Over the past two years the United Way system adopted and embraced a new and powerful mission focused on improving lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities. By adopting the new mission, we put a stake in the ground around a new business framework and fundamentally resumed the historic role that United Way has played within our communities. Now, with our focus clearly on improving lives, we need to be equally clear as to how we will do that—our theory of change. For United Way, it has always been the case that in order to impact the most lives, we must ensure that everyone in a community acts together to change the conditions and systems that affect people. We must work on the most compelling issues that we, as community, have in common.

 Standards of Excellence