LIGHTING THE WAY
Seeking to aid the community and its residents has been the United Way of Ulster County's mission for nearly 70 years
KINGSTON, N.Y. » For nearly seven decades, United Way of Ulster County has sought to level the playing field and provide resources to people in the community who are struggling, whether that is due to financial, emotional, or physical constraints.
“We’re in the business of making sure there are resources and services available to people who are struggling, for whatever reason,” President and Chief Executive Officer Stacey Rein said recently. She said the United Way of Ulster County, which was incorporated in 1954, is a communitybased, volunteer-led agency that provides resources to other notfor-profit agencies doing work in the human services field, but which also offers its own programs, such as the Raising HOPE women’s mentoring program.
And to do that work, United Way of Ulster County relies on its network of approximately 300 volunteers and five employees, Rein said. She said the volunteers help raise funds for the agency, as well as assist with a variety of programs and events.
The programs the United Way provides are based on the needs of the community, Rein added. For instance, she said, the Raising HOPE women’s mentoring program was the result
of a needs assessment that took into account what other agencies in the community were seeing, not just ones funded by United Way.
The assessment showed there were women getting help through services such as the domestic violence shelter and then later ending up back there, Rein said. She said the women would get themselves together, have a plan of action, and leave the service when they got new housing.
“And then six months later they’d be back at the shelter,” Rein said. This was also being seen with women coming out of prison or drug treatment, she said.
The Raising HOPE program was started in 2008 to help women through a mentorship program develop and achieve their educational and career goals in order to become financially stable and self-sufficient, according to a description provided by United Way.
Rein said the program is thriving and has two full-time employees to run it, thanks to a grant from the NoVo Foundation. She said the program also saw an increase in participation when the mentorship workshops went virtual due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The workshops used to have four or five people come to them,” Rein said. “Now there’s 15 or 20 or 25 people at a workshop.” She also said attendees no longer have to find transportation to Kingston to attend the workshops or find childcare.
The pandemic also had other effects on the agency, Rein said. She said when it first started the agency created a resource directory online for people to find help. As the pandemic progressed, Rein added, she started to understand what the government resources would be and it occurred to her that immigrants who were not registered citizens would not have access to them.
“That was a real concern to me,” Rein said. She said she reached out to other agencies to find out what they were doing, and United Way of Ulster County ended up being a financial resource that focused on people who were not eligible for government resources.
Rein said that included immigrants, but also people who were recently incarcerated or those on Social Security or disability who lived on low fixed incomes.
Rein said the agency spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for thousands of households in order to sustain them before protections like the eviction moratorium were enacted by the state.
The agency also focused money on childcare programs, according to Rein. She said the agency has always helped fund afterschool programs at places like the Boys and Girls Club and the YMCA of Kingston and Ulster County. While schools were closed during the pandemic, though, there was a real need for full-day care to enable parents to work and to help children who were at high risk if they were left home all day, Rein said.
Rein said the United Way of Ulster County worked hard to get money through its agency, other foundations, and the county government to help pay people to provide full-time child care. She said agencies that usually provided care from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m., were able to be open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. during the height of the pandemic.
When schools returned to more regular schedules this year, so too did the child care, Rein said.
Rein said her agency also runs a free tax preparation program, which it took over more than 10 years ago. When the pandemic started, there was a question of what to do because the tax preparations were done in person, she said.
The staff at United Way shifted and were able to put together a wholly virtual program, Rein said, adding that the state actually used that program as a model for others. Now, the volunteer tax preparers are able to get more returns done because they have flexibility in their schedules, Rein said. She added that the agency relies heavily on its volunteers.
“If we don’t have volunteers, it can’t happen,” Rein said. “Which is the case for a lot of not-for-profits.”
Moving forward, Rein, who was hired by United Way in April 1994, plans to retire at the end of June. She will be succeeded by Su Marcy, the agency’s vice president.
During her tenure, Rein and her staff have raised $30 million for local human service agencies and special projects, such as the United Way’s Emergency and Homelessness Prevention Fund, according to a press release.
“It’s been a great career,” Rein said. She said she has worked with volunteers and donors who care about the community, as well as wonderful colleagues in the human services field, all of who will continue to do good work.