 Welcome to INSIGHT, produced in partnership with Lakeland Public Television serving North Central Minnesota. Today we are chatting with Danea Alamano, Executive Director of United Way of Bemidji Area. Danea has generously agreed to share some of her experience with us. Thank you Danea for joining us today. Thank you for having me. United Way as a national organization with regional offices is such a fascinating organization. Talk about United Way here in Bemidji here in North Central Minnesota. Sure. I think the unique part about United Way is that it's its own, you know, every United Way is its own 501C3. So we get to be whatever our community needs us to be. And here in Bemidji, 99% of funds raised here stay locally right here in Bemidji. And our mission is to mobilize the caring power of the community through giving. And I think that there's many different ways that we're able to do that. We benefit both the business and the, or the giver, the business and the giver and also the agency in that for a business they can give to one place and they're giving to everyone and are sure that where those funds are allocated is where they need to be in our community. And then for the agency you hope that by providing funding they're getting to spend more time on their programming and less time on fundraising. And this is so much the strength of United Way, particularly in rural America, in that it is the strength of the community that is dedicated to strengthening the community itself. Talk about how you function as an intermediary to assure people who give that their money is going to be used wisely and to help the people who receive the funds provide their services in a way that again connect not only to the constituents but also draw the giver into their constituency base. Every spring our investment cabinet comes together and there's 16 people on the investment cabinet and they spend six weeks allocating funds with about 30 hours of volunteer hours in that six-week time period. So to go through the process those 16 people are broken down into teams of eight and each receive about four applications that those are their responsibility to know in depth, to know the finances in depth, to read through their application, they set up interviews to go on site. And these are the organizations that prospectively will receive funds. Yes and they have to be a 501c3 non-profit here in the Bemidji area and we cover it within the school district. You have people who are functioning as investment advisors and decision makers. So they are coming in as people who are looking at a portfolio of activities and deciding which of those portfolio of activities will have the biggest bang for the buck, which balances the kinds of investments that United Way makes and which investments will provide the greatest impact on the community. Talk about how that process works. Does everybody undertake their analysis in an idiosyncratic way or do you have certain standards by which you measure, by which you guide people in making those decisions? Well the process once the investment cabinet is given their assigned agencies, they go out on a non-site interview to ask to talk to both the director and a board member and see the facility themselves come back and spend five hours literally five hours discussing how everyone's interview went. It's about on an average it's about 30 applications that we receive every year and and then after that we ask any new agencies or any agencies we still have questions for to come back for a full cabinet interview. After those interviews are done each individual cabinet member sends me their recommendations. We put that all in a spreadsheet they all come back and we have another five hour meeting deciding on the actual amounts that each agency will receive based on how their financials are maybe they're they're financially well off this year so they don't need as much funding as they needed the year before and maybe they're in major need of of even closing and really need our help to to get their programming keep their programming going and then that is then presented to our board of directors and they approve or or have the cabinet come back together and look at the financials one more time. One of our biggest programs is our backpack buddies program. Talk about that. Yeah we we give we give food to children elementary aged children on the weekends or holiday breaks who wouldn't otherwise have access to nutritious food so a food pack is non-perishable it fits inside their backpack as a backpack buddy and it's nutritionally balanced. Teachers are the ones identifying these students. We're not we're not linking ourselves to any programs that the school has for lunch or breakfast but more these are the kids that really really need our support so there are 200 kids in four elementary schools that are receiving a backpack buddy two backpack buddies one for Saturday one for Sunday every week those 200 kids are are getting that and then holidays we we pass them out a little more frequently so they're getting you know the last week they might have a backpack buddy every week. We even let teachers decide you know if if you know a seven-year-old has a three-year-old sister at home will often give an extra food pack just to make sure that the whole thing you know the family has enough food for the weekend. It's so interesting because it's it's basically a gap in the type of programs it's not a program that is large enough to have its own organization so you basically created a program that you administer yourself easy to do logistically fairly lean but it was it was a way where you could take the resources that are contributed to United Way and on a on a pass through basis basically utilizing the good graces of teachers and the intelligence that they collect to ensure that that appropriate support goes directly to children. Right right and then and so every school year those students are identified for the school year it's not the same students all the time even just based off of how their needs change and how their family structure changes. How was that program conceived and how long has it existed? I think it's been around for six or seven years and it has always had about 200 children as far as I can tell that are in need in the program. Any other programs that you self-administered? Yeah we have holiday gifts for kids and we're giving between six and seven hundred children a gift for the Christmas time of year. We have a distribution day where we all the gifts and all the funds we raised to buy gifts are are out and parents sign up beforehand to come and shop for their child or children on that day and it's really just an amazing day because you get to we all we have a volunteer walking with each each parent that's or guardian that's coming through and we pull out our bigger gifts like throughout the day so you know if you don't have to be there right at opening to get the best gifts it's it's throughout the day and I had a lot of different duties my first time doing this just this last year but there was one lady I was walking through and her her husband had just left her she is a stay-at-home mom she she her pride was shot having to come to this and we're walking through and out comes a bike and she got to she got to take the bike home and was just beside herself and I was just such a neat experience to watch you know just watch the impact that that program's making on people here. Another program we we have is our volunteer Bemidji website so we offer to the to any organization it could be Rotary or one of our agencies for example can have a spot on our site where they can ask volunteers to you know volunteers come and look at the site every day and they can sign up for different events one day events that that need volunteers for on that day so that site's called volunteer Bemidji.org and it has really served a need in our community. Another program is our someone special program where our different nonprofit agencies are welcome to nominate volunteers that they have in the community that they want to recognize and they're on in the newspaper on the radio and then receive a really nice plaque from Ken K. Thompson here in town just to say thank you for all their great work. Is United Way and the way United Way looks at these investments is this also a matter of economic development in the area where you're priming the pump you're you're helping people who need help and then that actually enables the growth of the area. That's definitely the hope I think you know with our focus and listening to our cabinet talk about different agencies and it always came back to but we have to meet those basic needs for people to thrive and be able to hold a job or learn when they're in school or whatever it might be we have to if you can eat you can learn right if you if you are not in pain because you do receive health care you can contribute if you're not on drugs you can work. Exactly exactly and if you are educated you can get a job and you can start to create and and see how you can help others as you progress through your life. Right right and so many agencies are doing so many amazing things in our community it's such a driving force for me to want to grow and want to help them and and want them to be able to continue to do their programming like I said before rather than having to focus so much on the fundraising I would I would love to close that gap and make sure that they are getting to actually make that impact for other people. Dinea Alamano thank you so much for sharing the experience of United Way of Bemidji Area and thank you so much for your insights.