The United Way of Bruce Grey is looking back on the past year and ahead to 2024.
Among a busy 2023, which was also the organization’s 25th anniversary, Executive Director Francesca Dobbyn says they launched their first two Coldest Night of the Year events in Saugeen Shores and Kincardine, which raised over $75,000 towards housing and homelessness.
“We celebrated Pi Day and World Penguin Day in the spring which were two odd things. Lots of activities with Pride throughout the year, Keystone Family Fun Festival, we did way more backpacks in the summer than we have every done before,” says Dobbyn.
She adds they also worked with the City of Owen Sound to provide 600 bags of candy to youth during the Halloween Trick or Treat Trail and also continued to work on the S.O.S. program which provides medical, addiction and crisis management services.
She says while they were doing their best to try and change lives, this year also presented various challenges, including a drop in donations.
“One of the things we are really tracking and starting to battle is we are challenged by a drop in donations. We still have the same number of donors, we actually have more donors, but unfortunately because of the economy, people are donating less. We are going into the year end with a bit of a deficit that we are trying to fundraise our way out of because we’ve tried to meet the need as much as possible and not let people go hungry or not let them be cold and that has been a challenge for us as an organization to meet that need,” says Dobbyn.
She says this deficit the organization is facing is going to impact what they are able to do next year as they will need to cover the deficit.
“We know our community is super supportive for all the work we are doing,” says Dobbyn. “It has been a really rough year on the fundraising side of things.”
Looking ahead to the new year, she says the organization plans to add Meaford and Markdale as locations to hold Coldest Night of the Year walks in February.
“We continue to work with all the partners in the community around homelessness, substance use, the S.O.S. project, it’s going to be a busy 2024,” says Dobbyn.
Additionally for 2024, they want to start focusing on policy change, including looking at universal basic income and the living wage.
“Looking at really solving these hard to solve problems and the big problems rather than just doing all this collecting food and charity and things like that, that just solves the problem for today. We want to solve the problems long term,” says Dobbyn.
