SOME DAY OF ACTION IDEAS

Recruiting and empowering people throughout the community to share their time and lend a voice to important issues can be an excellent activity for United Way Day of Action. For example, United Ways can:

• Launch an online campaign to have the community at large weigh in on a particular issue, and then publicize the results. Ideally you can capture the names of visitors and follow up with information and opportunities to stay involved. You can also recruit high school or college volunteers to initiate and manage an activity, especially using social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, etc.

• Challenge your community's adults to volunteer with kids during the summer months, and then drive visitors to your website by offering to connect people to volunteer opportunities by providing a list of opportunities to work with youth. Or, declare June 21 as the day to start to LIVE UNITED. Collect pledges to volunteer and schedule training later in the summer for volunteers to begin in the fall.

• Teach your volunteers how to be advocates on a particular issue. Arm them with key messages about the problem, how United Way and its agencies are involved in the solution, and then challenge them to tell as many friends as possible, through social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, etc., or through good old-fashioned face-to-face interactions, such as speaking at a community meeting.

• Sponsor a volunteer pledge campaign. On the longest day of the year, ask volunteers to commit to a certain amount of hours, and post the information on your website. Volunteers can register their hours and be recognized for achieving their goal. You can engage employers to offer matching hours with employees.

• Sponsor a volunteer fair to recruit volunteers interested in helping make a difference in health, income or education. Hold it at a shopping mall, football field or town square. Agencies can each have a booth - three separate areas for health, education and income, and another area where there is crossover among the issues. Food, games and prizes will add to the fun.

• Share How I LIVE UNITED stories from your volunteers, staff members, family members, and friends with a local media outlet.

• Build a Born Learning Trail in your community.

• Send emails out to your distribution list to educate folks on the needs in your community around education, income and health and what you plan to do about it.

• Leverage an existing event happening on June 21 in your community (an event within an event).

• Get one new champion involved with your United Way.

• Ask local officials to declare June 21, 2009 as LIVE UNITED Day.

• Host a LIVE UNITED photo session for local people/celebrities and learn more they LIVE UNITED.