Bill Golderer - United Way of Greater Philadelphia & Southern New Jersey

As President & Chief Executive Officer of United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey, Bill serves its mission to fight poverty and expand opportunity by harnessing the collective power of the corporate, private philanthropy, nonprofit, and public sector. Under his leadership, United Way raises and invests over $20 million annually to advance educational attainment, creating career pathways and forging paths to financial empowerment through large-scale initiatives like PHLConnectED, and The Promise, a public-private partnership to help families access opportunities for upward mobility.

Bill is a graduate of Southern Methodist University and Yale University Divinity School, and received an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Eastern University.  Bill is the founder of Broad Street Ministry, Rooster Soup Company and was named one of the 76 Most Influential Philadelphians by Philadelphia Magazine and Leadership Philadelphia’s 100 most trusted Connectors.  

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I'm the rain ballad borrow with CEOsyou should know, brought to you by
Comcast Business. I'm Bill Golderer.I'm President and CEO of the United Way
of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey. And what is the mission of United
Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern NewJersey. The aspirational vision is to meaningfully

(00:21):
and measurably reduce poverty and expand opportunityfor all in our community. How do
you do that? What's so confusingis to say, kind of, it's
such a big mission. You haveto say, well, where do you
start? And we start with likethe experience that I think is universal to
our neighbors, which is as you'regoing through your life, whether you're I

(00:45):
have two teenage boys and you know, and then I'm not a teenage boy
anymore, but through their life andthrough my life and everybody I've ever met,
broadly defined if you're talking about thejourney to oh, become poverty or
in the adversity that poverty presents,and expanding opportunities, which is opening doors.

(01:07):
I talked to people about it,and there's two broad buckets that things
fall into life events, things thatkeep you up at night and things that
help you get out of bed inthe morning. So things that keep you
up at night are unanticipated pocket emergencies. Will my car get me to the
interview I just landed? Like?Do I have enough miles? Do I

(01:30):
have enough money for gas? Forthat job? Interview? Like? These
are things the worries that are constantin every person. Whether you've made it
big or you're hoping to make itbig, we are all plagued by things
that keep us up at night,that could keep us back and hold us
down, and things that get usout of bed are the thing The opportunities

(01:53):
we can visualize for ourselves or thatour parents could visualize for us, whether
it's a new credential, a newprofessional certification, a new job opportunity,
opening your own business, saving moneyso you can have your own spot.
You know, these are universal toeveryone, and it starts there, and

(02:15):
then we bring we you know.I have a friend who says romance without
finance don't stand a chance, youknow, And maybe I don't know if
that's true or not. I'm nota marriage counselor, but I will say
this that if you don't put realfinancial capital behind programs and initiatives that are

(02:38):
designed to help address people the thingsthat are keeping people up at night and
helping people get out of the morning, get out of bed in the morning.
You're just wishful thinking. So youUnited Way is the financial and reputational
gin that powers these things forward.We touch thousands and thousands of lives every

(02:58):
year, but we don't do recservice. We don't compete with existing nonprofits.
We bring capital and innovation to theirexisting efforts. So for those who
are out there who may not trulyunderstand what United Way does, I wonder
if you could explain simply what doesUnited Way do. So what we do

(03:20):
is we take a deep look ateveryone who is working in mostly in the
nonprofit space to elevate the lives oftheir neighbors. And it's a very narrow
focus. Now. Unfortunately, historicallywe used to be more of a community
chest and we would just redistribute fundsand collect a lot of funds and then

(03:40):
give them give them away. Nowour mission has become laser focused on poverty
reduction and opportunity creation. So wetake an inventory of all the work that's
being done across our nine county footprintand we look for natural collaborations and cooperation
opportunities where if you take these individualefforts, many nonprofits are always fighting over

(04:08):
funding, and we look for waysto bring high performing organizations with good reputations
in the community, bring them towardcommon endeavors, and we incentivize collaboration and
cooperation through greater financial investment in theirability to deliver results for their community.

(04:30):
Sounds like a lot of words,but what I have found is any cause
you've ever cared about, when youget deep into it, the way the
system is set up that I'm tryingin our organizations trying to disrupt is we've
created kind of the Hunger Games fornonprofit organizations where they're competing when they could
be cooperating. And no no nonprofitleader I've ever met likes the way it's

(04:53):
set up. And so our workis primarily to say, what if you
could do more with more you hadmore resources, more people power, more
friends in the same space that aretrying to work on the same issues.
But the number one thing that getsin the way of that is, as
I alluded to earlier, something Icalled the met which is money, ego

(05:15):
and turf, Like you have toput your ego aside, You've got to
reduce your anxiety about money and figureout whether we could do something much bigger,
and that would be much more effectiveif we figured out how we could
do it together. You have longbeen involved in this space of service and

(05:38):
helping people achieve their potential, regardlessof where they stand at that moment.
In your work at the Broad StreetMinistry, you certainly did that, and
that was so innovative and so effective. And I wonder if you can talk
a little bit about your own originstory in terms of, you know,
what is it that drives you,what is it that keeps you going and

(06:00):
innovating and working towards uplifting folks theway that you are committed to doing.
There's kind of two or maybe threequick drivers. The first is I have
Philadelphia like coursing through my veins,like for better or worse. My people
are here like generations of people.And I spoke briefly, you know,

(06:26):
my dad's went to Kensington High Schooland no further like that's where he finished
his formal education and he went onto So this is part of the answer,
is he went on without a collegedegree to become an executive through hard
work but the world was different,and he worked for a company named Equifax.

(06:50):
He worked there for forty two years. He rose through the ranks,
and you know, part of thatwas his race, and his gender and
his all the things. But likemost people, he worked really hard and
there was a payoff. I knowthat world doesn't exist in the same way
it did, but whether it's him. My uncle Joe drove of the forty

(07:12):
two septibus for forty four years.My other uncle was alignment at Pico.
Like the way I love Philadelphia isthe way I love my sons. I
know you're capable of better. That'sloving for me. I know that we
can do better for our neighbors,and we just we're just not doing enough.
So it's like an impatient love thatI try to give. And the
second thing is I read a bookrecently that I commend to listeners called four

(07:36):
Thousand Weeks. I'm a Presbyterian minister, and as a minister, I'm at
people's side their entire lives, whenthey welcome a new life into the world,
when they take a chance on somebodyelse, take a chance on love
and get married. And I'm alsothere at the end. And I think
a lot of us think we're goingto do our good work some other day,

(07:57):
at some other time when we havemore time. And the reality is,
if you're blessed, if you're fortunate, you get four thousand weeks to
make the impact you want to makein this world. Eighty years times fifty
weeks is four thousand weeks. Andso not to talk to you, Lorraine,
but I just had a birthday andI'm on the back nine of four

(08:18):
thousand and so I live each daywith a deep sense of urgency that we
have a contribution to make and weneed to encourage each other to make that
contribution. And so there's like animpatience, a relentlessness, but a deep
joy in expending yourself in this direction. And I feel a sense of privilege
that I get the chance to dothis. How can individuals? Certainly we've

(08:43):
talked about how nonprofits can interact withthe United Way, but how can the
average individual out there who's listening tothis interview, either online or on the
radio, how can they connect withUnited Way? The number one thing is
like, if you're a person who'sin need of help, like you,
if you're someone who's like at acrossroads and you're trying to access resources.

(09:07):
Most people don't even know this resourceexists. But the largest database that is
you can do it on your phonelike texting, but twenty four hours,
seven days a week, in Ithink fourteen languages. There's a lot a
helpline called two one one, andduring the pandemic this thing went into overdrive

(09:30):
and it's everything from rent assistance,food security, transportation needs like whatever.
This is a warehousing things that youmight need for children or elderly people.
This is the most robust and upto date database of resources that people.
If you need something, United WayPowers two one one. It is like

(09:52):
I mean, if I do saysmell myself. It's the most comprehensive resource
guide that we have, and itconnects people to things they need. If
you're a person who says, youknow, I feel so overwhelmed by the
number of needs in my community,and I just and I don't have a
ton of money, but I wantto give something to someone and I want

(10:13):
to see the impact. There's fortyone thousand individual donors who make up United
Way. United Ways it's one hundredyear old startup. Is how we talk
about it, like we've been hittingour Stride in the last few years.
And I met this woman who hasbeen supporting the Night Away, she said,
for her eighty years, and shegives She does this thing where she
goes to the she rolls coins.I don't know if this is going to

(10:37):
make any sense to younger people,but there were these things called coins,
and you like had got these paperthings and she would roll coins and she
would just drive them to United Wayand drop them off. And that's what
she would do every time in December, she would take all the coins that
she'd accumulated over the year and giveWe have a computer record and over those

(10:58):
eighty years, this woman has givenover one hundred thousand dollars to her neighbors.
And she's like, I can't believeit's one hundred thousand. And So
what I'm saying is you can makea major impact with your loose change and
join nearly fifty thousand other Philadelphians whohave made the same choice, because if
you don't know where to start,We've been doing this a long time and

(11:20):
we know a lot about who's doinggreat work, and we want to make
sure that we're an engine to supportthat great work. The last thing I'll
say, is this United Way.If you love Philly and you love our
region, we are very quickly Bynext year, I hope to come back.
If you'll have me. We're goingto be the first United Way in
the country where one hundred cents ofthose dollars, if you gave a dollar

(11:43):
de nighted Way, one hundred centsof it goes back into the community.
We'll be able to give you adigital readout on what happened. So it's
taken a long time to get usthere because it's been a while, But
I think in a time when we'relearning how to re engage after the pandemic
and some of these problems we're facingfeel so overwhelming, we owe it to

(12:05):
our community to be accountable and transparentto how dollars flow. Because people work
so hard for their money, wewant to make sure it goes to good
use. If people would like toget in touch with United Way of Philadelphia
and Southern New Jersey and Southern NewJersey, how do they do that?
Give us all the different ways.Yeah, the best way is just to

(12:26):
type into your phone into your webbrowser, United for Impact dot org and
that gets you all our social andinsta and all the things, but United
for Impact is the best way tostart your journey to know United Way.
Fantastic, Thank you, Thank you, CEOs you should know. Brought to
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(12:50):
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