June 16, 2025
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WMUL-FM) — The Executive Director of United Way of the River Cities said their grant process is meant to help organizations that are making an impact on the community.
Jedd Flowers, the Executive Director of UWRC, said, “Whenever an organization applies for the grants, they do a letter of intent and then they’re invited to apply, but they have to show some measurable difference they’re going to make.”
United Way of the River Cities is dedicated to helping communities in four counties in West Virginia and two in Ohio.
By doing so, they allow non-profits to apply for grants that can help their communities.
According to Flowers, UWRC gives out two types of grants, one is a safety net grant, which is given every year.
“Safety net grants go towards things like food at the food bank or basic services like the clothing pantry in Huntington,” Flowers said.
The second type of grant UWRC provides is an impact grant, and these are given out every two years.
“Impact grants go towards things that generally take a long time to show results, and this is to give organizations time to grow,” he said.
Flowers also said that when an organization is applying for a grant, it must provide an annual audit or review, provide evidence of its 501C3 status and they have to make a difference in one of the four UWRC impact areas.
“Those impact areas are a healthy community, youth opportunity, financial security and community resilience,” Flowers said.
After an organization has completed the application, it is then reviewed by the UWRC Finance Committee to make sure they meet the financial and impact area requirements.
He said the application is then passed to the Community Impact Council which is made up of UWRC board members and community members.
“Whenever they receive the grant, they sign an agreement with United Way that they will provide regular reporting, provide receipts and file regular reports,” Flowers said.
He said they conduct site visits at all the different funded partners who receive grants.
Flowers said, “The purpose of that is to see it for ourselves in person, what they’re doing with the funds they received from United Way to make sure they are doing what they said.”
He said that by having this process, grants are vetted and trustworthy because they want to keep the trust within the community that their donations are being used for the benefit of the area.
“You want to respect that trust and keep that trust,” Flowers said. “The only reason we exist is that people over the years have seen the work that we do and they trust us.”
He said that they were able to give out double the amount of grants in 2024 compared to 2023.
“You can see we actually gave out $607,787, and that’s because we received additional funds from other support areas,” Flowers said.
Flowers said they are also working with people below the federal poverty rate who may be working multiple jobs but still are not making enough to live.
He said this population of people is continuing to rise, and UWRC is working on ways to help them.