 It's The Cube. Coming to you from San Jose, California. Here's your host, Jeff Rick. Hi, Jeff Rick here with The Cube. We're on the ground at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, California at the Silicon Valley Business Journal Corporate Philanthropy Awards. It's a mouthful. It's a great event here celebrating 50 corporations and the money they get back to the community via funding and contributions. It's also an opportunity for the nonprofits to come out and really put a face to the name and really showcase what they're working on. So I'm happy to be joined here by Jeff Ogden from United Way. Welcome. Thank you. Glad to be here. So United Way is a big organization. I'm sure you're probably from a little more of a local affiliate. So give us a little update. Yes, United Way Silicon Valley is local here in San Clara County. We're focused on helping individuals here really become self-sufficient and live a better life. Silicon Valley is an expensive place to live and work. And we want to help families kind of get that extra edge when they need to help. So give us kind of some of the numbers, the scale of your outreach, how many people are you helping, how big is your organization, how long have you been around. One of United Way's biggest programs we have is Silicon Valley 211. And so individuals can call 211 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It's confidential, it's free, and it allows them to connect them to a service that they may not otherwise know is out there in the community. Last year we had over 60,000 referrals just through 211. So something as simple as somebody maybe need rental assistance, utility assistance. Maybe they don't have enough food. Or it can be something as serious as domestic violence and they need to get out of the home today, now. And so they can call 211 and that can help them. So that's one of our premier programs. 211, so they can just pick up any phone 211. Pick up any phone dial 211. Is that a national program? It is a national program. And even if they're not here in Silicon Valley or in San Clara County and they dial 211, one of the first questions the operator asks them is, what's your zip code? So they can help direct them to the right services within their zip code. It's a great program. So are you brokering other people's services as well, or is that a suite of services within the stuff that you guys provide? We're really the brokerage. So we're kind of the cleaning house, helping people connect them to the services that are available. So if all of a sudden you need assistance of any kind of magnitude, you probably don't know where to turn for the first time. If it's specific, it's the first time you've ever needed assistance. So 211 and now is them to connect them directly to that service. They don't have to pick up the phone and dial four or five, six different numbers just to find that right service that they need. And how many people are coming through that program a year? Last year we had over 60,000 referrals, making sure families stayed prevented homelessness, making sure they got food on the table, rental assistance, utility assistance, and legal assistance, helping connect seniors to legal services so they're not ripped off. The phone calls are ridiculous. They're ripped off. You told me to call you back. Yes. And you just know the old people are very easily taken by some of this stuff. Very much so. A majority of seniors are on fixed incomes, and so a lot of legal issues affect them. And so this enables seniors to get connected to free legal services here in Silicon Valley. So talk a little bit about corporate philanthropy and how that plays into your guys' fundraising and support. For United Way it's very important. We partner with, here locally, over 250 different corporate partners that's helped support us in the work we're doing. So the work we do could not be done without the support of the local corporations and the companies and their employees. Obviously, the corporate contributions are important, but allowing their employees to get back through the workplace is the most effective, efficient way to get money to nonprofits. And so when companies allow that to happen, more money goes into the community. So we're really appreciative of that. And you guys are one of the first, right, direct contribution models to the company. Yeah, we're the original. We're the original. We're the old school. But we also are new and we're innovative. We have new programs, new ideas, new things always happening. So it's great that we're able to partner with today's newest companies and some of the ones that have been around for, you know, 100 years. IBM is over 100 years old and we're still partnering with them. So I'll give you the last word. Where should people go to help to contribute? How do they get involved? If they want to get involved, they can go to unitedwaysiliconvalley.org. Or they can also just go to 211sc.org or pick up the phone and dial 211. Great. Well, thanks, Jeff, for stopping by. Jeff Frick, we're on the ground at the Fairmont Hotel in Silicon Valley, actually downtown San Jose, at the Silicon Valley Business Journal corporate philanthropy awards.