United Way Plans ‘Huge Shift’ in Funding

Amy Lindner President & CEO, United Way. Photo courtesy of the United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County.

United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County today announced that it will change how it funds member groups in order “to ensure greater strategic impact.”

The press release described the change as part of a “global brand refresh” that is happening for United Way worldwide, “one of the world’s oldest and largest charities.”

But in a recent interview with Urban Milwaukee, the local United Way president and CEO Amy Lindner used much stronger language, calling the change “a huge shift for us.”

“To go from funding historic groups to impact-based funding and a competitive, application-based process” is quite significant, she suggested.

The change is also a response to donors, who “want to see major impact from their donations,” she added.

Lindner, in the press release noted that United Way has in the recent past “effectively addressed some of the biggest needs leading to sustainable solutions” in the four-county area it serves. “Our plan is to increase the pace on addressing these needs.”

Two examples of these solutions, the release noted, “include reducing the teen birth rate by 65% through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, and by meeting the criteria to end family homelessness in Milwaukee and Ozaukee counties.”

To achieve this kind of impact the local United Way “will invest in multi-year grants to organizations that demonstrate they can advance the work of the organization’s Key Initiatives.”

And those key initiatives include:

Reducing Barriers to Employment & Advancement

Goal: 15,000 people will be ready to start stable careers having overcome key employment barriers by 2029.

Safe & Stable Homes

Goal: End family homelessness in our entire four-county footprint by 2025.

Techquity

Goal: We will provide 50,000 computers to people who need them by 2027.

Teen Mental Wellness: Empowering Minds

Goal: Empowering Minds schools will elevate the mental wellness of 21,000 high school students by 2030.

Going back many decades, United Way supported major nonprofits in the metro area, like the Red Cross, YMCA, YWCA, Boys & Girls Club, Salvation Army and Children’s Wisconsin. “Many of the programs we currently fund have been getting funding for decades and decades,” Lindner noted. “We have funded some of the same groups in perpetuity.”

Meanwhile, fundraising has been flat, as Urban Milwaukee has reported. United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County raised $59.7 million in 2024, about the same as it has raised for the past seven years. In 2017 it raised $60.4 million. If that total had risen at the rate of inflation since then United Way would now be raising about $77 million, $17 million more than last year’s total.

The new strategy is clearly intended to generate excitement among donors and kickstart higher levels of funding. And it seems to suggest that legacy recipients of funding will have to prove themselves. “Legacy funds will support programming that is essential for sustaining the achievement of a past collective impact or Key Initiative goal,” the press release says.

The press release didn’t mention health, which has always been a key mission of United Way. Does that mean groups affiliated with huge profit-making corporate operations like Ascension, Aurora Health and Children’s Wisconsin will no longer be funded? That’s unclear. Linder has said that much of that funding comes from donor choice, but there is no way to track that because United Way’s website does not offer an easily accessible list of its allocations or how much comes from donor choice versus United Way priorities. Some might argue that more transparency in its giving process would help increase donations.

It remains to be seen how great a shift in funding will come from the new United Way policy. And we won’t know until July 1, 2026, when the money raised from the 2025 fund drive is allocated. In short, all the money raised last year and due to be allocated in July of this year will be under the old United Way guidelines.