United Way of Summit and Medina

Summit county cares - by march of 2020, it was clear that the community needed to develop a system for channeling state and federal aid to the Summit county residents most affected by the historic economic recession triggered by the covid-19 pandemic. The county of Summit designed Summit county cares, a consortium of uwsm and several other community partners, as the front door for residents to access rent, mortgage, and utility assistance. Uwsm took a lead role in administering the cares program, with agency staff coordinating workflow and caseloads among community partners, processing applications while providing case management to affected tenants and landlords, and disbursing all assistance checks. This tremendous effort involved the majority of the agency's staff and resulted in the redirection and training of several staff members and teams to assist with cases, the hiring of several temporary staff members to assist with various program components and, over the program's first two phases, the distribution of 24 times the amount of housing assistance that uwsm typically handles in a year. Since the launch of Summit county cares, cares was responsible for providing over 23,982 rent, utility and mortgage payments and over $68m. 58% of applicants were african american, 74% were women, and 43% of the households served had school aged children. This is particularly important, as it has long been documented that single black mothers disproportionately face eviction.

Housing services - our housing services department serves as the community's front door and central intake for hud-funded shelters and permanent supportive housing programs in Summit county as well as the local continuum of care for addressing homelessness in the community. Our housing services program administers the community's homeless management information system and oversees data collection for homelessness in the community while also offering our own suite of services to rapidly rehouse homeless residents of the community and to prevent homelessness for those threatened by it. Over the course of this year, the program provided 385 instances of rental/security deposit assistance. Our central intake, which serves as the front door point of contact for housing services throughout the community, served 2,420 total households, including 2,698 adults and 1,658 children. Our own rapid rehousing program rehoused 260 households and our homeless prevention program served 345 households. Additionally, housing services secured funding to expand its services to uwsm's family resource centers, thereby broadening wrap-around services for families with school aged children. We also incorporated diversion, a more intensive, robust, and client-driven service intervention, as a practice in centralized intake. This required a complete procedural redesign and expanded housing services' collaboration with 2-1-1.

Community impact - community impact is the effort to align resources around common strategies to accomplish bold goals. Uwsm brings together non-profit agencies, government agencies, topical experts, volunteers and funders to plan and work collaboratively toward achieving community-wide objectives. As part of that effort, we invest resources in nonprofit agencies, internal programming, and volunteer activities that have a track record of improving education, income, and health in Summit and Medina counties.

Family resource centers (frc) - the frcs provide and support coordinated programs/services for students and families that reduce barriers to learning while promoting family engagement, reading proficiency, and early grades attendance. In fy20, uwsm, in partnership with akron public schools, launched family resource centers in robinson and helen arnold community learning centers. Then, at the end of fy21, uwsm launched a third frc at mcebright community learning center. In fye22, uwsm launched its fourth frc at north community learning center. This frc is our first within grades 9-12. A partnership with United Way worldwide and doordash expanded to deliver food and school supplies to families within our frcs. As part of a strategy to offer uwsm's full ecosystems of services at the frcs, housing services case managers and financial coaches are scheduled onsite at the centers to provide housing assistance, financial coaching, and tax preparation services.

2-1-1 - uwsm's 2-1-1 program connects people in need with services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, providing referrals by phone and text and through the 2-1-1 online resource database. 2-1-1 also plays a key role in providing service coordination among uwsm's other services, initiatives, and programs. In fy22, 2-1-1 continues to take on services for a total of nine counties (Summit, Medina, carroll, harrison, jefferson, lorain, portage, stark, and tuscarawas counties). In all, the 2-1-1 line handled 76,822 calls, 1,354 texts, and 115,221 database searches in Summit & Medina counties. 2-1-1 truly has become the entry point to services throughout our community.

Diversity, equity & inclusion (dei) - uwsm firmly believes that we cannot build a better future for our community unless we build it together. Our dei programming includes bridges Summit county, poverty simulations, and various dei workshops including implicit bias. Bridges provides a framework to help employers, community organizations, social service agencies, and individuals learn how to effectively reach and support adults and families who are striving to go from financial dependence to independence. Our implicit bias workshop discusses the understanding and implications of how our unconscious thoughts drive our attitudes, stereotypes, decisions, and ultimately discriminatory actions towards individuals and groups, and how we might become more aware and mitigate our biases. With covid-19 taking place during this fiscal year, we were able to shift to completely virtual workshops. As a result, 951 people attended our 29 community dei workshops to ensure heightened awareness of the mission for dei in our community. Also during the fiscal year, we continued building infrastructure around wrapping our dei services with our agency partners - particularly by offering additional workshops and trainings and connecting organizations to external dei resources and support systems. Uwsm also formed an internal dei committee, comprised of board, staff, and community members that provides advisory support for internal and external dei initiatives. Due to the pandemic, our poverty simulations were suspended as we could not adequately recreate the experience virtually. However, we anticipate that programming to resume during fy22.

Financial empowerment centers - the akron financial empowerment center (fec) is a program of the city of akron in partnership with United Way. The fec provides professional, one-on-one financial counseling as a free public service to enable residents to address their financial challenges and needs as well as plan for their futures. Fec clients receive free assistance with money management, budgeting, reducing debt, establishing and improving credit, connecting to safe and affordable banking services, building savings, and referrals to other services and organizations. Professionally trained counselors support their clients in navigating complex financial challenges and choices, helping them identify and meet present challenges and future ambitions. Bank on rubber city leverages municipal engagement to improve the financial stability of households with low and moderate incomes by embedding financial empowerment strategies into local government infrastructure. Since the launch of the fecs in june of 2018 we have provided over 10,213 one on one financial coaching sessions, 4,057 individuals are on the path to financial empowerment. In addition, through our fec work, uwsm operates under the umbrella a program known as volunteer tax assistance (vita). Last year, volunteers through uwsm performed over 2000 taxes, returned nearly $2.5m back directly to our clients through federal & state refunds, and provided $496,000 of tax preparation savings to our clients.

College & career academy of akron - uwsm works in partnership with akron public schools' college and career academies, securing partnerships with local businesses, government, and other community organizations to provide relevant, experiential learning and resources for students. All core academic courses are taught through the lens of students' interest areas, thereby developing essential communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and technical skills. Together, our goal is to graduate academically prepared, well-rounded students with a skill set that meets the talent needs of our community's employers.