United Way of Greater Portland Announces 2018 Campaign Results
At its annual Campaign Celebration on January 10th at the Portland Harbor Hotel, United Way of Greater Portland announced anticipated pledges of $8.1 million during the 2018 fundraising campaign. This is the fourth consecutive year of campaign growth.
“The strength of community runs deep in Greater Portland,” said Mike Vail, 2018 Campaign Chair and President at Hannaford Supermarkets. “Throughout the campaign, I was inspired to see so many coming together, demonstrating just how remarkable a community it is that we live and work.”
United Way’s annual campaign kicked off September 14 with a rally, food drive, and canned-good sculpture contest in Monument Square. The event collected enough food to provide 28,163 meals – breaking last year’s record for Cumberland County’s largest one-day food drive (16,428 donated in 2017). Collected food items were donated to Wayside Food Programs–one of United Way of Greater Portland’s Funded Community Partners–to be distributed to food pantries throughout Cumberland County.
During the campaign, the Campaign Cabinet, comprised of 31 executive and corporate leaders from every sector of our community, worked closely with United Way staff to generate support from over 300 companies and organizations throughout Greater Portland.
BerryDunn, Gorham Savings Bank, Hannaford Supermarkets, L.L.Bean, MaineHealth, Unum, and WEX played an integral role in this year’s success, loaning nine employees to bolster United Way of Greater Portland’s capacity for nine weeks during the campaign. These Loaned Executives (LEs) helped run workplace campaigns and informed others about United Way’s impact. Anthem, Wipfli | MacPage, Preti Flaherty, and Verrill Dana also sponsored this valuable program. The LE Program received a generous gift of $25,000 for three years in support from Gorham Savings Bank in honor of Chris Emmons. Emmons is a longtime leader and champion of United Way of Greater Portland and the Loaned Executive Program. With this generous gift, United Way is able to allocate resources previously used to support the Program into funding to advance Thrive2027.
Thrive2027 is our community’s commitment to three ten-year goals where we:
- Give kids a strong start
- Empower neighbors to thrive – not just survive
- Help us all live longer, better
Campaign highlights include:
- Seven community-minded organizations all pledged $25,000 a year for the next 3 years to help advance Thrive2027 thanks to John T. Gorman Foundation’s matching challenge. These organizations include Dead River Company, Baker Newman Noyes, Gorham Savings Bank, IDEXX, MEMIC, and WEX Inc.
- United Way welcomed new workplace campaigns from Zachau Construction and TideSmart, and are working on more new campaigns this spring.
- Cumberland County invested $100,000 toward Thrive2027.
- Pape generously donated a vehicle and L.L.Bean a $1000 gift card that helped to incentivize and activate new and current donors.
- Dead River Company had over an over 50% increase year over year in corporate and employee giving.
- Berry Dunn, Dead River Company, Disability RMS, Gorham Savings Bank, Hannaford, IDEXX, MEMIC, and WEX Inc. and many more saw impressive growth in employee giving.
Women United and Brick & Beam Society – individual giving group of United Way – are both working toward their respective goals. To date, Women United has 31 new members, Brick & Beam has 19. Both groups are impacting change in the community with investments supporting Thrive2027 Goals 1 & 2. Collectively, these individual giving groups will raise nearly $300,000 this year.
Tocqueville Society, United Way’s highest giving level for contributions of $10,000 or more saw its third year of consecutive growth, raising over $1.35 million. With nearly 80 household members, this group of leaders makes a significant impact to the annual campaign, and their consistent dedication to United Way’s mission and Thrive2027 goals sets the tone for annual objectives and capacity.
United Way also announced that Deanna Sherman, President and CEO of Dead River Co, will chair the 2019 Campaign.
