Work has been underway to unite several United Ways across the Maritime region for a number of years now. We’re excited to share that as of June 1, 2024, all of the boards of directors and the memberships of seven United Ways have passed resolutions to legally come together as one entity.
The seven United Ways include United Way Central New Brunswick, United Way of Colchester County, United Way Halifax, United Way of Lunenburg County, United Way of Pictou County, United Way Prince Edward Island and United Way Saint John, Kings & Charlotte.
There are still some legal and financial steps that need to be completed before our legal day one, which we anticipate will be early July.
A new regional organization means we’ll be stronger together, and united for impact.
This is an exciting opportunity for our region, as we streamline our work and maximize staff time, we will have more opportunity to proactively build new revenue and business partnerships, which means greater impact in your community. We are looking forward to the opportunity to share resources and expertise, to continuing to strengthen and advocate for the social impact sector, and to increasing our investment in local communities over time, across the region. We will also be able to streamline operations with regional governance and financial oversight.
We’ve deliberately been working through this process slowly, being very mindful to address individual concerns of staff, board and community all along the way. The design of a new entity is predicated on a number of core principles:
- Ensuring locally raised dollars are invested locally and funding decisions are made based on local knowledge and expertise;
- Ensuring there is United Way staff and volunteer presence in each geographic location, to continue to grow strong relationships; and,
- Ensuring all employees currently employed by the United Ways have positions within the new regional organization that align with their interests, skills and experience.
Your United Way will still be yours – and will now be even stronger.
We look forward to sharing more information after our unification is finalized.
