2008 Achievement Celebration

“Every year, we know that meeting our goal in time for the Achievement Celebration will be a challenge,” said United Way President Frank Lazarski. “But we also know that setting a challenging goal makes us strive to do our best. We have good reason to be optimistic that we will reach our goal in the coming months, as companies close out their campaigns.”

Upon their arrival at the Achievement Celebration, guests were given “good bucks”—“dollars” to invest in Vision Areas represented by 12 displays around the room. With only 10 good bucks to spend, we hope the exercise helped give our guests insight on the difficulty of the funding decisions made by United Way volunteers.

Also at the event, we honored six Central New York companies with our Spirit of Caring awards, and we crowned one dedicated individual as our 2007 Campaign Volunteer of the Year. Finally, we drew six lucky grand-prize winners in our Step Up Challenge. Congratulations to all the winners.

Many thanks to our sponsor KS&R, whose generous sponsorship allowed us to hold this year’s event free of charge. And last but certainly not least, thank you to all of our campaign volunteers and donors. We’re proud to partner with you to build a better community.

Spirit of Caring Awards recognize that philanthropy takes many forms. With these awards, United Way of Central New York celebrates outstanding achievements of our corporate customers, their unions and employees.

Spirit of Caring Awards are given to companies in six categories including:

Organized Labor Participation
Professional Service
Volunteer Service
Gifts-In-Kind
Leadership Development
Campaign Excellence

For more information and to meet last year's winners visit the Sprit of Caring Awards page.

WINNER!

Tim Callahan
Welch Allyn, Inc.

The Campaign Volunteer of the Year Award recognizes one person who chaired a United Way campaign, and is the highest honor an individual can receive from United Way. Tim Callahan first took the helm of Welch-Allyn’s excellent United Way campaign in 2006.

By most accounts the campaign did very well that year, but Tim wasn’t satisfied. “I wasn’t personally pleased with the results,” he said. “I thought we could do a lot more.”

So this year, he redoubled his efforts by assembling a dedicated campaign team and trying to reach everyone on every shift with a campaign meeting. The results: A 24 percent increase in giving and an 11 percent increase in participation.

Click below to meet all this year's Campaign Volunteer of the Year Award Finalists.

United Way Awards

United Way’s campaign awards recognize companies for their level of achievement. Awards are given in four categories: platinum, gold, silver and bronze. A company’s award level is determined a combination of participation rate and per capita giving.

SEFA Awards

The State Employees Federated Appeal (SEFA) is an annual campaign for New York State employees to contribute to the future of their community through nearly 300 agencies. SEFA offers a way for state employees to support a network of vital community services all year long with one annual fundraising effort.

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Organized Labor to the SEFA Campaign: AFSCME Council 82, NYSOMCE, PEF, Teamsters Local 72, CSEA-AFSCME 1000 and UUP.

CFC Awards

The Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) is a national charitable fundraising workplace campaign for federal workers established by Presidential Executive Order in 1961. The CFC supports more than 1,000 local, national and international organizations that provide important services for health, welfare and the environment.

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Organized Labor to the CFC Campaign: AFGE 3342, APWU 257, NAGE, NALC 134, NARLC, NATCA, NPMHU, NTEU and PASS

Top Rankings

View top companies in categories such as total giving, per capita giving and leadership giving.

New Campaigns

Please join us in thanking and welcoming these new organizations to the United Way Campaign.

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