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United Way CEO Fred Payne encourages dialogue in visit
Is it impacting poverty?
Is it good for our community?
Is it sustainable?
While there is a lot that Fred Payne has to consider in his new role as United Way of Central Indiana CEO, he told a group of community leaders Thursday morning that the work of the United Way really comes down to these three questions.
“If the answer is yes to each of these three questions, then that’s something we may need to move forward on,” Payne said. “If the answer is no to even one, we may need to move it down the scale.”
Payne’s visit with 40 or so community members at Tiger Pointe Country Club was the first of nine such visits across the seven-county service area that also includes Boone, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Marion and Morgan counties.
The new leader noted that the visit comes at an important time, as not only is he barely two months into his tenure with the non-profit, but that the United Way of Central Indiana is currently rebooting its strategic plan as it examines how it partners with a wide-ranging group of local non-profits and government organizations across a diverse area of Central Indiana.
Besides all this, Putnam County is hardly a year into its partnership with the larger Central Indiana organization. Payne noted that it’s currently time for his organization to understand the needs of Putnam County and maintain a dialogue with local leaders.
“The partnership is in its infancy,” he said, noting that Putnam is certainly more rural than some of the other counties under the Central Indiana umbrella. “In areas where it may not fit perfectly, we may have to make some adjustments.”
Still, Payne did not come without having done some homework on Putnam County and the needs the local community has.
“What we have are like 4,600, maybe 5,000, people in Putnam County who are living in poverty,” Payne said. “And then when you talk about 4,600 people living in poverty, and you see that about a quarter of those people are elderly, that tells a different story.”
Those stories are what really matter to Payne — how the United Way and its community partners can impact people’s lives in meaningful ways.
He told a story from his previous job as commissioner of the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. Sure, there are plenty of numbers that could represent what additional training does for those struggling with poverty, but Payne recalled he and Gov. Eric Holcomb meeting with a woman in Bloomington without a high school diploma, who had been scraping to provide for her three children and herself.
She had worked at just about every fast food joint in Bloomington, Payne related, and knew she needed to get her high school equivalency if she ever wanted to pick herself up. A distrust of government programs stopped her though.
By the time she met with the two state officials, though, the woman had earned her equivalency and had a job making more than three times what she had made.
What had changed, Payne recalled the governor asking.
“I have three children, and I didn’t want them to see a high school diploma as something special,” the woman said. “I wanted to be a role model.”
At this point, Holcomb told the woman she was a role model, bringing her to tears and nearly doing the same to Payne.
A desire to make that kind of difference for individuals served Payne in his DWD days, as well as now at the United Way.
“It just felt right,” he said of taking his latest role. “It feels right coming here, sharing who I am, you getting to know me and me getting to know you.”
It’s something he hopes the United Way — both at the regional and local level — can continue to build.
“Our table is big enough that it can include people who want to make their lives better,” Payne said.
To learn more about the United Way of Central Indiana, visit www.uwci.org/.