Remarks on the United Way Campaign

TONIGHT I would like to talk with you about the special challenge this year's United Way campaign in your community faces. And I am speaking as one who has worked as a United Way volunteer in my own hometown, as one who knows what the United Way campaign can do in your community.

The one annual campaign for your community agencies may still be called the United Fund or the Community Chest. But this year a new symbol for such campaigns has been adopted. We call it the United Way. This one effort each year to raise funds to help people in need is one of vast importance to you and to your community, and to the Nation as well.

The United Way symbolizes the very best in each of us and in each of our communities. It brings together men and women from every part of the community, all working together to help those who need help.

This is the way to handle community problems--a uniquely American way. We care about our less fortunate neighbors. We are willing to work to make our communities better and you in your community know far better than anyone in Washington which of your neighbors needs help and what is needed to make your community better.

That is why the United Way serves so very well, because it is an effort with a special goal and a special campaign, designed for the community involved.

It is impossible for me to discuss each of those community campaigns and problems individually, but tonight I want to talk with you about the urgent need for your support for your community's campaign.

The national goal for the United Way campaign this year is more than $1 billion-the largest goal of any campaign in our history.

But it is a critical goal this year. Last year your United Way pledge, with those of other Americans, helped 34 million families. That is a tremendously impressive total, but we can't help that many families this year with the amount of money we all pledged last year. I think you know the reason why.

The same problem that put the squeeze on your family budget and which is the number one concern of this Administration has hit the United Way, too. Inflation has taken its toll in the voluntary sector as well.

Last year, for example, in a typical community, the United Way could provide professional care for a retarded child for a little more than $6 a day. This year it costs $10 a day to provide the same professional care to the same child.

Last year a typical day care center could care for a child for $24 a week. This year it costs $30.

Last year a hot-meal program for senior citizens cost $1. Now that same meal costs $1.25.

The problem is where inflation causes you to cut back for the same sick and aged and the dependent young, there is nothing left to cut. They cannot afford to lose the help they are now receiving. Your pledge to United Way in your community provides the most effective, the most economical and efficient way to provide that help. The volunteer effort of the United Way workers insures that more of your dollars go to serve people. Your pledge to the United Way campaign in your community is an investment in a better community. It is an investment in a better Nation and a better world.

I ask you to join in, to give your fair share to make the United Way work for our fellow human beings this year, just as it has worked so well in the past.

Thank you for thinking of others.