For 15 years at the United Way of Rhode Island, Anthony Maione has sought to better the lives of Rhode Islanders and improve their communities.
As CEO since 2005, he has distinguished the local branch of the national social-services nonprofit group via its 211 call and walk-in volume and the recent launch of MyFund – to name a few accomplishments.
“In the United Way system, there are apples and oranges, and we’re a walnut,” he said laughing, noting how UWRI seeks to meet people’s needs using a broader set of community-engagement tools than other branches.
Much of his work, he said, has not been choosing the best programming from a list of mediocre options but deciding between “good, better and best.”
But philanthropy, added Maione, who will retire Dec. 31, “is changing. You have things now that you didn’t have before and a lot of that has to do with technology and social media.
“The one thing you learn doing fundraising as long as I’ve been doing it,” he said, “is that it’s the donor’s money [and] you have to pay attention to what they want.”
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INVESTED: United Way of Rhode Island CEO Anthony Maione says affordable housing is a top need in the state. Rather than spending $100,000 to build two or three housing units, UWRI invested that money in three statewide bond campaigns in hopes of bringing more funds to the table to build more units.
/ PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY[/caption]
What were your goals when you were hired by UWRI? United Ways all over the country at that time were moving to … try to be more relevant, produce better results from grants and be more public with those results.
When I came in, I read my mission as two things: relevancy and emotion. United Way in the workplace is a transactional thing. We would show up once a year and ask people to make gifts. They would do that and then they wouldn’t see us again for a year. We really needed to put [ourselves] out there more and there were two things we did out of the gate [when I came onboard].
First, we moved from 02906, the Waterman and Wayland location … to Olneyville – a community we wanted to be in and in which we thought we could be helpful.
The second thing made an even bigger difference – we opened 211. Now, 211 takes close to 200,000 telephone calls each year. It is the most per capita of any 211 in the country, a significant force in the lives of people and hits both [relevancy and emotion]. … We see 2,000 walk-in visitors per year … no other 211 does this.
In addition, we changed the grant program. We used to have, like most United Ways, 50 partner agencies who received money annually. They would have to meet certain requirements, it wasn’t just a “gimme,” but it was the same 50 – a closed system.
We used to talk about being 20 miles wide and one-quarter of an inch deep. … Now, we have an open request-for-proposal process. We give grants, expect certain outcomes from those grants, track the data and if it looks positive use [it] to convince policymakers, who at the end of the day have vastly more money than we do, to change human service policy to follow the direction of the data.
With 211, were there initial hurdles you had to get over or was the volume always that high? One of the early challenges was that you have to get all of the phone companies to recognize 211 is a number. There is 211 all over the country … and you have to be careful because if you’re on the border of Massachusetts you might get them … or [vice versa]. … [But,] it grew really fast.
There had been a small help line, which had been a United Way [asset] a long time ago and it ended up at Crossroads Rhode Island. They were doing a fine job, but it was small and didn’t have the resources. When we [renewed ownership of] 211, we had resources: money to promote it, money to hire more staff and we knew it would be part of our strategy going forward.
You’ve talked about 211 and being feet-on-the-ground in areas that need it most. Are those the top priorities for United Way? We have a number of high priorities. We have a summer-learning program that is about to kick off [thanks to] a grant from Hasbro Inc. with 1,100 kids and we’re in year six now. … In the summer, children go backwards in reading, and in lower-income communities reading and math. They lose those two months [and that loss] accumulates over time, so by the time they hit fifth, sixth or seventh grade, they are significantly behind their peers who have access to good programing in the summer.
We can show average gains of 15 percent in math and reading. In some communities, [especially] if they’re lower-income communities, it might be as high as 50 percent in reading and 75 percent in math. We’re not just holding the kids stable, which is what we had hoped to do; we’re pushing them forward.
One of the top needs is always housing. We are way low in affordable housing and it affects more than those who might become homeless. It affects the workforce, young people who might want to stay here after college [and] families.
We’ve been very active in the issue … [investing] $100,000 in three bond issues – something very unusual for a United Way. We said, for $100,000, “How many units of affordable housing can we help to build?” It’s probably two or three, maybe not even that. If we invest that [money] in a statewide bond campaign, that [action] brings more money to the table and we can build a lot more units. The first bond was $50 million [in 2006], the latest was $50 million [in 2016] and we’re building thousands of units.
[Editor’s note: A third housing bond, for $25 million, was approved in 2012.]
We don’t think bonding is the best way to do this forever, it’s one part of the solution. The next thing for us to think about, [similar to] Massachusetts and Connecticut, is an annual budget allocation for affordable housing. Rhode Island is not going to grow economically, you’re not going to locate a business here, if employees don’t have a place to live.
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MISSION-DRIVEN: During Anthony Maione’s tenure as CEO of United Way of Rhode Island, the nonprofit moved to Olneyville, where “we thought we could be helpful.” He opened 211, which now takes 200,000 telephone calls and sees 2,000 walk-in visitors per year. He also added a request-for-proposals process to the nonprofit’s grant program. The moves were part of Maione’s mission to increase “relevancy and emotion.” / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY[/caption]
In a 2012 PBN interview, you characterized Rhode Island philanthropy as having “bright spots … but still challenging times.” A year later, you said the era was the “toughest fundraising climate in [your] career.” Have we moved on philanthropically from the slump of the Great Recession? We’re still coming back … and are probably still down $800,000 or $900,000 from what we used to raise in 2009.
Philanthropy is changing. You have things now that you didn’t have before and a lot of that has to do with technology and social media. Now, if you have money to give, you could go to a GoFundMe page. The one thing you learn doing fundraising as long as I’ve been doing it, is that it’s the donor’s money [and] you have to pay attention to what they want. If the donor wants to do GoFundMe, and there are a lot of really wonderful causes on there … they can and that’s different from how things used to be.
We’re doing a lot more volunteerism … [something] important to millennials … [who were] taught how to volunteer but there was never a discussion about giving. The thought was, your gift is your time. Millennials will give, we think they are very generous, but they want to kick the bricks [too], they want to be involved – that’s different and we have to accommodate for that. We’re not going to ask them to change the way they think, it’s all about the donor.
Is that approach wearing on your bandwidth? Yes, absolutely. In our communications department alone, [we used to be] a press release organization. … Today, we have our own channels – Facebook, website, Twitter – [and] it has put a tremendous amount of pressure on [our team] because if you are going to push stuff out, you have to have content.
We needed more people … [but] we have a trust fund that pays for administrative and fundraising [costs], which we live inside and we’re not going to break through that ceiling to hire five more professional communicators.
It’s created a tremendous amount of strain.
You were talking about a flexibility in meeting people where they want to give. Is MyFund the result of that thinking? Yes. We’ve had a donor-advised fund since the 1980s, called the Philanthropy Account, where people would give us $1,000, get one tax receipt and throughout the year designate their money. We decided this doesn’t work anymore. … It’s all about the fewest number of clicks. [Giving] needs to feel more like your online banking experience.
Now, you give us $1,000 and on your phone you can see your balance, who you’ve given to throughout the year, decide if you want to give again, add money [and] … it’s free to the donor.
We set a goal of raising $260,000 on 260 new donors. We thought that was a pretty assertive goal [and] we’re at roughly 115 donors and have raised north of $500,000. We got a $500,000 donation from one anonymous donor to push the total above [roughly $1 million].
We’re doing much better, more than three times what we anticipated, and that’s exciting because all of those donors saw the value of the product we created, which bodes well for future fundraising.
In January, UWRI took over Serve Rhode Island. Has it helped to have this asset? We used to be the Volunteer Center of Rhode Island, which became Serve Rhode Island. … It’s a second thing pushed out, which has now come back in – like 211.
Organizations pay a small fee to list [volunteer opportunities] on the website, then volunteers go on the website and match themselves. There are 66 agencies listed with 250 leads and 12,000 registered volunteers.
I can see, down the road, if not already, there will be pressure about staffing [Serve Rhode Island] … and engaging 12,000 people. … It’s awesome, [but] it’s a lot more work.
The two major sources from which UWRI gets its money are corporations and private individuals/groups. What characteristics or profile [metrics] would you give these groups? They’re more alike than not alike. … [But] our challenge is never a one-size-fits-all dating profile.
Corporations, like people, have certain causes they care about. When a new company comes to Rhode Island, we check their website to see if they are aligned with the things we do. If not, it’s not necessarily an opportunity for us. We try not to get mission drift chasing the newest thing in town.
I’m hard-pressed to tell you the name of a large company that isn’t doing something around volunteerism and marrying it to the cause they care most about.
That’s not that different from a person sitting at home asking, “What do I care about?”
[However], it’s a lot easier on the corporate side where we probably have a conversation with [each firm] once per year or more.
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PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY[/caption]
Do you think the volume of nonprofits in operation today, especially in Rhode Island, has created a competitive funding atmosphere? It’s a very competitive environment. I’ve been doing this for 35 years and it has always been. You never turned up in Rhode Island saying, “This will be easy.”
Now, your competition is even bigger because of GoFundMe and Kickstarter.
For a while we had a merger and consolidation fund and gave grants to nonprofits, [which] merged or consolidated their backroom activities. [Therein], we learned the nonprofit community isn’t like the corporate community, where if the two balance sheets work and we can save some money, we’ll do it. People come to this work because they feel something, and if the organization is going to go through a merger, those [emotions] have to be addressed.
We did it for six years, and there were plenty that consolidated but it wasn’t enough to keep it going.
What about the merger forum, would you hold one again given the industry’s volume? We held the forum to expose people to the resources available. No, I don’t think that’s high on the list of things for us to be doing.
So, the number of nonprofits operating today is not at odds with the nature of philanthropy? [A study led by former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, D-New Jersey] found that there was [$100 billion] in duplicated nonprofit overhead. In theory, if you could get that money out and into service, that would be a good thing.
And that’s why we did [the merger forum]. We wanted more people to be served.
The length of time, the challenges and the fact that we didn’t have more to put into the pot were the main reasons we decided [to close the fund].
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PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY[/caption]
Eight staff members were cut in 2009 to accommodate a dip in revenue. Today, where does the organization stand financially and employment-wise? [Regarding the $12.8 million annual campaign], we’ve been in that zone for the last five or six years and we see that as good because we were in a fall before. … We dipped and are level [now]. As I indicated, from 2009 we are about $900,000 less. But you have to level before you can go up. The interesting thing about relevancy is that a lot of the money we lost during the recession was money that was passing through. … The money that was given to us tended to stick and, to me, that is encouraging because it meant the things we were doing – the 211, bond issues, children’s summer programming – were important enough to donors that even in the recession they stuck with us.
What remains on your plate before December? The major project will be the onboarding of the new CEO.
Will you be involved? I will be involved … but it depends on who gets hired. If it’s someone who needs a warm handoff … I want to make sure the new person is welcomed and understands the nuances of the $18.6 million, 72-person operation.
Any news on the replacement front? [We’re] still interviewing. I think they’re hopeful to make an offer to someone this summer.
Are you excited to retire? I anticipate continuing to be involved in the community but not at the full-time level. I would like to be doing something for the next five years before I totally hang up my sneakers.
Is there anything to which you wish you had put more time? The Dalai Lama says, “If we’ve done the best we can, we shouldn’t have any regrets.” I have no regrets looking back and I try not to have too much worry looking forward.