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For more than 12 years, Joe Martin has been an active leader of the United Way of Lee County, and has found the experience serving his community to be particularly rewarding.
In fact, he's always been involved in public service, living the advice his father and mother gave: It's better to give than receive.
Having met a lot of local challenges over the years, Martin has a slightly different take on how the United Way can serve the community.
Identifying needs, helping create new agencies and providing "seed funding" to launch independent groups, he says, will help Lee County thrive.
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Q. You have been involved in the United Way for well over a decade. Why is it so important?
A. Many of the small organizations, groups with one or two people working, simply wouldn't be there without the United Way. They wouldn't survive, and these groups truly reach some of the poorest of the poor in our area.
That's the backbone of the United Way. It's one reason we're a prominent fixture in the community and why people want to give. It's great to see how your dollar goes to so many outstanding groups.
We've touched a lot of people.
Q. Some of those small agencies have grown and do their own fundraising. Is that part of the United Way plan?
A. You do see some of these agencies that you helped over the years get started and grow to a certain point, where they're standing alone. It's exciting, and that helps us put more dollars back into the smaller groups that are just starting up.
For so many years, it's been as if the United Way is a primary funding source and it's always there. People expect those dollars every year.
What we're trying to say is it's important for organizations that can expand to build a solid board and begin their own fundraising activities.
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Q. Is this a different approach than what most people expect from the United Way?
A. It could be. One of the things we've been wanting to do is develop a campaign to help establish small groups — to go out and find a need that nobody's addressing yet and help new groups get started.
It's getting critical to think outside the box and say, "What are the true needs in the community and how can we get things going to spur some action?"
Q. From your perspective, what direction will the United Way of Lee County be taking for the future?
A. When I started working with United Way 12 years ago, we used to give money to everything. But, we needed to get refocused on human service needs.
We need to determine where we could get the biggest bang for the buck, and we did that.
I think the United Way is at another crossroads.
We're giving money to needs all over, but we need to look at what agencies provide and focus on those that provide services where, if they weren't around, who knows how those people would survive.
Providing that kind of help is what's exciting about the United Way.
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