2022-Leaders-United-Quarterly-Q1-ReaderSpreads-v4 - Flipbook - Page 3
BACKGROUND
WHAT ARE THE ISSUES?
In December 2020, author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott
gifted more than $4 billion to 384 nonprofit agencies across
the United States. United Way of Greater Nashville received
$20 million.
Throughout our planning process, three priority areas for the
investment of Ms. Scott’s gift clearly surfaced:
We are humbled by and so grateful to Ms. Scott for this gift, which we believe has the
power to be transformational for our community. Our organization adopted a multistep process to determine the best possible deployment of those funds. In 2021,
we completed a strategic planning process to help guide us through the creation of
the investment plan. We began by holding focus groups and surveying community
stakeholders, donors, nonprofit agencies and corporate donors for their input. This
process allowed us to hear from a diverse audience that represents our multi-county
High-Quality, Affordable Child Care
Our community is suffering from a crippling lack of affordable, high-quality child care,
especially for our lower income residents. The pandemic showed our community that
high-quality, affordable and accessible child care is an essential service, and we need an
appropriately compensated and highly trained early education workforce to sustain it.
This service is not only essential for setting our children up for future educational success
but is crucial to our families’ abilities to remain in the workforce and be financially selfsufficient and stable.
footprint and to capture a broad picture of the most pressing issues. From there, we
outlined clear goals and three priority areas of investment for the funds. For each
priority, cross-functional teams worked with community leaders and experts to develop
overarching strategies for creating lasting change in each area.
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Unite d Way of G reater Nas h v i l l e
U nited Way of Greater Nas h ville
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