Board Liaison for United Ways
A local United Way is an independently incorporated, locally governed 501(c)(3) and a member of United Way Worldwide. Its volunteer board of directors does more than most boards: it oversees a community campaign, then stewards how those dollars are invested back into the community. Board Liaison for United Ways maps to how that actually works — a governing board with a President and CEO, community-impact and allocations committees, and the membership standards a United Way keeps current.
What sets it apart is the allocations layer. When a board decides which partner agencies receive funding, directors tied to those agencies have to step back — and that has to be visible and documented. It keeps conflict-of-interest disclosures beside the funding decisions they affect, so recusals are on the record, not in someone’s memory.
A board that distributes a community fund lives with a conflict of interest most boards don’t: many of the community leaders you want as directors also lead or sit on the agencies applying for funding. That’s not a problem to avoid — it’s one to manage in the open. The board record needs to show who disclosed a tie to a funded agency, who recused from which allocation, and that the decisions were made by the directors who could make them. Board Liaison for United Ways keeps those disclosures and recusals next to the allocation decisions, so the process is documented as it happens. Confirm your own obligations against your bylaws and current United Way Worldwide membership requirements.
A United Way board distributes a community fund to partner agencies — and many directors are tied to those agencies. How to run allocations with disclosure, recusal, and a clean record.
4 min readWhat a local United Way board of directors is responsible for: governing an independent 501(c)(3), the community campaign, community-impact oversight, the board vs. the President and CEO, and membership standards.