programs are beginning to take this into account. Three out of four parents agree that out-of-school programs should provide nutritious snacks and meals for their children. One out of three AISD students have BMIs that put them at risk for health issues. Students gain weight 3X faster during the summer break. Conversely, when students lose access to school meals, they also lose the regulated diet and exercise schedule of a school day’s structure. Paul Von Hippel, a statistician from Ohio State, identifies this as a major factor in rapid weight gain occuring among youth during the summer break. His report found that students gain weight three times faster during the […]
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