By Sheila G. Kelley, Development Coordinator
Dalton Black is starting his second year as Harvey County United Way director. He brings experience working with nonprofit organizations. Dalton’s favorite thing about working with nonprofits is to be able to connect those who give to those who need. He lives in Park City with his husband, Gage, foster daughter, four cats and two dogs.
I started with the agency in October as a temporary, part-time development assistant to help during the 2021 fundraising campaign. Since then, I’ve been hired on permanently, working 20 hours a week. I live in Marion with my husband, John and our menagerie of rescued cats. I have three and ½ grandchildren who are highlights of our lives!
Question: Why did you choose a profession in non-profit work?
Dalton: I don’t think I chose nonprofit work. I think it chose me. While finishing my degree at Wichita State University, I had every intention to work at an advertising agency, or some other for-profit company in their marketing department. While I was looking for internships in my final year of college, I couldn’t find anything in the for-profit sector that looked that exciting to me. The post that did look like fun was one for a development intern where I’d be helping with volunteer coordination, event management and many other things with the community. Helping people comes naturally to me and the only place I can find that kind of work is at a non-profit.
Sheila: I’ve worked in academia, non-profit agencies and for-profit businesses. All of them had their good points and ones that were challenging but as I’m aging, it’s become important to me to help those people and communities struggling to be sustainable citizens, enjoying life without worrying every minute of the day about lack of finances or services. My heart overflows when I see positive changes happening through work I’ve helped with. Like Dalton, helping people comes naturally to me as well.
Question : Of the three United Way focus areas – education, health, income – which are you most passionate about and why?
Dalton: Income stability. While the old saying “money can’t buy happiness” is great in theory, it’s not actually true. Money does buy happiness. When folks are paid a living wage and have access to affordable housing, they are better off. When folks are able to afford health insurance, visits to the doctor and their medications, they are happier and healthier. When folks are more financially stable, they are able to spend their “fun” money at small businesses rather than big box stores because it’s less expensive. Everything in our world costs money. Those who don’t have as much aren’t able to afford anything other than their most essential expenses, and sometimes they aren’t even able to afford that. If we can find ways to ease the stress caused by income instability, then we are truly making steps toward happier citizens and community.
Sheila: Education has always been important to me, especially reading and public speaking. Someone once told me knowledge is power and as I’m getting older, I really believe that to be so. As a very strong reader, I have always been troubled when reading about people who were not ever taught to read. I grew up listening to Dolly Parton and was so pleased to learn that she also recognized the importance of being literate. She was very forthright about how much her daddy missed out in life since he couldn’t read. I so admired her taking that passion and her well-earned funds to start the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. Every child from birth to five years old who participate in the program receives a free book each month and parents are encouraged to read to and with their children.
Question: What has been your proudest accomplishment with HCUW?
Dalton: We’ve done a lot over the past two years, but I think my proudest was the fact that, despite a global pandemic, HCUW was able to keep moving and finding ways to help our community. It has been tough for us all, and many folks had struggles that they’ve never had before. We had our own set of struggles at HCUW, but we remained focused on our mission of creating lasting change in our community. We were still able to fund all of our partner agencies, give free books to children in our community, and create an initiative to help educators in the county get school supplies for their classrooms.
Sheila: I’m very pleased with the new Small Business United initiative that was started this past year. Most businesses in our communities are small, with less than 10 employees. As a former business owner, I know the extent of donation requests these businesses get daily. They can get tapped out early and easily. The SBU group is designed to bring focus on and, hopefully, bring more customers to the businesses. We started out with a goal of recruiting 10 businesses to kick off the program. I was really pleased to see that we had 15 small businesses from Newton, Halstead, Hesston, and Sedgwick become foundational members. I’m excited about what we can do this year for these businesses.
Question: How important are your volunteers?
Dalton: As an organization with one full-time employee and one part-time employee, we rely on volunteers to help us achieve our mission. Our board of directors are all volunteers and they provide strategic leadership for Harvey County United Way, but they also help “on the ground.” You can always find them passing out books at KidFEST, getting supplies for our vendors at the Chili Cook-Off, or anything else that needs to be done. We couldn’t do what we do without them and the rest of our volunteers.
Sheila: To me, volunteers are the backbone of any successful enterprise. In this busy, busy world, people have less and less time to give to organizations. I’ve always strived to identify, train and fully support all my volunteers from someone hanging up posters to another supervising other volunteers. I appreciate everyone’s contribution, whether small and one time only or full-time, every time!
Question : If there was one new program you could implement, what would it be and why?
Dalton: This year I’d really like to explore how we might add an initiative that focuses on health and one that focuses on income stability. At the moment, we don’t have any projects that tap into those two focus areas. We’re exploring this now by talking with other community leaders to find out where the gaps are and how we might be able to play a part in addressing the issues. Stay tuned for more on that! 🙂
Sheila: For as long as I can remember, quality, available, licensed childcare has always been needed, especially in smaller communities like we have around this area. I’d like to see some kind of cooperative initiative to make it possible for people interested in being childcare providers to get training and support in the community to be able to open their own childcare business. I’d also like to see a county needs assessment be conducted so we make sure we aren’t overlapping services in some areas and not providing for others that might not be identified.