Jeannie Weber, Executive Director of the United Way of Greater Warren County, joined Terry James on Focus to share her inspiring journey into nonprofit work and the impactful efforts of her organization in Mercer County. Jeannie explained that her career shift was driven by personal experiences, including helping her daughter receive cochlear implants and navigating nonprofit support as a survivor of abuse. These experiences motivated her to leave the corporate world after 30 years to dedicate herself to nonprofit service. Jeannie highlighted that the Greater Warren County United Way also supports Mercer County, providing funding for various initiatives, such as Mercer County Better Together’s Imagination Library, grants for the YMCA’s summer programs, and resources for Community senior meals, among others.Jeannie emphasized the organization’s recent expansion into Mercer County, supported by a grant from the Moline Foundation, allowing them to give before asking for community contributions. United Way has now launched its first capital campaign in the area, aiming to raise $50,000 in the next four months to sustain and expand these efforts. She encouraged donations via their website, wcunitedway.org, where contributions can be made as one-time gifts or through manageable monthly deductions. Jeannie also outlined plans for workplace campaigns, showcasing how small payroll contributions can collectively make a significant impact.
Good morning and welcome to Focus. I’m Terry James joined by Jeanne Weber and she is with United Way, the executive director there of United Way of Greater Warren County. Hi Jeanne.
Hi Terry, it’s really nice to meet you. Nice to have you here and I’m learning a lot from you but first I want to hear how did you get involved with United Way? Believe it or not I’ve been there almost 10 years but I actually started in non-profit work as a result of a couple of things. My daughter was born deaf and in the process of getting cochlear implants for her I worked with a lot of non-profit agencies to help her through.
We also are abuse survivors. We have a very good friend here in Aledo, Kay, actually Kay and John Downey. The night that we left we hid out here in Aledo for a weekend.
We’re very grateful for that. All of the organizations that we used to help us through that weekend are also non-profits. So once we were through all of that I left the corporate world that I’d been in for about 30 years and decided to work in non-profit work just to give back for the rest of my life.
And when you first called me I wondered did Mercer County have a United Way and you told me that this Greater Warren County United Way serves Mercer County. We are and we didn’t actually even realize that until there was an inquiry about Imagination Library about six years ago. Mercer County Better Together took it over and we have already given them some funding.
That’s a great program to get kids reading and it’s just one of the programs you’re involved with. It is. Talk about a couple of the others that you think folks will know about how you’ve helped here in Mercer County.
Well everybody knows Mercer County why. They received a grant for it from us last year too for their summer children’s program. We also purchased a born learning trail for them and as I was sharing with you that will go in in the spring around the Y and what that is for is for caregivers and their children to go through a set of exercises that are fun and playful and help you learn reading and math.
Get a little bit of exercise and you also learn something. We’ve provided some funding directly to the health department and a couple of other places here. However, there are several organizations that we’ve been funding that we have been taking care of the funding for Mercer County prior to this and those include Jamison Community Center who delivers senior meals here every day.
Very important. During the week. Very very important.
Not only because of the meals because it gives the delivery person a chance to check on that senior and that’s really really important. Loving Bottoms Diaper Bank. I know our health department has just recently talked about that how they were taking donations but United Way helps with that.
Yes we do. We fund a lot of their service here in Mercer County. A lot actually we do a lot of things with Loving Bottoms Diaper Bank because there are a lot of different places and we talked about quarters appointed special advocates who are also training the advocates that are working here in Mercer County.
And those are people that are with the kids that when they have to testify in court it can be very scary. Yes and they help them through that process. Yeah we have already been doing the funding for them for the last few years as well so there are a number of others Terry but I’d be happy to give you that list so you can post it for your audience so they can look and see what we’ve been doing ahead of time.
Yeah again talking with Jeannie Weber with United Way of Greater Warren County and we will post those on the website along with this interview. You guys are doing your capital campaign right now. Yes we are.
We are in the process of kicking off our first campaign in Mercer County and we’re really really excited about it. We were able to make those donations initially because we received a grant from the Moline Foundation to do that. I never like to go into a community that we’ve expanded and just start asking for things without giving away things first so we wanted to do that.
So I’m just here to talk about the fact that we have a goal of raising $50,000 in Mercer County this year. I’m hoping to do it in the next four months if possible and I’ve met a lot of wonderful people that I’ll be working with here in the community to make that happen. Well we’ll provide details on our website and Facebook page on how you can give but if you people want to find out right now how can they give to United Way of Greater Warren County? Sure it’s really easy to go to wcunitedway.org and literally every single page on our website gives you a place to click and make a donation directly.
Can’t miss it right? Yeah that donation can be made as one big lump sum or you can choose to have you know two to five to ten to twenty dollars taken out of your bank account every month and you never miss it. That’s my preference that’s the way I like to give every year. We will be working with some employers here to do some workplace campaigns and that idea is the same.
Pre-tax a donation comes out of a check and it’s usually two to five dollars and it ends up adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars when we’re done. All right very good. Well Jeannie Weber it’s very nice to speak with you and I wish you luck on this campaign.
You’re doing a lot of great things here in Mercer County and the Mercer County area so we’re looking forward to doing more. What’s that website one more time? It is wcunitedway.org. All right Jeannie thank you very much and this has been Focus.