In Northeast Ohio’s business and civic leadership circles, Marc Byrnes is a power player (in fact, he appears on Page 44 of our Power 100 list). His accomplishments as chairman of the 120-year-old Oswald Companies, donor chairman for the United Way board of trustees and many other civic and executive roles have earned him this recognition.
Yet when asked why he was drawn to serve the United Way, Byrnes doesn’t offer up a canned corporate response about civic duty or giving back to his community.
Instead, he says, “I am a personal, direct beneficiary of the United Way.”
Orphaned, placed into foster care and adopted through Bellfaire JCB, a foster and adoption agency supported by United way, Byrnes credits much of his present-day success to his experiences with the organization.
“Had it not been for the United Way, I would not have had the good fortune of having frankly been nurtured and taken care of by a beautiful couple, Judy and Larry Byrnes,” he says. “And ultimately my adoptive mother, who died 20 years ago, was remarkably taken care of by another United Way agency, the Western Reserve Hospice.”
His rise from orphan to chairman of one of the top 50 largest insurance brokers in the nation may be unique, but Byrnes does not stand alone as a beneficiary of the United Way.
Originally founded in Cleveland in 1913, the nonprofit has nearly 1,800 offices in more than 40 countries worldwide. In Greater Cleveland alone, the United Way provides more than $50 million annually to 450,000 area residents, plus financial, educational and health services.
Outgoing chairman of the board Rick Buoncore says stories like Byrnes’, while not often heard, are at the heart of the United Way’s work and mission.
“Yeah, we collect money and we’re sort of the community do-gooder, but there’s so much more direct stuff we’re doing,” he says.
He offers the story of Titus Hicks as an example. At the age of 14, Hicks joined the United Way’s Baldwin-Wallace scholarship program, which aims to support high-aptitude but at-risk students through graduation. Hicks lived in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Cleveland, was one of eight children — five of whom were incarcerated at the time — and had been told by more than one teacher that he would never graduate.
“He’s the first one in his family to graduate high school and will be the first one, a year from now, to graduate college. His younger nephews and nieces are now not looking up at the five in jail going, ‘That’s my destiny,’ but looking up at him,” says Buoncore. “You kind of end the cycle, at least for that family.”
For decades, the United Way has been recognized for its massive and successful fundraising efforts. But five years ago it narrowed its focus in Northeast Ohio to three main impact areas — education, financial stability and health — marketing itself not with capital investment figures but rather through success stories such as Hicks and Byrnes’. And this people-centered approach is increasing coffers and swelling volunteer ranks.
From job training programs in homeless shelters to family financial planning assistance, social services in Cleveland Municipal School District schools, chronic disease management tools, nutrition and healthy lifestyle education programs, veteran services and more, nearly 130 different programs were funded through United Way of Greater Cleveland last year.
First, the organization asked community members directly about their concerns and needs. Then, rather than simply dishing out funds to various programs and agencies, Buoncore explains, it has been developing success metrics, evaluating each program’s impact and holding each one accountable for results.
The results of this method are aready becoming clear: At John Adams High School, since working with the United Way and College Now, the East Side school has raised its graduation rate to 82 percent — far above the district average of 59 percent. Participants in the United Way’s summer reading program saw a 25 percent increase in reading ability from the end of the previous school year to the beginning of the next. Approximately 1,100 adults have been trained and matched with jobs retained beyond 90 days. And more than 280,000 calls were answered last year through the agency’s 2-1-1 help hotline, which serves any Greater Cleveland resident in any kind of distress, from domestic abuse to hunger to mortgage assistance to medical care.
“It doesn’t really matter what the dollars are, it matters what the impact is,” says Buoncore. “If United Way wasn’t here, what would happen? That’s a very scary thought. Two-hundred eighty calls wouldn’t be heard, 25 schools wouldn’t have a program. Titus would probably be in jail. That’s the reason I’m involved.”
