United Way - Thomas Jefferson Area - United Way - Thomas Jefferson Area

Day of Caring Updated Planning Timeline!

kconnolly@unitedwaytja.org (Kim Connolly) — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:17:59 +0000

Since opening registration for the United Way Laurence E. Richardson Day of Caring last week, we’ve already had 15 teams sign up and we have 11 projects submitted. It’s a great kick-off to registration, but we’re expecting to get another 220 projects and around 70 additional teams! Don’t miss your chance to be a part of this wonderful community event that puts over $300,000 worth of volunteer hours back into our community in just one day!

The registration process is structured a bit differently this year, so check out the updated planning timeline for the deadlines and important dates. All registrations for projects and teams must be submitted no later than June 28th, as project selection will take place in July this year to allow teams more time to visit project sites and nonprofits more time to prepare for their volunteer groups.

If you have questions about the United Way Day of Caring, please contact Jessica Snyder, United Way Volunteer Center director at 434.972.1705.

Posted by: Jessica Snyder

United Way Day of Caring 2013 Registration is Open!

kconnolly@unitedwaytja.org (Kim Connolly) — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:57:15 +0000

Local nonprofits look forward to it. Local business volunteers look forward to it. What is it?

The United Way Laurence E. Richardson Day of Caring. This year's date is September 18, 2013.

Last year, nearly 2,500 volunteers from local businesses and organizations spent a half or full day working on a variety of projects for local nonprofits and schools. At the end of the day, we all have a sense of accomplishment, and the volunteers have a greater familiarity with a nonprofit's mission and needs. The nonprofits get a large project completed and make new friends in the community.

How can you participate? If you are involved with a local nonprofit, ask if they have any projects they are unable to accomplish on their own due to lack of manpower. It could be as simple as cleaning out and organizing a storage area, or perhaps is a deferred maintenance issue like painting or lanscaping. Or perhaps help is needed stuffing envelopes for amialing. What ever the need, there are probably volunteers willing to help. If you would like your company or organization to register a team, bring the information to your human resources department.

Project registration is now open for nonprofits and schools, and volunteer teams from lcoal businesses or civic organization can also register. Visit www.DayofCaring.info for indepth information and registration information.

You can also follow our United Way Volunteer Center on Twitter @CVilleVolunteer

Posted by: Kim Connolly

Letter Carriers' “Stamp Out Hunger” Food Drive This Weekend

kconnolly@unitedwaytja.org (Kim Connolly) — Fri, 10 May 2013 02:57:03 +0000

Our local letter carriers are making it very easy for you to help fill the shelves of the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank this Saturday. During the “Stamp Out Hunger” Food Drive on Saturday, May 11, local residents can leave their donations of nonperishable food items in a bag by their mailbox and their letter carriers will do the rest!

You should have received a post card and a plastic grocery bag in your mailbox this week. The food bank has a very helpful list of most needed food items on their website, but let us stress: canned meats, vegetables, peanut butter and cereals. And please – NO GLASS containers! Picture the bags being quickly placed in the back of postal vans, riding around in the backs of those vans, and then being unloaded and sorted back at the main post office. Every year we have to clean up broken glass and the often messy contents of jars and bottles!

Speaking of unloading and sorting, this is the 6^th year that the members of the Civil Air Patrol’s Monticello Composite Squadron have volunteered to unload and sort the more than 60,000 pounds of food that comes in on one day. They are in constant motion for hours with energetic and efficient cheerfulness. One year, there was a power outage and they kept going in near darkness.

The Stamp Out Hunger food drive is truly a collaborative effort – from the amazing letter carriers who volunteer to take on the extra workload every year, to the food bank that coordinates the massive one-day influx of donations, to the wonderful members of the Civil Air Patrol who give up a spring Saturday each year, and to our United Way, that works on the marketing and volunteer coordination. The end result is help for working families, children and the elderly, who make up the majority of food bank recipients.

Please remember to put out your bag of food donations on Saturday morning, May 11. If you forget, you can put it out the following Monday or Tuesday and your letter carrier will make sure it gets to the food bank.

Posted by: Kim Connolly

Our Day of Sharing Team Rocks!

kconnolly@unitedwaytja.org (Kim Connolly) — Fri, 03 May 2013 22:48:43 +0000

It all started with a call to our office from Brooke Jenkins, a participant in this year’s Chamber of Commerce Leadership Charlottesville class. Brooke wanted to find a way to work with our office on her Leadership Charlottesville project and had a great idea. She wanted to start a tradition in Charlottesville where businesses can donate wish list items to local nonprofits. After a brief meeting in our office with Brooke, the concept of the United Way Day of Sharing was born.

Fast forward to December when we found out that the United Way Day of Sharing project had been selected as a Leadership Charlottesville project by nine participants. From December until April, the group worked to call over 300 nonprofits to get wish list submissions and find businesses interested in participating. PSAs were filmed, meetings were held, and this group worked hard to ensure our first United Way Day of Sharing would be a success.

April 24^th arrived and the preparations were complete for the United Way Day of Sharing. The event flew by, with hundreds of donated items pouring in from local families and businesses. The group from Leadership Charlottesville had taken an idea and made it into a reality for dozens of area nonprofits and public schools! From toilet paper to crayons to microwaves, nonprofits received items that will help to reach more people and make a bigger impact on our community.

We can’t thank this group from Leadership Charlottesville enough for their creation of this wonderful event and the hours they took from work to make this dream a reality. We want to recognize and thank the following team members from the Leadership Charlottesville Day of Sharing team: Simone Alley from CenturyLink; Elaine Fogliani from Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates- Architects; Wendy Heifetz from MH Swanson & Associates; Amy Hughes from Comcast Spotlight; Brooke Jenkins from Virginia National Bank; Holen Lewis from Freeman’s Auctioneers & Appraisers; Jennifer McCune from Rodan + Fields Dermatologists; Michelle Rupp from The Charlottesville Newsplex; and Jamie Shifflett from the City of Charlottesville Fire Department.

Many congratulations to this talented group on the completion of a successful first United Way Day of Sharing and on the completion of the Leadership Charlottesville program! Also, thank you to the businesses of each team member for encouraging their participation in this program and supporting our local community!

Posted by: Jessica Snyder, United Way Volunteer Center director

Learning and Sharing with our Intern

kconnolly@unitedwaytja.org (Kim Connolly) — Fri, 03 May 2013 02:00:36 +0000

This was our University of Virginia intern's last week with us. We really enjoyed having Shana Finkel as part of our team this past academic year. We teased her that she started her year with us as part of our Day of Caring and ended it with our Day of Sharing. Nice bookends to her many experiences here with us. Congratulations on your upcoming graduation, Shana, and best of luck!

I have really enjoyed my time interning at the United Way-Thomas Jefferson Area. Through working with the tax preparation program, learning to mobilize and show appreciation to hundreds of volunteers, and understanding the long term developmental plan and inner workings of a non-profit, I’ve gained skills that will carry over into whatever career I pursue down the line. I feel very lucky to have had the chance to work with such special coworkers and am grateful for their guidance and willingness to share their personal experiences with me. Though I do not yet have a plan for after graduation, I know that the experiences I’ve had at United Way will always stay with me.

Shana

United Way Day of Sharing Fulfills Nonprofits' Wishes

kconnolly@unitedwaytja.org (Kim Connolly) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:55:58 +0000

Last Wednesday, April 24^th, we celebrated National Volunteer Week and the generosity of the Charlottesville community with our first United Way Day of Sharing. Similar to the United Way Laurence E. Richardson Day of Caring, the goal of the Day of Sharing was to bring the business and nonprofit communities together to fulfill wish lists of our local nonprofits.

As a first time event, we weren’t sure what to expect. From December through April, we worked with a talented group of community leaders from The Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Charlottesville program to collect wish lists from local nonprofits and engage businesses in donating. From recording public service announcements to finding a location for the event, the group helped us to make this inaugural event as successful as possible.

On the day of the event, we all showed up in our Live United t-shirts, set up boxes, arranged a food table, and hung balloons and signs at Pen Park. What we worried could turn into a waiting game for donors to arrive turned into something so much more than we could have expected. By 10:00 that morning, we had a row of cars starting to line up waiting to drop off markers, office chairs, non-perishable snacks, dog treats, mattress pads and much more. By 10:30 that morning, we had people buzzing around the picnic shelter, wonderful conversations taking place, and local media crews shooting footage for the news at noon.

By the end of the day, we had almost half of the wish list requests filled by local businesses! First time events can be unpredictable, especially when the event is so dependent on the response of others. Yet, the generosity of people in Charlottesville and the surrounding counties always comes through to help others in need. From children’s karate classes to large businesses, we had hundreds of items come in during a four hour event that will help our local nonprofits reach more people (and animals!).

The success of this event would not have been possible without the hard work and efforts of the Leadership Charlottesville group, Cville Coffee for their donation of delicious coffee, Paul McDaniel from AVIVA Rentals for the audio equipment, and all of the press coverage from our local media outlets (Newsplex, NBC29, Comcast Spotlight, Monticello Media and Charlottesville Radio Group). We thank all of these sponsors, donors and volunteers for making this event a huge success in its first year. As one of the Leadership Charlottesville participants shared, each and every small difference added up to a big impact!

Submitted by: Jessica Snyder, United Way Volunteer Center director

Celebrating Young Children on the Downtown Mall

kconnolly@unitedwaytja.org (Kim Connolly) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:02:50 +0000

Smart Beginnings is a public/private collaborative, housed at the United Way-Thomas Jefferson Area, which works to make our community a place where children grow up healthy and arrive at school prepared to succeed. Jessie Ray, our Smart Beginnings director, also works very closely with the United Way School Readiness Impact Team to advance early education opportunities for vulnerable families.

Smart Beginnings and the Pinwheel Collaborative got together this year to offer a fun way to recognize Child Abuse Prevention Month and celebrate the Week of the Young Child. Jessie worked with the Collaborative to organize a “Pinwheel Parade” and concert for area preschoolers and their families in the month of April. All the City of Charlottesville public preschool 3 and 4 year olds were in attendance, as were five Albemarle County Bright Stars classes and a few local private preschools. Everyone made their way through the historic downtown mall holding pinwheels, the symbol of child abuse prevention, and marching to the beat of African drums; drawing the attention of downtown mall workers who ventured out of their stores and offices to get a look, plus a few families who joined us along the way!

Our United Way sponsored the event and the performers. Cathy Bollinger, Elly Tucker, and Paul Brier entertained the children with fun and educational songs down at the NTelos Wireless Pavilion for about 40 minutes before the classes returned to their schools. The Pavilion generously donated the use of their space for the event.

Overall, we had close to 350 local preschoolers holding pinwheels, singing, and dancing, making this a fun event for the community. Many thanks to the dozens of volunteers from local nonprofits and schools who came out to help, and to Kevin Monroe and Bob Garrity for their wonderful drumming! This was the first time in many years that the City and County preschoolers have been able to come together for such a fun performance. NBC29 did a great story of the event you can read about here.

Children are our greatest resource, and we were delighted to have the opportunity to bring together so many local preschool children, their teachers and parents, for a celebration of early childhood and our goals of healthy kids who are well prepared for entering kindergarten.

Posted by: Jessie Ray, Smart Beginnings director

Volunteers, Kids, and Sharing

kconnolly@unitedwaytja.org (Kim Connolly) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 02:20:28 +0000

This is the kind of busy week we do not mind at all!

This is National Volunteer Week, and we would like to thank our many United Way volunteers – from our board members, to community members who serve on our Community Impact teams alongside our board members. We have office volunteers and interns, and we just wrapped up our free tax preparation season with more than 100 volunteers from the community. In addition, our United Way Volunteer Center works to promote volunteerism all year round, and we salute ALL those who offer their time and talent to make our community a better place.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 23, we also celebrate the Week of the Young Child by raising awareness of the importance of early childhood development through our Smart Beginnings initiative and one of our three impact areas: School Readiness. We celebrate through hosting a Pinwheel Parade on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall in conjunction with Safe Schools, Healthy Students. The parade starts at the Omni Hotel at 10:00 and, led by African drumming, the hundreds of young children from area preschool programs and other kids and their parents, will march down the Mall to the Pavilion for a free concert featuring local artists, Cathy Bollinger, Elly Tucker and Paul Brier.

Then, on Wednesday, April 24, we honor the spirit of National Volunteer Week with the first annual United Way Day of Sharing!

A Weedeater. Ping pong table. Computer Flash drives. Supplies for a school nurse’s office. Coffee. Digital cameras. A hole punch. Postage stamps. Folding tables. Pencils. Flower bulbs. Bookshelves.

All of these items were on local nonprofits’ and schools’ wish lists for the first annual United Way Day of Sharing, and all these wishes – and others – have been fulfilled. The donated items will be brought to the picnic pavilions at Charlottesville's Pen Park on Wednesday, April 24 between 10 am to 2 pm, where representatives of local nonprofits will be available to receive them. Some of the larger items will be delivered directly to the nonprofits’ locations.

The United Way Day of Sharing is the culmination of a team project of the 2013 class of Leadership Charlottesville, sponsored by the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. The goal of the Day of Sharing is to match local businesses, individuals and civic organizations with nonprofit organizations to donate items on the nonprofits' wish lists.

All in all, a wonderful week!

Posted by: Kim Connolly

Charlottesville Design Marathon

kconnolly@unitedwaytja.org (Kim Connolly) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 22:23:06 +0000

Last week, we were one of the lucky local nonprofit participants in the Charlottesville Design Marathon. For one long, creative day, teams of professional graphic designers, architects and other design professionals, plus college students, volunteered their time to help create designs for local nonprofits. Some were structural designs for remodeling physical spaces, and others were graphic designs for logos, brochures, annual reports or marketing campaigns.

Our project was to design a logo and invitation for a gala event that we hope will take place in 2014. The energy in the room at CitySpace was palpable as the designers assigned to each team met with their nonprofit partners to begin the creative process. Team United Way - Krista Ulrich, Andrew Stronge and Peggy Brennan - immediately began brainstorming sketches and ideas. The nonprofit representatives simply had to be there for the start and then check in at various times during the day to approve or make suggestions to the designs in progress. At the end of the day, we had an amazing design for a logo and invitation, which will be unveiled in a couple of weeks by the Design Marathon.

Thank you, Team United Way and the Charlottesville Design Marathon. What a great experience!

Posted by: Kim Connolly