Portage Plains United Way (PPUW) is accepting letters of interest in funding from any registered local, not-for-profit organizations or charities working in the catchment area who are interested in accessing multi-year funding through United Way.

"Each year the PPUW wants to hear from the community before we make any decisions on the funds we'll raise for the following year," says Executive Director Mandy Dubois. "So right now we're looking for those organizations in our catchment area, which is quite a big area that goes from as north as Langruth, as west as Sidney, as south as Notre Dame, and as east as St. François Xavier. So our area is pretty big, and we're looking for some non-profits that we don't currently fund that may be interested in accessing multi-year funding from us."

The Board wants to ensure the funds raised each year by the United Way are being distributed effectively in order to meet the needs of the community. The letters of interest should be no more than two-pages in length and should only contain the following information; the organization name, CRA charity number, contact information for Board Chair & Organization's CEO, a description of what the organization does, a narrative description of how the organization meets one or more of United Way's three funding priorities (All That Kids Can Be, Poverty to Possibility, Strong Communities) as well as the length of time (one, two, or three years) and amount of funding being sought.

"We don't have any limitations to the number of agencies we can fund, the limitation is dollars," explains Dubois. "So we have to raise enough dollars through the year to meet the needs of the organizations. We already have 11 that rely on us for funding, most of them have multi-year agreements with us already, so we do have some commitments we have to make, however, there's always room to grow. This is how we gauge our fundraising goal, we see how much we need to collect from the community. So adding more agencies means increasing our fundraising goal, which would mean increasing the dollars we need from the community."

Dubois adds they want to be able to help as many people as they can but they have to be realistic in how many dollars can be raised at the same time. She strongly encourages any not-for-profit or charity to contact our office at 204-857-4440 for further details. Letters of Interest must be submitted by 4:00 p.m. on May 15, 2017, to Dubois.