A column for Saturday, December 17
This week, ARLANXEO, employees and retirees, gave the United Way of Sarnia-Lambton a much needed boost.
ARLANXEO, which matches employee and retiree contributions to the United Way, dollar for dollar, lifted the United Way campaign to $1,130,000.
“Currently, we are at 68% of our $1,650,000 needs target,” said 2022 Campaign Chair Vicky Ducharme. We are down to just two more weeks to go, and we are still expecting several employee campaigns to wrap up their drives and report heir final figures,” she said.
In addition to the employee campaigns, Ducharme said when analyzing the online donations that were received all of last year, 41% of the year’s online donations were made during the last 26 days of the year. “That is quite an impressive amount, and I know many donors wait until the end of the year, but make their donations to get the end of the year tax credit,” she said. “We are hopeful many will donate again this year,” she said.
Ducharme said the impact of inflation, and the increasing interest rates is taking its toll on the United Way fundraising campaign. “We know that the inflation rates are affecting all of us, but I am reminded how hard it affects families and seniors who have limited incomes, and how it is affecting not only the needs for agencies’ services, but how some of the agencies costs are increasing as well.
Ducharme pointed to LEO, for example, who traveled 617,000 KM last year taking seniors and people with disabilities to medical appointments, grocery stores, and even food banks. She pondered how much their fuel bills are today compared to only a couple of years ago. “What’s more, we have an ageing population so both they, and the Canadian Red Cross who also do transportation services, have more people requesting services today than in the past,” she said.
Worley has just begun their employee campaign and the company will match all employee contributions as well. “In just their first few hours of their online campaign, they reached 66% of last year’s total already, said Ducharme.“
Other campaigns still running include CF Industries in Courtright, Cabot Canada, TransAlta, and Shell, plus several other non industrial campaigns including OPP in Petrolia, Lambton College, and Bluewater Health. Dow in Corunna just wrapped up their employee campaign.
“We are urging everybody who has given in past years to the United Way but not yet this year, to please get those contributions in before the end of the year,” she said.
Ducharme said if anybody stops by the United Way office to make their contributions in person and they find the office is closed, they may deposit their donations through the mail slot at Kumon, just two doors down from the United Way office on Lamton Mall Road in Sarnia.
“Jenny Cho – Young at Kumon has been a great friend and neighbour to the United Way since the United Way office moved to 1362 Lambton Mall Road and she happily accepts donations for the United Way thorough her mail slot,” Ducharme said. “Last year in particular, I know several people stopped by after hours, and between Christmas and New Years in the area doing last minute Christmas shopping and left their contributions at Kumon through their mail slot.” “I am happy to help out the United Way in any way that I can”, Cho – Young said.
The United Way of Sarnia-Lambton campaign will run until the end of the year and will support more than 30 local programs and services.
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Jenny Cho – Young of Kumon and Jason Killingsworth demonstrate how simple it is to drop off United Way donations after regular business hours. The United Way of Sarnia-Lambton is located at 1362 Lambton Mall Road, just two doors down from Kumon making after hours donations simple and convenient. The United Way campaign runs until the end of the year in hopes of raising $1.65M to fund over 30 programs and services in our community.
