Sharing Best Practices: Deloitte

This column profiles a campaign that gets results while utilizing innovative strategies. We hope that by hearing from your peers, you gain some fresh ideas to use in your own campaign. If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming Best Practices profile, contact your United Way representative.

This month, our conversation is with Mena McLean, United Way campaign coordinator and director of Community Affairs at Deloitte. With approximately 1,000 employees, the campaign raised over $560,000 for United Way last year.

Do you set a goal? Yes, we set both a participation and a dollar goal for our campaign.

How do you communicate to employees during the campaign? We run an online campaign and use eWay to process pledges, so we rely heavily on electronic communication. We send weekly e-mails and voicemails and post relevant information and stories on our Intranet. All three vehicles are successful for us, but e-mails tend to have the most success.

This past campaign we hosted a kickoff event and had United Way's CEO, Michael Brennan, and Mike Tenbusch, the vice president of Educational Preparedness, as guest speakers. Even though we had a small turnout, everyone that attended found it valuable and each of them gave to the campaign.

What’s your favorite aspect of the campaign and why? This past campaign we decided to focus on one of United Way’s three areas. At Deloitte, education is very important to us and we’ve decided that we’d like to make our biggest impact in this area. So, we invited United Way's vice president of Educational Preparedness to speak to employees about United Way's work to turn around failing high schools and we highlighted the program in all of our communications pieces. Employees were encouraged to consider donating to the United Way High School Turnaround Program. This focused approach was a great success and over 25 percent of the money raised in the campaign was designated to the Turnaround program.

How have you successfully increased participation or dollars raised? We’ve had competitions between our business functions. The group with the highest number of participants was rewarded with an end of the campaign party that included cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

How do you use your United Way representative? Our representative is Brittany Guerriero, and she does a great job supporting us and by lending her voice for speaking engagements. She tells an impactful story that really rallies support.

Cheer on the Pistons while supporting United Way

Support United Way's High School Turnaround Program with a night at the Palace of Auburn Hills on March 31.

Bring your friends and family and watch the Detroit Pistons take on the Miami Heat. Tickets are $20 and half of the ticket price will help United Way purchase classroom resources for its turnaround schools.

To purchase tickets:
1. Log on to Ticketmaster here.
2. Click on "Find Tickets".
3. Enter PISTONS as your Special Offer Code. (Do not enter your e-mail on this page)
4. On the next page, enter your e-mail address to create an account.
5. Create an account and follow the prompts to select your seats.
6. Print your tickets.

If you need assistance, contact Raquel Gumma at 248-377-0105. See you at the game!

In the news

United Way's work, as featured in news articles and blogs.

Yes He Can: One Can A Week program inspires imitators. The Huffington Post. Article about an Arizona man's One Can A Week program, and the national movement it's inspiring, including an adaptation by United Way for Southeastern Michigan.

Kids loved kickoff of free family fun days. Oakland County Moms Blog. Article discussed the first Panera Family Fun Day in conjunction with United Way's ELC. Join us for the next event on March 13 at the Panera on Eureka Rd. in Southgate.