Hello and welcome to your United Way pledging tutorial with United Way of Greater Philadelphia in Southern New Jersey. First of all, thank you so so much for considering a gift to United Way. It's generosity like yours that powers our mission to end intergenerational poverty here in Southeast Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey. And in recognition of that fact, we want to make this as easy and straightforward as it can possibly be for you. So today we're gonna walk through the pledging process starting with that all important question of why, why we do what we do, which is our mission to end intergenerational poverty here in our region, but then move on to questions of how, what, where, and who? So let's get started. First of all, you're gonna find yourself in E-Pledge by a couple of different means, you may receive a direct link sent straight to your work inbox or you may have to fill out a quick form to confirm your identity. But whatever the case may be, you're gonna find yourself in E-pledge right here and confronting your first real question, which is how would you like to give and you have some great options available to you. You have a gift by credit card you can give by electronic check. You can choose to receive a bill in the mail. But for today's purposes, we're gonna assume you want to make a gift by payroll deduction for reasons we're gonna talk about in a moment. This is uh what most people choose, but you should know you have other options available to you as well. If you want to make a gift of stock or bonds, if you have a donor advised fund or if you want to make a gift of some kind of tangible asset or in kind goods, you can always reach out to us at donor services at Unitedforimpact.org and we're gonna be happy to help you out. Now, let's move on answering this question How payroll deduction. Now, what, what would I like to give this year? Now, you have three fields here that are gonna add up to an answer to that question. Our second field is going be pay periods per year. This may or may not be set by your employer. So we're going to take that as given, we're gonna assume you have a simple biweekly pay scale 26 pays per year over a full calendar. We're gonna focus instead on these two other fields, deductions per and total annual pledge and these fields are linked. So let's say you ask yourself the simple intuitive, honest financial question. How much can I really afford to set aside from a given paycheck to invest in my community? And that's a personal choice that is up to every individual. But let's say you do ask yourself that question and the answer turns out to be, 20 bucks, which is a very generous gift. And thank you very much. If you want to give it this low $20 per pay becomes $10 a week at this rate, which adds up to $520 by the end of the year. And here we see the value of giving by payroll deduction. This is why this is still our most popular way to give because it is so accessible, it's so easy. Because what this does is most folks would maybe be hard pressed to make a gift of $520 straight from their checking account. But by working toward that total over the course of a full year, $20 at a time, it puts that kind of a gift more within reach. So you can make a contribution proportional to your commitment to a cause or organization of your choice. But you also have the ability to go the other way around. Let's say you want to make a flat gift of $500 this year and work toward it by whatever rate makes sense. And E-Pledge is gonna and tell you what that rate is. So when the new deduction cycle starts, if you want to reach $500 you're gonna be able to check your pay stub and see. Yes, $19.23 sent straight to United Way for investment in the community. Now that answers the, what question, what do I want to give $500 this year? $19.23 at a time. So what about where and where is really where e-pledge shines because you have an incredible amount of control over how your money actually reaches the community. So by default, a gift to United Way is gonna go to our Impact Fund. This is our general fund from which we distribute grants to a whole host of nonprofit partners active in all areas of the fight against intergenerational poverty throughout our region. And we have the areas listed here. We have early learning, career pathways, financial empowerment and community resiliency. Now, a gift to the Impact Fund is the most encouraged way to give because this allows us to target the area of greatest need so we can identify opportunities or risks so that your dollars can have the biggest impact they possibly can match need that exists in the community. But let's say that you want to target your gift. You want it to be a little bit more personal to you, your experience or your understanding of what the community really needs. And thank you for leveraging that insight. So let's say you wanna make a gift of $250 to early learning, you can split your gift like so or you could split your gift between. So let's say you want the kids to learn to read. We also want them to be able to get jobs. We can absolutely facilitate that. And what this is going to do is it's going to earmark $250 in each of these two pillars. This will be invested specifically in work geared towards serving the youth of Philadelphia and helping connect youth and adults with work opportunities. Now, this is a great way to give as well. So we have our impact fund, we have our four pillars, but we also have a third option available to us. And if we scroll down, we're going to find that here. This is our donor choice list. This is a searchable database of over 17,000 organizations um that you can give to through your United Way campaign. Now, let's search just one man. I main is a trusted partner of ours. It's a, a local food bank based in Lansdale P A. But I should note that while a gift to United Way is going to stay local to us, it's gonna stay in your community benefit, your region. A gift through United Way, which is this third option here, straight to a third party organization is not going to be so restricted. So you as an individual donor absolutely have the freedom to give to an organization outside of our footprint. What that means is that you just want to make sure that this is the Manna on main street that's in Lansdale PA and on a similarly named organization in California or Alaska or whatever the case may be. So let's say we're gonna split our gift between the Impact Fund and Manna on main street. And if you choose to give that way, thank you very much. But let's say that you are going mad with power today.. You just wanna give and give and give and you get a little carried away. You wanna give to Philabundance too, Philabundance being another trusted local food bank and you're going to also give $250 to them except there's a problem. E-pledge is going tell you hold on their buddy. This very literally does not add up. You got carried away. And what's not going to happen is E- pledge is going to choose the larger gift. We're not gonna double bill you. We're gonna say you may wanna check your math. So you're gonna be able to adjust either your total gift here or the target of your gift here. We'll say see you next year, Philabundance or you can make a direct gift to them if you so choose and we're gonna stick with our $20 our 250/250 split between the Impact Fund and one of our donor choice agencies that answers the question of where, which brings us to the last question of who and that, who is you here? You're gonna provide if you so choose some identifying information that's gonna help us clarify any potential clerical confusion with your employer and link this gift to your um account. This is totally voluntary. Your work email will be filled in here. This is just a little extra so you can just go down here and click confirm and that is gonna conclude your pledge for this year. Thank you very, very much. I hope this has been helpful. If you do have more questions, you can always reach out to us at donor services at Unitedfor impact.org with your help. We can make a difference. Have a great day.
