Head of Centre County United Way renews call for donations

Tammy Gentzel called a timeout and asked for a community huddle Friday.

Gentzel, the executive director for Centre County United Way, said the nonprofit is about $100,000 away from its $2.2 million goal.

The organization needs to maneuver a two-week drive to meet its objective by Jan. 31.

“We’ve come short before,” she said. “Last year our goal was $2.1 million, and we came in at $2,095,000. We really rely on the community to make our partner agencies whole for people to have access to the highest quality education, health care and many other resources. We believe they will do it.”

The goal, she said, was formed by community representatives of the nonprofitwho evaluated its partner agency needs earlier in the year.

“It represents meeting a community need, not a goal our board puts together to look good,” Gentzel said. “When our community representatives gave us their feedback they said we were about $117,000 short of what we needed to provide our partner agencies whole and strong.”

United Way will have representatives at some high traffic grocery stores like the Giant on North Atherton Street and Burkholder’s Country Market in Penns Valley to hopefully connect with new donors.

They will also have an after-business social 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology. Representatives from partner agencies, community leaders, businesses, donors and the nonprofit will be there to mingle with potential donors that might have questions about the United Way and beneficiaries.

“Every year our new donors’ donations is what really makes it happen in January,” Genztel said. “That last push is the time for really reaching out to new donors.”

The United Way has shifted its focus for this campaign compared with previous years.

The largest base of donations historically comes from employee-driven campaigns.

“That employee base is so much smaller today with manufacturing jobs drying up, businesses contracting and becoming smaller and more employees telecommunicating or working on a contract basis,” Gentzel said. “That model of gaining support isn’t as strong as it was.”

The change in base funding prompted the nonprofit to try to build more one-on-one connections for private donorship.

They hope their last push will put them over the top.

“It’s like we’re at the end of football, and we’re all tied,” Gentzel said. “We want to win and make sure we are whole and healthy so that the same is true for for people who need assistance.”

This story was originally published January 15, 2016 at 7:49 PM with the headline "Head of Centre County United Way renews call for donations."