United Way of Massachusetts Bay’s story began during the Great Depression, created to unite communities and resources in support of Greater Boston families facing hardship. Soon after, World War II “heightened a realization of the need for caring for our own people and giving them a chance for decent lives.”
In 1941, United Way (known then as the Community Fund) reflected on its wartime support efforts and recognized that the crisis amplified a need that had existed long before the war: the need to fight for opportunity for all.
The Community Fund raised money and mobilized partners to provide material support, while promoting the importance of giving people the resources they need to succeed and doing so with “tolerance, neighborliness, justice and charity”; an effort they wrote was awakening “the social conscience of all of Greater Boston.”
This social conscience was put into action after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. In just over two months following the attack, Greater Boston had organized a United War Fund, mobilized 30,000 volunteers, and raised nearly $8 million for social and health services. The Community Fund credited a strong foundation of preparation and partnership as the reason the response was a success: “The ground was prepared as early as June, 1941 – six months before the Pearl Harbor attack.”
One year later, Community Fund staff and agencies worked quickly to help the victims of the Cocoanut Grove Disaster, a fire in Boston which took the lives of 492 people. “[M]uch that was learned in this great trial will make this service even more efficient in any future disasters,” United Way reflected at the time. “This sudden crisis brought home to the people of Greater Boston more dramatically and forcefully than any words could the need for maintaining fundamental social and health agencies within the community.”
“We’re Built for This”: Decades of Crisis Response
These examples from United Way’s earliest days as an organization built our approach to crisis response that we continue to draw from today. Our regional network powers a strong safety net infrastructure that enables us to respond quickly to meet urgent needs while also focusing on the bigger systemic fault lines and cracks that a disaster often reveals.
Over the decades that followed, United Way has continued to put past lessons and experience into practice through nearly every kind of emergency disaster imaginable.
- When the Great Blizzard of 1978 paralyzed New England, United Way offered an emergency grant of $100,000 to the Greater Boston Chapter of the American Red Cross to help families who were stranded without supplies and supported efforts to raise additional resources for residents displaced by evacuations.
- In 1983, United Way launched the “Economic Conditions Response Fund” to help “those most impacted by the economy, helping the unemployed and the working poor who needed fuel, food and shelter” following cutbacks in funding to human services.
- After the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001, United Way held a “Walk for Unity” to raise money for local families who had lost loved ones and partnered with Catholic Charities of Boston to provide emergency financial assistance in during the weeks and months following the attack.
- When the foreclosure rates rose over 140% in 2008, United Way launched the Community Support Fund to provide emergency assistance for basic needs. Among the first investments was a $300,000 commitment to the City of Boston’s Food + Fuel Campaign.
- After dozens of gas explosions rocked Lawrence in 2018 and more than 15,000 residents were evacuated from their homes, we launched a Greater Lawrence Relief Fund to assist displaced families and small business owners.
Meeting the Challenge of a Pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic tested communities in unprecedented ways, demanding a response at an equally unprecedented scale. In 2020, United Way launched the Covid-19 Family Support Fund to provide flexible financial assistance to residents experiencing lost income and wages. Within its first six months, the fund supported more than 300,000 households.
“United Way knew our work and our clients.” said Joan Abbott, who led BEST Hospitality Training, which trains workers for the hotel and food service industries. “They knew that the pandemic would hit our industry particularly hard. It was United Way who first stepped up to provide direct support to hospitality workers who lost their jobs in March. For this, we are eternally grateful.”
United Way ultimately raised $13.7 million from 14,000 donors and overall mobilized more than $40 million in pandemic recovery efforts.
Those investments included funds to help families meet immediate needs while also supporting longer-term recovery, including expanding summer learning and enrichment opportunities following a year of remote education for many young children.
But United Way’s role extended beyond fundraising.
As State Representative Andy Vargas explained, “We had all the pieces in Haverhill to help people. But we didn’t necessarily have the facilitator. United Way stepped up to be the facilitator we needed to make sure that all of our social service organizations, community and volunteer groups, and our city and state and private sector leadership are all working together because that’s the only way we’re going to get through this pandemic.”
Preparing for What’s Next
Today, communities across Massachusetts are facing new challenges and growing uncertainty. While the nature of today’s federal impacts may be different from past crises, United Way’s approach has been forged through decades of responding to war, fires, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, economic crises, public health emergencies, and more.
That experience continues to guide our work.
Through our United Way Federal Response Calls, our United Response Fund, and a mobilization of over $7 million to provide emergency food assistance during the federal government shutdown and disruption in SNAP benefits, United Way continues to provide immediate support while keeping an eye on protecting the progress we have made to advance thriving, healthy communities.
Following the pandemic, we reflected, “United Way will never waste a moment when communities are in crisis. We work to make sure the innovative approaches that emerge during a crisis response become our new way of doing business, and that we heal stronger.”
For 90 years, crisis response has been about more than meeting urgent needs. It has been about stabilizing the safety net and strengthening it for the future. As new challenges emerge, United Way will continue to use the lessons of past crises to strengthen communities while preparing for whatever emergency comes our way.
