In the United Way world, Summit County is seen as a Leader

After my trip to the Brand Forum in late January and last week's regional 'Great Rivers Conference' in Indianapolis that was attended by a large contingent of United Way of Summit County staffers, one of the realizations we've come to is that our organization is far ahead of the curve on many aspects of our work.

Our staff was constantly innundated with questions from people from other communities - asking advice on how have we been able to do this, or how have we been able to achieve those results.

During this week's 'de-brief' meeting, the sentiment was shared again and again 'our work here in Summit County is solid and cutting edge.'

Today, a contingent of our colleagues from Columbus are visiting us to chat with Beth Houseman and discover how she has gotten 'BornLearning' up and running here with Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority.

United Way of the Bluegrass in Lexington, Kentucky is doing a survey of successful United Ways of similar populations, and we're included in their sample. I just filled out their questionaire, and I know that similar questions will be asked of leaders in other departments. We're very much looking forward to seeing the results of the benchmarking survey results when they're captured by the folks in Lexington.

Because while we're proud of the work we do and how well we do it, we're not satisfied, and we're always striving to do better. Perhaps there are ideas from other United Ways that we can incorporate here into our work.