news-record.com

The community's biggest clearinghouse for charitable giving is paying attention to more these days than funded agencies' good intentions.

As a tight economy creates a vexing brew of rising needs and tighter resources, United Way of Greater Greensboro is refining its efforts to tie money to results.

This is neither an easy nor an enviable job. But even in better times, it's a necessity. Agencies should be able to produce tangible measures of their effectiveness.

Toward that end, volunteers reviewed agencies' performances and directly linked them to a funding formula: funded agencies that receive "commendable" ratings get last year's funding, plus 50 percent of requested increases. Organizations rated as "satisfactory" receive 95 percent of the previous year's funding; those designated as "limited" receives 80 percent of what they got last year.

The formulas continue to refine a more, objective, performance-based approach begun in recent years. They also should help ensure fairness and consistency.

United Way also has tried to target its spending to the community's most pressing needs by seeking input from a cross-section of citizens. That helps to set clearer priorities.

One would hope, of course, that the assessments would reach beyond raw numbers to consider the unique challenges of a particular agency or specialty.

For instance, agencies that deal with drug abuse by their nature won't always produce stellar numbers. Crack-addiction treatment, in particular, is sorely needed here but does not typically produce success rates as high as in some other areas of treatment.

Couching it in sports terms, that's why three hits in every 10 at-bats is considered a success in baseball; it's so hard to do.

That said, the challenges are so many and the resources limited.

United Way has the right idea to mix compassion and generosity with a request for partner agencies to show reasonable returns on the community's investment.