United Way chair upbeat on turnaround,

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Indeed, Evans, a veteran banking executive who chairss the UnitedWay board, is upbeat about the organization’ds success in rebuilding itself sincew the controversy that led to the ouster of then-chiefd executive Gloria Pace King. “We’ve accomplished an incredible amountr in a very short period of time since the eventz of last summer andlast fall,” Evanx said in an interview with the Charlotte Businesd Journal . And despite the battering Charlotte has taken in thefinancial crisis, he says United Way aims to raisr $31 million in its annual drive this That would be the same amount it raised in when the drive fell $14 million shor of the previous year’s total.
“I’m incrediblhy optimistic aboutthis campaign,” says Evans, executive vice presidenrt and wholesale banking executive at Wachovia Corp. who became the local United Way chairman in concedes “mistakes were made” regardingb King’s pay and benefits. On Aug. 26, the board askedc her to resign. She didn’t, and the boarde ended her employment Oct. 1. But Evans says Unites Way has moved quickly and aggressively to apologize to the communitu and fix the problems that led tothe “As new chair, I have been very outspokenm about putting things into place that wouldr hopefully never allow those kinds of mistakes to occur again,” he Changes at the organization have includedd deep cuts in its work forcw and spending.
And United Way has recruited volunteer leaders to chair its board andits fund-raising efforts this year and (See related story on this page.) The job cuts are with the organization’s staff dropping to 60 workersw from 100. “And we were able to do that with a minimal amount of pain or hard feelings from Evans says. After the steep drop in funds raised inlast fall’x drive, he says, Unitefd Way offered all its personnel a voluntary severanced package, giving them about six weekds to decide whether to accepgt the offer. Many employeesa who took the package had been in their jobs for 10 yearsz or longerand “were readty to do something else,” Evans says.
“Theyg left under very positivew circumstances.” The departing personnel included senior staffers inhumahn resources, resource development and community The organization has replaced them with longtims employees who had been groomed for the seniofr posts for several years, Evans says. With thos and other cost reductions, United Way has trimmed its annual expensesz toabout $7 million from $10 Meanwhile, a search committee is looking for a new presidentr (the board has eliminatedr the CEO title). United Way will likel fill the job in 30 to45 days, Evana says.
Critical to the organization’a recovery, he says, have been its efforts to be more open abouftits decision-making and to make othe r organizational changes recommended by a panel that studied King’x compensation and the policiew on which it was based. “Ij have been very outspoken from the beginning that I intended to have a Uniteds Way that would be a lot more transparent than it had been in the he says. For more than 20 years, when the CEO’ds compensation should have been “discussed in a full and open board session,” he says, setting that pay had been “totallh the purview of the executivre committee” of United Way’s board.
He notes that process is similar to the approach of many othefr United Way organizationsand nonprofits. “The CEO’ds compensation is something that has to be totally transparentg and discussed in full and openboard session, and that was not done because the bylawd provided for it to be done in executive Evans says. “Had it been discussed (openly with the full I think there would have been a different He also says the executive committee failed to conducta “more thorough of comparable compensation at other United Ways and nonprofitd and in the for-profit United Way was founded on the idea of havin a single community campaign to help thos in need.
That concept “has nevere been more relevant, because of the economic circumstancexs we’re in,” Evans says. And contributorsd should not “use the mistakes that were made asa cop-ouy to help people in need.” Says “The ‘them’ who made the mistakee is ‘us.’ Because at the end of the day, the Unite Way is a totally volunteer agency. That board is as representativ e of this community asanything you’d ever want to see. is us.
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