How one United Way became 'a Harwood United Way'
Monday, February 6, 2006
(The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation)This week, The Harwood Institute is featuring
Ron Butler, executive director of the United
Way of Genesee County, Michigan, as part of its
ongoing series on public innovators creating
real, lasting change in America. Ron and his
predecessor, Michael K. Brown (now president of
the Capital Area United Way in East Lansing,
Michigan) worked with the Institute through our
Flint initiative to develop their capacity as a
catalytic organization.
Here is Ron's
story:
I began [working with The Harwood Institute] as vice-chair of the United Way of Genesee County. Seven years ago, we reached a crossroads. As a result of a variety of societal changes, including mounting unemployment due to layoffs at General Motors, the needs of local residents were entirely different from what we focused upon. We realized that, in order to be relevant again in the community, we needed to change how we did business; we needed to know what the community wanted us to be, and we needed a strategy to achieve it. (Read more in What Our Partners Say...)In 2005, the United Way of Genesee County decided to take on the role of being the "Home for the Place." The Harwood Institute trained more than a dozen community leaders in Flint on the core modules of what is now The Harwood Public Innovators Lab but in Flint was known as the Place for Public Ideas.
As the "Home for the Place," the United Way convenes the Place faculty, houses a myriad of Harwood-developed civic engagement materials for the community, dedicates staff and other resources to making sure that any community leader who wants to learn how to accelerate change has access to training by a member of the Place faculty.
Thanks to Ron's efforts and those of others on his staff such as Diana Kelly, Jerome Threlkeld, and Antwan Edson, the United Way of Genesee County has become, in Ron's words, "an authentic leader and agent of change."