The 2024 Prairieland United Way annual fundraising campaign has successfully concluded.
Executive Director Karen Walker says the Just Imagine campaign chaired by Kevin Eckhoff and Jodee Nell exceeded its goal of $470,000: “Actually, the beginning of [last] week, we got our final reports in and got some final contributions in. I’m happy to report that we have not only met our goal but exceeded our goal. I’m very happy to report that it’s by a substantial margin. We’re excited that we are going to have even more money to give out to our community when it comes to allocations, which will be coming up in a couple of weeks. Our goal this year was $470,000, and we actually went over $490,000 – so it’s a huge, huge number for us. We’ve not been over that total in a number of years.”
The exact final total released on Thursday was $492,655.
Walker says that some memorials and some new fundraisers for the campaign helped the campaign get beyond its goal. She says that the campaign and board never count on those one-time contributions each year when they go on to determine their goal for the following year’s campaign.
Allocation meetings will begin in a couple weeks. Requests are up by almost $30,000 compared to last year from area organizations, according to Walker. She says some of the area non-profits are experiencing uncertainty with state and federal funding, which is indicative of higher operation costs: “Per my conversations with our agencies, what some of them are seeing is maybe more need – especially some of those that rely on state and federal funding, some delays in getting their payments to come through. That’s been an issue. Some having to rely on maybe take out some loans to cover operating expenses. In talking with some of our food programs, they are seeing some increase in costs above what they have already seen. Yeah, there is some concern in what the future might look like for them. Certainly, we know that we have an outstanding community that will rise to the occasion and do what we can to help meet those needs and try to make sure that we take care of our citizens. We are very fortunate in that we all pull together and do what we can to help in any way that we can.”
As far as raising the bar next year, Walker says that some of the unexpected gifts and new fundraisers may not be available next year to contribute to the campaign. She says that planning for next year’s campaign will begin in mid-to-late summer. She says that the United Way board will try to find a perfect balance for the upcoming 2025 campaign.
Prairieland United Way’s annual meeting is scheduled for April 9th. More information about the meeting is expected to come out later this month.