United (Way) we stand: How this newspaper increased its giving

When you're strange faces come out of the rain. When you're strange no one remembers your name.

DEC. 15, 2009: When the Watertown Daily Times recently became the first north country business to win a second “Community Service Award” from the United Way of Northern New York, I offered my usual reaction:

So what? Big deal. Who cares?

The truth be known, the Times receives dozens of awards every year from dozens of north country charities and public service groups for all sorts of donations of time, talents and money. Being the highly emotional person I am, I treasure them all. But I'm not about to say some awards are more equal than others because people who actually HAVE emotions might get their feelings hurt.

But then I started thinking about this one. We received the Community Service Award because Times' employees dramatically increased their giving to United Way. And they did it during a year in which this paper furloughed all of its employees for two weeks.

You do the math: Times employees docked two paychecks equals Times employees giving more money to charity.

How does it compute?

Deep in the heart of our circulation department, Laurie Putney and Lynn Szatkowski hatched an ingenious plan.

Says Lynn: “We did an in-house bake sale with many employees donating their time and baking skills. We did three 50/50 raffles. We had collection cans by all the hot spots around the building. We had employee special raffles with gift cards and special incentives like days off with pay and a VIP parking spot under the awning. We also emphasized that all it took was $1 a week or one less trip to the vending machines.”

By the end of the campaign, employees had either signed pledge cards or had bought food and raffle tickets. One way or the other Laurie and Lynn got our money and gave it to United Way.

“Lynn and Laurie were model community volunteers,” said Jayne Graves, United Way's executive director. “They really believed in the United Way concept ‘The Power of a Dollar' and that for those of us with jobs, a roof over our head and groceries in the cupboard, this was our year to step forward with an annual gift of $26 or $52.

“The really amazing thing about Lynn and Laurie is that even though they were fully aware that fellow employees at the Times were experiencing some rough weather, they believed that the employees would respond generously — and they did!”

So there. Some awards ARE more equal than others. And so are some employees. Laurie and Lynn, like their counterparts at all north country businesses that support the United Way, deserve the community's praise. At a time when the normal reaction would be to hunker down, they decided to stand up and reach out to help those in need.