At United Way of Deschutes County, we fight for the HEALTH, EDUCATION, FINANCIAL STABILITY, and RESILIENCE of EVERY person in our Central Oregon community.

We’re more than fundraisers. We’re changemakers.

Since 1953, United Way of Deschutes County has been strengthening communities in Crook, Deschutes, and Jefferson Counties and investing locally in our community’s most needed programs and services while simultaneously strengthening our community.

For 66 years, we’ve focused on HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND FINANCIAL STABILITY as the foundation of wellbeing and opportunity, along with basic needs like food, safety, and shelter.

As we continue to focus on these causes, we are also working upstream to tackle CHILDHOOD TRAUMA: the root cause of many challenges currently faced by so many in our community.  In the U.S. the cost to society of childhood trauma is estimated to exceed $100 billion a year. In Central Oregon, the number ranges from $38 – $81 million.

And, we’ve taken on RESILIENCE – the ability to manage hardship, cope with stress, and bounce back from trauma. Resilience is like an inoculation against the impacts of trauma. We work to improve lives and foster a healthier Central Oregon in 4 main ways.

• We serve as an INCUBATOR for community movements, initiatives, and programs that need to exist in Central Oregon and fill those gaps by making them happen. 

Through our TRACEs program, we have trained 1,700 individuals in resilience-building and trauma-informed care, and surveyed 2,900 people to benchmark resilience in our community.

• Through GRANTMAKING, we support local, direct-service nonprofits and programs that focus on a wide range of human health and wellness issues in our region.

31% of Central Oregonians are serviced by a United Way funded program or service.

• We conduct NEEDS ASSESSMENT throughout our community. We gather data on poverty, financial hardship, basic needs gaps, resilience and more.

In Central Oregon, nearly 11,000 households live below the federal poverty level. Another nearly 24,000 are ALICE families. ALICE households earn incomes above the federal poverty level, but less than what it takes to survive in our economy. That’s 35,000 of our 88,000 households in Crook, Deschutes, and Jefferson Counties.

•  We offer PHILANTHROPIC opportunities. From individual community members to businesses and employers, everyone can give back to our community by giving to or through United Way.

Last year we raised $1,269,000 to benefit our community: $638,000 raised last year for our grant-funded Community Impact Partner nonprofit organizations, $313,000 raised last year for our TRACEs program, and $318,000 for other nonprofits.

We are investing in future solutions to the challenges that we have historically addressed through funding, such as basic needs, safety net, and prevention. While we will continue to address issues that are happening right now, we are simultaneously moving upstream to address the root causes of issues that are immediate today, so that they don’t exist tomorrow. Funding the immediate is necessary, but not sufficient.

Building on tradition and assuming a strong role in convening and collaborating with our Central Oregon community allows us to address these root causes of critical issues affecting our community. We remain focused on our community’s human and social service needs to improve lives and create measurable, sustained change in our community.

United Way of Deschutes County belongs to OUR Central Oregon community.