United Way Suncoast

Financial stability:conditions - United Way Suncoast's 2023 alice report revealed that asset limited, income constrained employed households make up 45 percent of all households in our five-county region. The research didn't come as a surprise, and from every indication, the challenges facing these families continue to grow with average rental rates rising and 1 in 4 households in our alice zones of focus utilizing snap benefits. Alice families count the days between paychecks, hoping to make it to the next payday. Alice families span all races, ages, ethnicities, and abilities. (continued on schedule o)alice families often work two or more jobs and still cannot pay the bills. Alice families live a life of struggle but our communities can't live without them. Against this backdrop, our organization knows it must be diligent in its efforts to eliminate economic barriers and give families the "freedom to rise. "investments - to fill the economic gaps and eliminate barriers in fy2023, United Way Suncoast utilized its own initiatives, programs in its neighborhood resource centers and collaborations with strategic community partners. Overall, uws invested $4.9 million in its financial stability initiatives.the efforts included:- the eviction mitigation program that helped residents stay in their homes.- volunteer income tax assistance (vita) program that provides free tax preparation to qualified households- bank on, an initiative that provides access to safe and affordable accounts to the unbanked and the underbanked.- financial coaching, an initiative that provides an experienced coach to assist individuals in reaching their financial goals.- money matters, a monthly virtual financial literacy series.- neighborhood resource center offerings including employment services, legal advice, family support, computer lab access, homeowner and contractor resources, notary services, and case management. Impacts - as with much of our work, United Way Suncoast utilized strategic precision in its financial stability efforts, concentrating on zip codes of focus where the need is greatest.consider our success with vita, which processed close to 10,000 tax returns through the five-county region with 45 percent of those in uws zip codes of focus. Overall, vita brought back $10 million in refunds and saved fees with an additional $3.8 million in earned income and child tax credits.our eviction mitigation effort helped more than 6,000 people stay in their homes or find new stable housing, a success rate of 91 percent.the bank on program has generated more than 12,000 accounts since 2020,and continues to be a tool to help community members build credit.our neighborhood centers tripled its number of visitors in fy2023, connecting more than 2,800 people to needed services.collectively, uws and our partners put 800 people on a path to post-secondary success, helping them work towards earning certificates or higher education degrees. More than 2,400 people were placed in a job or promoted/given a raise.

Community support services:united we serve (volunteers) - volunteer action is a key part of United Way's mission, and with United we serve, our philanthropic engagement team creates opportunities throughout the year with its monthly engagement opportunities. We started the fiscal year in the community with pop-up volunteer events to bring awareness to the 9/11 day of remembrance, a moment to support others in tribute to those killed and injured on september 11, 2001, first responders and the countless others who serve to defend the nation's freedom at home and around the world. From there, we rallied the community to support those affected by hurricane ian through volunteerism and donation supply drives to respond to the needs throughout our region. (continued on schedule o)we welcomed volunteers to stuff the bus in manatee county in a publix partnership that put food on the shelves of the meals on wheels plus food pantry. We created opportunities for volunteers to compose kits for veterans, distribute meals during the holidays and showcase their care for the community during the mlk day of service. They did not disappoint. In april, they laced up their sneakers for the 5k on the runway at tampa international airport, raising more than $86,000 for our work. That event proved to be the unofficial start of our week of caring, the region's largest volunteer initiative connecting hands-on service with organizations and individuals in need. The celebration of community service inspired 414 volunteers to complete 51 projects for 26 organizations. The work extended to more than 1,100 hours, delivering a value of $37,079.united we lead - when United Way Suncoast invests in community, it invests in outcomes. We're currently fulfilling a three-year, $18 million commitment to 100 programs that support early learning, youth success and financial stability. With each program we've implemented accountability measures that target objectives. There's no better Way to steward the dollars entrusted to us, and there's no better Way to show our support for our strategic community partners.however, to achieve higher quality community impact, our investment strategy must go further. It has to include supporting the development and growth of the people running our partner programs as well as finding ways to eliminate the administrative and knowledge barriers they face. In fy 2023, we continued to initiate a visionary pilot program to increase the capacity of nonprofit partners. Utilizing a series of workshops and monthly coaching sessions, we've yielded remarkable results. We've already seen partners leverage our resources to win new grants, reduce inefficiencies, improve internal communication and collaboration, and impact more people more deeply. In fy2024, we will look to take the next step with the resiliency institute, a game-changing effort that will build on these principles.

Early learning and youth success:early learningconditions - america and the Suncoast region continue to grapple with the childcare crisis. Parents struggle to find access to quality, affordable childcare, and the costs continue to be debilitating for alice families. In our five-county region, the annual average cost for a year of childcare for a non-infant is higher than a year of tuition at the university of south Florida. Meanwhile, childcare centers deal with a challenging business model that limits how much they can pay early learning teachers. (continued on schedule o)the crisis diminishes the number of preschoolers ready for kindergarten, and that impacts the number of students reading on level by the end of third grade. The impact of the pandemic remains a factor as the education system strives to improve both kindergarten readiness and third grade literacy.investments - with 90 percent of brain development occurring between birth and 5 years, and third grade reading representing an indicator of long-term academic success, we know we must continue to focus on these developmental aspects. In fy2023, United Way Suncoast did just that with a multi-pronged approach. We extended our quality childcare initiative to now include 53 preschools across our five-county footprint. Qci includes professional development and environmental support for childcare centers. The campbell park network for early learning, which focuses specifically on south st. petersburg, also provides classroom materials along with coaching for teachers and weekly play instruction for caregivers and children. In addition, we distributed more than 35 united4literacy kits across the region to support play-based learning for 35-year-olds. Another component of our work is preschool behavior support programs in 4 of 5 counties. In terms of third-grade literacy, we partner with our school districts to provide paraprofessionals in four of our five school districts and we expanded our elementary support to 34 schools of focus. In addition, we continued our highly successful summer care program by providing more than 600 scholarships for children to attend high quality camp experiences and literacy support (bridge curriculum and tutoring) to combat summer learning loss. Overall, we invested $4.4 million into improving kindergarten readiness, increasing grade level reading, and removing barriers to education access.impact - early learning and education remain a dynamic tool - maybe our best tool - to help create generational wealth, lift up families and create a better world for every student. Increasing access and the equity of quality childcare stands as one of the best ways to improve communities. For United Way Suncoast, that improvement is reflected in the fact that nearly 6,000 children between the ages of 0-5 demonstrated age-appropriate communication, vocabulary and/or other early literacy skills or progress. More than 6,000 third grade students achieved the goal of reading on grade level or are set on the path to achieve that benchmark within the next year.our summer care program also enjoyed success, where 83 percent of our students maintained or grew their academic skills over the summer through these programs.in addition, we took on barriers to school readiness by generating food support to 10,451 households through our school-based food distribution partners. We also helped nearly 4,000 students receive support for asthma, dental, vision and hearing loss issues.

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