United Way St. Croix Valley and Dunn County merge

CHIPPEWA VALLEY — As a means of creating a collective impact, United Way St. Croix Valley and Dunn County merged their organizations on July 1.

Now covering a six-county area, the two organizations combined under a new name: United Way St. Croix and Red Cedar Valleys.

“It’s just aligning everyone’s vision to understand what the needs are in Dunn and Pepin counties, and to raise the community resources to work through our nonprofit partners to meet those needs,” said Steve McCarthy, executive director for United Way St. Croix. “We always want to help ALICE in the moment, but we also want to help ALICE to not be ALICE in the future.”

United Way is a local organization to most people, covering numerous counties throughout the country while identifying and meeting people’s needs from community to community.

McCarthy said they aim to help community members who are represented by ALICE, an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. These are people who earn above the federal poverty level but still do not earn enough to afford some basic needs.

Making investments back into the community to help ALICE is one way to achieve certain goals.

“For me it is a value to the community because it really uses data to drive these investments. We really work closely with the health departments at the state and county level, as well as departments of human services,” McCarthy said. “We also rely on other data to really objectively identify community needs and priorities and target them through those community investments.”

McCarthy said those community investments are a reinvestment from annual campaigns as they look to support partners, often nonprofit, who target United Way’s identified priorities. McCarthy said their investments are typically focused on three areas: health, education and financial stability.

When looking at households living at or below the poverty level combined with those just above it and still struggling, roughly one in three households struggle financially, which McCarthy said is a “jaw dropping” statistic.

“It is not a very good statistic,” he said. “It is not something that anybody feels good about.”

As their organizations continued to work to meet the needs of people, conversations between the two organizations began during COVID as a means of helping each other through difficulties while still serving their communities.

“As a result of that conversation, the boards started talking with one another and realized that by combining forces we can better help ALICE in Dunn County,” said McCarthy.

The main reason why Dunn County United Way merged with St. Croix Valleys rather than United Way of the Greater Chippewa Valley is because of Dunn County itself. The look and feel of Dunn was perceived as significantly more similar to counties like Burnett, Pierce, Polk and St. Croix, which means that the needs of both areas can align in many ways.

McCarthy said the merger is building on the good practices they have there, as the opportunity to better help their communities arises. This includes continuing access to programs and services through their six-county area such as 211, the number for essential community services; Success by 6, which helps early childhood development; Mental Health First Aid Training and the John and Coughlin Hope Fund.

“With the merger, we know that we will be able to do a much better job supporting the nonprofits that help ALICE ...” said McCarthy. “United Way St. Croix Valleys has programs and services that have been pretty effective here in this part of the state. We are essentially going to replicate what we are doing to better help ALICE families.”

For more information on United Way St. Croix and Red Cedar Valleys, visit the organization’s new website at uwvalleys.org .