Campaigners with the United Way in Timmins are off and running on their annual fundraising drive.
They gathered this morning for breakfast, and to hear reminders of the programs the United Way funds with the money.
United Way regional coordinator Jennifer Gorman says the fundraising target is always to do better than the previous year.
“We always want to do more,” she emphasizes. “We’ve always had a request for more than what’s available. So we’re certainly around that $300,000 amount, but we’d like to do more than that.”
The breakfast crowd heard from agencies whose programs benefit from being funded by United Way. Some told of how a periodic lack of money means they can’t offer or expand essential services.
“A lot of them have wait lists,” Gorman explains. “We’ve had agencies that haven’t received any funding at all when they’ve applied and some of them don’t get as much as they’ve requested, because we can only give what the donors give.”
The theme this year is “unignorable issues”. Workplace campaigns last until the end of December.