Posted on August 16, 2005

Long Island United Way Offering Naming Opportunities

The United Way of Long Island in Deer Park, New York, has begun to offer naming opportunities to individual donors for specific projects within the agencies it funds, Newsday reports.

While naming gifts are common practice at universities and hospitals, they are all but unheard of at United Ways, which typically aggregate charitable resources within a local community and make those resources available to nonprofit agencies in the form of general operating support. Nevertheless, several United Ways around the country have begun to move away from broad-based, agency-specific grants and re-focused their grantmaking to deliver community impact through specific projects and initiatives.

The United Way of Long Island decided to follow in those footsteps after it received $500,000 from a fund set up by Amy Hagedorn and her late husband, Horace, one of Long Island's best-known philanthropists. The gift will be used to purchase a mobile dental van for the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, and will be acknowledged in the van itself, along with contributions from the United Way and North Shore-LIJ employees.

"This may represent a new model for us," said United Way of Long Island president Patrick Foye. "I think that being able to do that has been effective for the Harvards and Adelphis and Hofstras [universities]. I think that naming opportunities are attractive to people and that's something we're going to be mindful of going forward."