It's Time for United Ways to get out of the Kiddie Pool
Growing up in Indiana, the best part of summer was when our neighborhood pool opened up. Every week my mom would load me and my siblings into the car for the 2-minute drive to the pool where we would immediately run into the water. There was only one problem. I didn’t learn how to swim until I was around 10.
This, of course, left me stranded in the dreaded “shallow end” of the pool with my younger sister or, even worse, in the kiddie pool with my mom and my two youngest siblings. I would stare longingly at the grown-up kids splashing in the deep end, wishing I was there as I stood in the ankle-deep water of the kiddie pool.
The reason this memory came back to me is because I’ve recently been reflecting on a popular phrase: a mile wide and an inch deep. The reason I hated the kiddie pool was because there was no substance to it. I couldn’t get that amazing feeling of floating and being suspended in water, my feet unable to touch the bottom. And as I thought about my childhood experience, I realized that, like 10-year-old me, there are United Ways still in the kiddie pool.
The problem with being a mile wide and an inch deep is that you never really cover anything with any depth. Rather, there is merely a shallow coverage of everything. United Ways for years have been funding “impact categories” or “focus areas,” the most popular being: income, education, and health. All of which are great things that are very much needed in communities around the country. The thing is YOU don’t have to tackle all of them. It is impossible to do all of them with any depth.
There are many things your community needs. But at the end of the day, focusing all of your energy on one issue and making impactful and meaningful change does so much more than spreading yourself thin trying to band-aid over every issue. By focusing on one issue, you are able to dig deep into the root causes of that issue and convene the community to help fix the problem in a holistic way that changes lives permanently.
Leaving the kiddie pool can be scary, even if you desperately want to be in the deep end. I remember being terrified when I finally realized if I ever wanted to swim with the big kids, I would simply have to jump in. But here’s the thing – I wasn’t alone. My dad was there in the water, ready to catch me and to help me swim until I could do it alone. Likewise, Perspectives is here to guide you as well.
In our up-coming webinar United Way Survival Guide: How to Keep Your United Way from Dying we will go over how you can make deep, meaningful change in your community by focusing on one issue. We will show you the process while also highlighting other United Ways who have been swimming laps in the deep end for years with their issue focus.
Join us on January 20, 2021 at 2 P.M. EST for this free webinar