United Way of Erie County

Community Schools - This model is a strategy (not a program) for organizing school and community resources around student success. A community school is both a place and set of partnerships that help address health, wellness and the social needs of its students, families and surrounding neighborhood. Schools become centers of the community, open to everyone, all day, every day, evenings and weekends.

Imagination Library - Provides a high-quality, age-appropriate book to any child in Erie County under the age of five. Also recruits and trains volunteer Reading Buddies who help parents and caregivers better understand how to read and interact with young children.

Allocations and Community Impact - To achieve our mission of breaking the cycle of poverty and improving our community, we support, fund, and facilitate intentional local partnerships working together under the collective impact model to achieve goals of student success from birth and family stability. Collective impact is a framework to address complex social problems and has five key conditions that produce true collaboration and alignment among the many partner agencies and programs: common agenda, shared measurements, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and a backbone organization. As part of its Community Impact work, United Way serves as the backbone for our local efforts. 81.98% of this program's expenses were allocated to agencies and programs in 2023.