United Way of the Florida Keys

United Way  of the Florida Keys is providing funds to the following programs for 2011-2012:

American Red Cross  (Ongoing 24/7 disaster response)

Boys and Girls Club  (After Care to assist low income families)

Domestic Abuse Shelter  (local match for State contract for provision of services, at $43: $1 ratio)

Florida Keys Outreach Center (homeless children activity program: Kids Corner)

Girl Scouts (training materials and support Keyswide)

Helpline   (crisis referral hotline, in lieu of 211)

Marathon Recreation Center  (free after school care to low income families)

MARC  (lunch for low-income with developmental disabilities)

Wesley House Family Services (local match for school readiness program,  $16:$1) 

Burton Memorial United Methodist Church Food (support food pantry)

KAIR Food Pantry (purchase refrigeration and fresh produce and meats)

YMCA (to hire literacy teacher and supplies for summer camp)

Mary, Star of the Sea Food Pantry (food recovery & delivery program  $9:$1)

Grace Jones  (weekend backpack program feeding hungry kids $7: $1)

Anchors Aweigh Club (printed materials purchase for substance abuse recovery)

 In the fall of 2010 we began a review of our application to incorporate our community impact areas and the move toward funding programs rather than organizations.

The revised application for 2011-2012 allocations became available on this website toward the end of December 2011. The accompanying documents required to be submitted along with the completely filled out application included:

• Your organization's  most recent IRS Form 990 to be submitted on disk,
• Your organization's CPA Management Letter
• Current list of your organization's Board Members with addresses, phone numbers and affiliations on disk
• the one page financial report, and your appendix A submittal (see the application package for details)

 The completed applications package were due February 25, 2011. 

To be considered for funding an agency would need to be a 501 (c) 3 health and human service agency in compliance with current state and federal required registrations and providing services in Monroe County, and meet the other criterion listed in the application below.

2011-2012 United Way of the Florida Keys Agency Application:

Cover Letter and Guidelines

Application

Budget Summary

Funding starts at the beginning of May 2011 for the agencies chosen for funding for the 2011-2012 year.  The application will be available on this website in late December 2011 for the 2012-2013 funding year.

Our allocations process (starting with our application for 2010-11 funding) has undergone some changes as our organization has made efforts over the past year to both align with our community impact goals and also move toward a more transparent process. 

As we strive to measure the performance of the agencies we fund, toward meeting specified outcomes so that we can be accountable to donors for the results achieved, we have also began our transition into funding programs rather than organizations.  

We have expanded our allocations committee this year to include more members of the community, and intend to expand it further still for next year's allocation process. Every applicant agency was visited by a team of allocation committee members and had a chance to make their case and show the team members what they do and how they do it.  This has been a crucial avenue for our volunteers to gain a more informed perspective on each organization and ask questions.  

Each volunteer serving on the allocations committee was given clear criterion to be used across the board for every non-profit organization applying in advance of each site visit.  These volunteers are familiar with the funding application from each organization and were provided with the criterion so they could determine what questions still remained to be asked about each organization to get a sense of their efficacy, efficiency and how able they are to conduct the work they are trying to accomplish.

Though it is a work in progress, we are putting together a numeric allocation matrix with each of these criterion formalized and assigned a numeric value. So...based on the application and the site visits, an applicant program will receive say 8 out of a possible 10 points on a particular criterion and some criterion are deemed to be worthy to be more heavily weighted than other criteria.  In the end, each applicant will be analyzed by allocation committee members on the same criteria (for apples to apples comparison) with a point total for each applicant.  

This is a way of formalizing the process a bit, while we recognize that we are comparing very diverse programs for consideration.  We intend to have the criterion (about 20 items) included in the 2012 application along with the point values for each.  In this way, every agency will know how they are being measured.  Being a 501c3 in good standing, serving constituents in the Keys, and providing clear financial data in the form requested is of course a part of that.  Also a part of that criterion to a greater degree than in 2011, is that each program falls within our community impact goals and has a clear, measurable way of reporting back on their progress toward achieving their declared outcomes.

We are providing guidance where necessary to work with applicant organizations to develop the metrics they will report to us moving forward.  We acknowledge that developing metrics that are both meaningful and measurable can be a challenge, but best practices in every sector are pointing in this direction.

These efforts are all to ensure that we are being good stewards of donor funds, which are often highly leveraged thanks to local match requirements on corporate, state or federal grants that many organizations seek outside of our county .  That ability to leverage both volunteers and funds is  a consideration, and will be one of the criterion you'll see published in the next version of the application.