Our Priorities
Our Mission is to advance the education, economic mobility, and health of our community by mobilizing resources, people, and organizations. We do this by bringing together the financial resources of donors, the passion of community volunteers, the expertise of community partners, and the dedication of United Way staff to create agreed-upon solutions, monitor our combined efforts, and publicly report our shared progress at the system, community, and individual levels.
Leading Systemic Change
Not all parents can afford quality daycare for their preschoolers, putting their children at risk of starting kindergarten socially and academically behind their more affluent peers. Hungry children can't focus on learning, and they can struggle throughout their school years. High school graduates without the funds to continue their education may remain in minimum wage jobs that keep them from affording quality housing and medical care. We acknowledge that unfair advantages were built into the fiber of our education, financial, and healthcare systems, so we're bringing people together to find ways to change these systems and give more children and adults a chance to succeed.
Guiding Community Resources
We focus on three key building blocks: a quality education that leads to a stable job, enough income to support a family through retirement, and good health. Our collective impact partnership model has changed the way local organizations work together. By supporting the creation of community Hubs we enabled more people to receive help where they live; by supporting early childhood education initiatives, more children of working parents were better prepared for kindergarten; by supporting workforce training programs, more people were able to improve their skills and get higher-paying jobs.
Promoting Capacity Building
When we know better, we do better. From our partnership meetings to our annual Collective Impact Summit, we are actively creating safe spaces and new educational opportunities for nonprofit professionals to gather, learn, and develop new ways of being that can spark positive changes in themselves, their organizations, and our community.
We all win when we LIVE UNITED. By forging unlikely partnerships. By finding new solutions to old problems. By mobilizing the best resources. And by inspiring individuals to join the fight against their community’s most daunting social crises.
Because in Lancaster County, THAT’S OUR WAY.