Kenneth S. Robinson. Photo courtesy United Way of the Mid-South.
Last month, United Way of the Mid-South (UWMS) marked the end of its 95th anniversary celebrations. As it approaches its centennial, the organization is going strong under the leadership of president and CEO Dr. Kenneth S. Robinson, who has synthesized his past experience in medicine and as a pastor at St. Andrew AME Church to find innovative ways to tackle the poverty issue in Memphis. The "Driving the Dream" initiative, piloted by Robinson and exclusive to the UWMS branch, is the flagship program that encompasses many community assets and corporations to present a united front for families in need. At their new headquarters in The Heights, a community north of the Summer/Graham area, Memphis magazine sat down with Robinson and chief communications and engagement officer, Lori Spicer-Robertson, to discuss United Way’s role in the community, the 95th anniversary, and how the organization looks to evolve.
MM: Your new headquarters are located in The Heights. Why is it important for United Way of the Mid-South to be based in an area like this?
Robinson: Thinking about the work that we do, it is much more purposeful for us to be in this community because The Heights is definitely a distressed community, but one with potential. So, there are lots of community assets around us that we work with. With United Way hubbed here, it enables us to kind of spill out into the community and utilize these different resources that people can use and heighten the awareness of the neighborhood through work with Jared Myers at The Heights CDC [community development corporation], and then with other neighborhoods, using perhaps our relationship with the Binghampton Development Corporation as an example. People may not have known that those resources were available before, but I think now with us sitting here, they have much more awareness of community-specific assets.
Have there been any growing pains while adjusting to the new building?
Robinson: I think we’re still in transition, but this building was a great gift. We’ve made plenty of infrastructure upgrades, and we’re continuously challenged because we now own a property and have to maintain the building.
However, owning the building saves us upward of $250,000 a year compared to the cost of leasing a space. And beyond that, it extends an extraordinary message to this community that we are a real, corporate partner in the middle of a real community with real individuals, and some distressed areas. It speaks volumes about what United Way should be doing, and that’s really impacting the community.
The building itself is a very comfortable place for corporate partners to come for meetings or other events. On the second floor, we lease office space below market rates, and currently have openings. That is available for small companies and nonprofits, and we see that as part of supporting the local economic development agenda. While we primarily work with individuals and families, we also like to support small businesses and nonprofits.
Can you talk about the efforts behind United Way’s main initiative, “Driving the Dream”?
Robinson: We have a footprint that allows us to be very impactful and influential. We don’t provide direct services; rather, we empower and support the agencies that are doing the work. “Driving the Dream” is an extraordinary coordinated, functional network of support services for people that are moving thematically from where they are to where they dream to be.
What we’re doing is connecting the dots among agencies and programs and services across a huge array of quality-of-life domains. We help not only agencies be more effective in finding and making referrals for their clients, but primarily helping individuals who have a multitude of needs, driving their capacity to sketch out where they need to go, what they want to do, where they want to go in terms of getting to a place of economic self-sufficiency. It’s crucial for individuals who struggle to find all the services they and their families need, and this is particularly challenging for families who live in poverty. Before, they had to self-navigate. [We are] connecting the dots and creating this network of agencies working together, using the same sort of approach — agencies that use common intake and assessment tools, and agencies that are entering data (with the client’s permission) about individuals. Agencies do the hand-off and facilitate it being possible for families to move from one agency to the next.
What has United Way done to commemorate its 95th anniversary?
Spicer-Robertson: Second quarter, we opened with our “Night to Unite” anniversary party, so we invited all of our current stakeholders as well as individuals who have not touched the footprint of United Way. It was a great event held Downtown, and 500 or so people who showed up to celebrate our community impact in Memphis. I think as we have looked over this past year, we also wanted to highlight some of this work. And so what has our community impact looked like? What has it meant? There was heavy partnership with our internal team to make sure we were sharing that story externally and really helping drive the work that we’re doing in driving that dream as we look beyond our 95 years.
We really started the celebration last year in 2018. But as we celebrate, we have to recognize that we have to evolve as the world evolves around us. We gave to great programs in the past, so how do we streamline our targets and our dollars? How do we scale this so that we have a larger impact going forward?
Recently, we marked the 50th anniversary of Dr. King. Our entire city had to take a look, and some people said that we’re worse off than we were before. If we’re looking to advance lives, how do we work to move that mission forward beyond these 95 years? It’s really the efforts from our aligned grant-making. We can’t do it just by plugging in money all over the community. We really have to streamline our focus and say ‘this is what we’re intentional about, this is what we need our partners to come to the table for,’ and then we can progress.
What is the organization planning while looking ahead to the 100th anniversary?
Spicer-Robertson: We have a new board member, Roland Cruickshank, who is the president of Methodist University Hospital. When he first came he was excited about doing something for the 95th, but he challenged us about what we were doing for the 100th. After great momentum and excitement from the ‘Night to Unite’ party, our focus is to see how we can really resonate our community impact and how we drive the dream. Over the next four years, how do we showcase this work and pull in more and more people so they know how valuable this system of care is not just to individuals and families, but to our network of service agents.
Robinson: The future for us is to continue creating linkages, not just to service agencies, but to other sectors that are also commonly addressing the same kinds of families, such as the healthcare sector. We announced in April a partnership with BlueCare. They understand that their health outcomes are absolutely impacted by the social determinants of health. So we’ve got another sector that is not our area of expertise, we don’t do healthcare, but they understand that the wellbeing of their patients is connected to an equitable access to these kinds of services. Now we’re partnering with a conglomerate of educational entities working to improve health outcomes as well. We’re not the educational providers, but they understand as we do that the outcomes they’re seeking are impacted by this.
I’m always thinking, is there a right way to approach this? It’s difficult to find the best way to advance very complex families with very complex challenges who have assets and potential dreams. And there really is no other way to do that besides doing it in a united way.
