| Name | Comments |
| Heart of West Michigan United Way (Grand Rapids) | This United Way refuses to answer direct and detailed inquiries into how it makes its decisions regarding which charities are eligible for donor-designated write-in gifts. It will only accept gifts to charities whose `primary purpose is health and human services,` and if it finds an intended recipient is ineligible it re-directs the money to the United Way general fund. The Director of Development -- the chief United Way fund raiser -- makes the eligibility decision. He recently determined that an organization that supports orphanages was not a `health and human service` charity. This United Way has repeatedly refused to say whether it ever notifies the donor when it re-directs a gift to the general fund.
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| The United Way of Anchorage, Alaska | This United Way uses the old bait and switch trick called `first dollars.` Sure, you can designate your gift to a specific United Way member charity, but when you do the United Way deducts an equal amount from the charity`s United Way grant. You gift makes no difference to that charity`s bottom line at all. This policy is an insult to donors` intelligence and independence.
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| United Way of Central Carolinas (Charlotte, NC) | This United Way says donors can make write-in gifts to health and human service organizations, a small subset of nonprofits. If United Way doesn`t agree that the named charity is a health and human service organization, it re-directs the money to the UW general fund. But just try to make such a gift to any but a United Way member charity. The pledge card section for write-in gifts requires you put in a code identifying the recipient, and only United Way members have code numbers.
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| United Way of Central Illinois (Springfield) | The State of Illinois has a law that says if public entity employers allow one charitable federated group access to their employees then they must allow the same privilege to all federated groups that are approved by the state and that ask for equal access. As a practical matter, this means the United Way cooperates with the other state-recognized federations to produce a common public employees fund drive for all of them. But since March, 2005, and continuing to this day this United Way has gone behind the backs of its partners to city and county governments trying to cut back room deals that will leave these fund drives in the sole possession of the United Way. Even though the state attorney general has made a finding in writing that doing so would be in violation of state law, the United Way encourages local public officials to do it anyway. This United Way president should be doing jail time for criminal conspiracy, as should the public officials who acquiesce to its demands, but the conventional wisdom is the state will look the other way.
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| United Way of Greater Knoxville (TN) | This United Way will only allow gifts to its own member charities. Attempts to give outside UW's "approved list" are rejected. To add insult to injury, employees at EW Scripps (as in Scripps Howard News Service) reported the list of "approved charities" they received was shorter than the list that appears on UW's web site. That's called "steering" in the insurance industry, and it's illegal. But not for the United Way of Greater Knoxville.
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