United Way Worldwide Honored with a 2018 Award of Distinction by Information Builders

United Way Recognized for Exemplary Data Management and Analytics with Launch of Global Performance Management System

Alexandria, Virginia (May 23, 2018) – United Way Worldwide was honored today by Information Builders in Orlando, Florida as a customer of distinction for the successful implementation of WebFOCUS, a business intelligence (BI) and analytics software tool.  United Way, the world’s largest privately funded nonprofit organization, successfully used WebFOCUS to help its worldwide network of 13,000 employees better understand which partners and programs are the highest performing. With WebFOCUS, United Way created an analytics environment to visualize data collected during large research studies, enabling local United Way affiliates to learn from peers, share best practices, and better serve more than 60 million people each year.

“We needed to know which local United Ways have the best track records, which programs are the most successful, and which initiatives have the greatest impact,” explains Lisa Bowman, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at United Way. “We need to know what each community needs and how well we are addressing those needs. The PerformanceLink tool has given our United Way network the power to harness the data to drive our fight for the health, education and financial stability of every person in every community.”

As a result of the successful deployment of WebFOCUS, United Way is now able to efficiently track the effectiveness of its charitable activities through PerformanceLink, a self-service BI portal that empowers workers to manipulate performance data and build their own dashboards, reports, and scorecards. Employees and volunteers throughout the United Way ecosystem now access the portal to better understand the needs of the 61 million people United Way serves each year.

“Our goal is engaging our users and helping individual United Way affiliates understand key insights from our national research,” says Karen Brunn, vice president of research at United Way Worldwide. “Our data visualization capability, centered on WebFOCUS, helps individual United Way offices share best practices, identify opportunities for improvement, and better utilize the resources and contributions of our worldwide team. The portal makes the information easier to interpret, understand, and apply to the urgent needs of the communities we work with, all over the world.”

About United Way Worldwide

United Way fights for the health, education and financial stability of every person in every community. Supported by 2.9 million volunteers, 9.8 million donors worldwide and $4.7 billion raised every year, United Way is the world’s largest privately-funded nonprofit. We’re engaged in 1,800 communities across more than 40 countries and territories worldwide to create sustainable solutions to the challenges facing our communities. United Way partners include global, national and local businesses, nonprofits, government, civic and faith-based organizations, along with educators, labor leaders, health providers, senior citizens, students and more. For more information about United Way, please visit UnitedWay.org. Follow us on Twitter: @UnitedWay and #LiveUnited.