LeAnn Powers and Laurie Garza

Powers: Part of our mission then is to empower people in the community to come together and help make that impact. We do it by inviting them to give. Whether it's individual gifts to us or financial gifts through workplace campaigns, giving of their time during volunteer opportunities or advocating for the work that we are doing, advocating for the legislative changes that need to happen to make sure that these impacts can happen or advocating for United Way's work in general. If there is a need in the community that we perceive isn't being met, we are going to mobilize people and bring them together to collaborate to try to find a way to resolve that need. We have a lot of great nonprofits in the community that we've been able to partner with in those impact areas, but there are still are some needs that are not being met. The one that we were really able to move quickly on in the grand scheme of things was the expansion of the free tax preparation services across the county.

We really saw the need to expand those services in the outlying areas of the county.

We brought the AARP, the IRS, the Literacy Council [of Williamson County], WBC Opportunities, us and Foundation Communities, and we all had conversations about how we could expand the program and make it more available to people. Since we started in 2011, we've seen a 116 percent increase in the number of people served.

How can Williamson County residents get involved with the United Way?

Garza: There are a number of different ways give, advocate, volunteer. The first way is to give to the United Way through a workplace campaign. We have a lot of wonderful folks who support the United Way through their campaigns. A lot of them live and work here in Williamson County, and a lot live in Williamson County and work in Travis County. They can give through their workplace if their workplace has a campaign.

They can volunteer. Twice a year we do a Day of Caring and a Day of Service. They're community volunteer events that we coordinate. There is one on Sept. 20, and the next one will be Jan. 20.

There is also our [free tax preparation service]. We'll start heavily recruiting for that starting in October. Basically we are looking for folks to be tax preparers, translators and greeters.

H-E-B runs a campaign pretty much through July, and there are 11 stores in Williamson County. The employees at those 11 stores raised $314,745 for United Way of Williamson County in 2013.

Powers: We are also encouraging people to be mentors. There are 12 school districts in Williamson County. All of them are looking for adult volunteers to be mentors and tutors to their students in their schools. We have a website to make it easy for people to consider or look into mentoring. It's www.mentorinwilco.org.

When selecting nonprofits for grants, what do you look for?

Powers: They absolutely have to match up with the goals that we are working on.

They have to be a 501(c)(3) [organization], and they have to be serving Williamson County residents.

Any dollars that they get from us have to be used in Williamson County. It's very important to us to let our donors know that we are stewarding their dollars well, so those agencies have to report back to us quarterly that they are actually using those dollars in the ways they said they would. There is a lot of accountability that is required of the agencies when they get a grant from the United Way because we want to be able to tell our donors that their dollars were used in the way we told [them] they would be used.

UWWC impact areas

The United Way of Williamson County works in three areas to help the citizens of Williamson County have the tools needed to have a high quality of life.

Education

Children enter kindergarten ready to read and learn

Students graduate from high school on time

Income

Families have financial stability and tools that they need such as job training and literacy skills

Access to better jobs

Health

Primary care access

Preventative care access