Corporate Cup is coming soon

Plans are almost complete for the 2010 version of the Griffin Hospital Community Corporate Cup website, and there are several changes in store as there are every year. The signature event in this partnership among the Valley United Way, Valley YMCA and the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce continues to be the Healthy Team competition, and we are happy to report that all of the pre and post-testing will be done at Griffin's Center for Cance Care in Derby. There may be some slight change in the testing, but full details will be available on the website shortly. On a healthy note, we will be including Griffin's Health Empowerment Series of lectures as a new feature of the Corporate Cup.

Billiards will not be part of the series this year because we no longer have a facility in the Valley big enough to accommodate the number of participants that we have attraced. Instead, we will be adding "Backyard Bocce" which has been requested for several years now.

The calendar of events has also been changed a bit, and the tentative schedule has been posted, but there may be some further changes before all the details are finalized.

One thing that will not be changing is the price. The Griffin Hospital Community Corporate Cup will continue to be an incredible bargain - particularly for full registrations. Companies may register for individual events but the full registration price of $450 can't be beat when you consider that it includes every single event. Companies may also take advantage of special pricing of $325 for a second team in every event. Participation in the Healthy Team alone would justify the cost!

We'll have complete information available on the website shortly, but we are already accepting registrations for the Kickoff Reception at Griffin Hospital on February 16.


For more information about Valley United Way, visit our website at www.valleyunitedway.org.

VALLEY UNITED WAY'S 'SILVER SCREEN SOIREE'

Who would you nominate? Do you have a friend or colleague you think could be awarded BEST ACTOR/ACTRESS in the Valley United Way’s Silver Screen Soiree??? It is our version of the Academy Awards to be held on Wednesday, February 24th at a location to be announced in the RD Scinto complex. Other nominations can be made for Best Director, Best Music, Best Picture, Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup. Here is an example of how you can nominate someone:

BEST ACTOR: Bob Jones should be awarded BEST ACTOR for making believe he is doing his work at his desk, when really he is playing video games at his computer.

Of course, it can be a serious nomination also…. Prizes will be awarded for Best Costume in addition to the above listed awards. All nominations will be reviewed that evening by our ‘judges’ and the top 3 candidates in each category will be introduced. Final winners will be chosen by an audience vote.

SAVE THE DATE, tell your friends and plan to join us for a fun evening out in the Scinto Towers complex February 24th, to support the Valley United Way. Beer/wine and food will be included. Other details will be forthcoming.

Haiti Disaster

 The catastrophic earthquake in Haiti this week has left an indelible impression of the devastation that it has caused in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The world wide response has been impressive, but also difficult to manage as rescue experts from around the world have mobilized to alleviate the suffering caused by the quake. The response ranges from the large scale effort being mounted by the U.S. government down to small church and civic groups looking to do anything that they can to help.

Former President Bill Clinton is the special UN Envoy to Haiti and he and George Bush have been tasked by President Obama with heading up the private philanthropic efforts within the U.S. The response has been overwhelming, but many people are struggling with finding the best way to help. For most people, that is not going to be a hands-on response, but rather a financial one in the form of a donation to the relief and recovery efforts. The question is how to do this.

Many, many organizations are accepting donations for this effort. As a local United Way, we raise a lot of money to support local initiatives, and we have the ability to accept donations earmarked for things such as relief in Haiti. However, there are other groups that are much better equipped to have an immediate impact on the crisis. We have listed three of them on our website, but there are many others. In the case of United Way, our parent organization United Way Worldwide is accepting donations and mobilizing their partners in the Caribbean area to make a difference in the recovery effort. The Red Cross has probably the most established record in disaster relief. We have even posted a link to a site that tells you how to use your cell phone to make an immediate donation by text to a variety of known efforts, and I would urge you to use the one that best fits your thoughts to help make a difference.

Yesterday, at our Derby/Shelton Rotary meeting, our club voted to make a $500 donation through our Rotary International Foundation. A separate collection among our members present resulted in more than $600 in additional donations, and we will have a second collection next week.It was just one example of people looking to help and finding the right vehicle to make it happen.

Please look at the options available to you and think how you might help. Even a $5.00 donation will make a big difference. I saw one reporter pointing out that the Haitian clinic where he was reporting didn't have any aspirin, and that a $5.00 donation would make a world of difference in getting a supply of aspirin for the clinic!

For more information about Valley United Way, visit our website at www.valleyunitedway.org.

Small Grants Can Make a Big Difference

Valley United Way currently has two small grants programs that will be awarding granrts during the first quarter of 2010. The first is the Spencial Needs Grants Program, and the second is the Youth Leadership Grants Program. Let me start by describing the smaller, but older program - the Youth Leadership Grants Program.

The Youth Leadership Grants Program was started way back in 1990 when the Youth Leadership Program was started. As part of the training for the students, we wanted to show them the importance of funding programs in the community, but also to impress on them the responsibility that goes with giving away money - and just how difficult it is to do so! The students first conduct their own needs assessment to determine the issues that they deem important to their peers. This becomes the focus for their grant making. They have currently posted their guidelines along with an on-line application form, and any group which has a program related to their priority areas may apply by January 22.

Once the applications are received, the students will then review the applications and may even visit with the applicants before they spend a weekend at Camp Jewell (Where they started their program last year!) reviewing the applications as a group and making their final funding decisions. Invariably, they will be asked for much more money than the $2,000 they have to give out. They will then have to make the hard decisions of choosing from many worth while programs for the dollars that they have available. Though it will be difficult, we have found that they have always done an excellent job. In fact, they do such a good job, that we ask two of them to serve on United Way's own Allocations Committee later in the year when United Way does its own allocations.

The Special Needs Grants Program is a result of the growth of desingated donor giving over the last several year. Some of our donors choose to direct their giving into speccific needs areas such as elder, homeless, hunger or youth issues among others. Those dollars are not part of the regular undesignated allocations pool  and they must be used only for the areas designated by the donors. As a result, we created the Special Needs Grants Program several years ago separate fromthe regular Allocations Process.

Under the Special Needs Grants Program, agencies may apply for funding for items not covered through their normal budgets. Funds can be used to cover special emergencies, or new and emerging issues and programs. The dollars vary widely by issue, but many times they are enough to fill these special needs identifited by agencies within pargameters established by donors.

The application process for this program is done entirely on-line through our eCimpact web based software. Agencies have until January 22 to submit their applications which will then be reviewed by the Allocations Committee. They will then make their recommendations to the full Board of Directors for a final decision. We have approximately $35,000 available for this program this year.

You can watch for the funding decisions some time in March.

For more information about Valley United Way, visit our website at www.valleyunitedway.org.

A THANK YOU TO OUR AGENCIES

As the New Year begins and the chill in the air continues, many of our United Way campaigns are wrapping up; including our partner agency campaigns. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for the services they offer to our community including; Helping Youth to Succeed, Strengthening Families and Helping People in Crisis. This year, with numbers staggering for various forms of assistance needed, each agency is taking action by providing support to our Annual Community Campaign. Their staffs skills and talents measurably improve the lives of people in our community. Thank you to the following agencies and their Campaign Coordinators for completing their campaigns for the 2009-2010 year and to Carol Kirby of the American Red Cross for chairing this division:
American Red Cross-Carol Kirby
Birmingham Group Health Services-Joyce Macauda
Boy Scouts-Kevin Bishop
Boys & Girls Club-Jack Ribas & Anne Wheeler
Catholic Charities-Diane D’Amato
Derby Day Care-Gladys Lazurek
Girl Scouts of CT-Jennifer Smith-Turner
Julia Day Nursery & Kindergarten-Sharon Kelly
Parent Child Resource Center-Sue Vogt
SONCCA-Arlene Swatson
TEAM-Sue Westine
Valley YMCA-Suzanne Reilly
Visiting Nurses Association-Andrew Eaves

SoupBowlTickets.com Comes to life!

Several times last year, I wrote about some incredible efforts in the Valley to deal with the issue of hunger including Griffin Hospital's amazing donation, United Way's Corporate Volunteer Council's building of Harvest House, the Letter Carriers food drive and the Scouts food drive. I also mentioned that several of the Valley's nonprofits were working together to make a suggestion from Jim Guarrera of Carey and Guarrerra Real Estate a reality in the fight against hunger.

Jim had come up with the idea of using surplus and unused tickets to sporting, cultural and other events as a vehicle for raising additional funds to purchase food. That idea has now come to life in the form of SoupBowlTickets.com, a website where people can purchase tickets to events or donate tickets that they will not be using. It will take some time for this to develop, but please take a minute to bookmark the site and visit it often to see our progress.

We also want to thank the Valley Association of Realtors who helped spearhead this effort with a $1,000 donation to get the project started.

You can visit the site at http://www.SoupBowlTickets.com.

For more information about Valley United Way, visit our website at www.valleyunitedway.org.