As we step into a new year, I find myself thinking about both where we’ve been and where we’re going.
At United Way of Southeast Louisiana, we’ve spent the last year listening. Really listening. To the people we serve, our partners, and our communities across the region. What we heard was honest, urgent, and hopeful all at once. Families are working hard, doing everything right, yet too many are still struggling to make ends meet. At the same time, there is a deep belief that with the right support, stability is possible.
That belief is what fuels us.
As we look ahead, we are entering this new year with renewed focus, a clearer strategy, and a refined approach to impact. One designed to meet this moment and build a stronger future for ALICE households across Southeast Louisiana.
A Bold Goal Grounded in Reality
Our goal is simple, and it is ambitious: to help ALICE households move from surviving to thriving.
This year, we are grounding that work in a new Bold Goal for United Way of Southeast Louisiana. By aligning our resources, partnerships, and investments, we are committing to increasing financial stability for ALICE households across our region. This Bold Goal gives us a clear north star. It sharpens our focus, holds us accountable, and ensures that our work is driving real, lasting change for working families.
BOLD GOAL
PLACE 100,000 INDIVIDUALS LIVING BELOW THE ALICE THRESHOLD ON A PATHWAY TO PROSPERITY BY 2035
ALICE, which stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, represents the backbone of our economy. These are the childcare providers, home health aides, grocery clerks, hospitality staff, and essential workers who keep our region running. They earn above the poverty line, yet still cannot afford the cost of living in the communities where they live.
ALICE isn’t about politics. It’s about people.
It’s about recognizing that when nearly half of households in our region are living paycheck to paycheck, we all feel the impact. Families delay medical care. Parents make impossible choices between childcare and rent. People, real people, are one emergency away from crisis.
Our Bold Goal acknowledges that reality and commits us to changing it.
A Strategic Plan Built for Impact
To reach that goal, we need more than good intentions. We need a clear, disciplined plan.
That’s where our 2025-2027 Strategic Plan comes in. It serves as our roadmap, a community-informed, data-driven framework that guides where we invest, how we measure progress, and how we partner for greater impact. It aligns all of our work around one shared outcome: Increasing stability and financial security for ALICE households.
This plan reflects an evolution in how United Way shows up.
We are strengthening what we do best. We connect people, partners, and resources across sectors. We respond at the speed of need while staying focused on long-term solutions. We scale what works so impact lasts beyond a single program or grant cycle.
This approach allows us to move with urgency and intention, addressing immediate needs while building pathways to opportunity.
Introducing the ALICE Pathway to Prosperity Grants
One of the most important ways this strategy comes to life is through our new ALICE Pathway to Prosperity grants.
These grants focus on programs that help working families build stability, develop essential skills, and access opportunities that strengthen long-term financial security. They support efforts that reflect how families actually live and work in our region.
This includes investments in workforce pathways, childcare solutions, financial coaching, access to benefits, and support services that help families remain housed, healthy, and employed. Most importantly, we designed the pathway as a continuum of service, rooted in coordinated case management to ensure no one goes it alone.
We believe progress happens when services are aligned, and families don’t have to navigate systems in a silo. Solutions are strongest when they reflect lived experience and remove barriers instead of adding complexity.
The Pathway to Prosperity grants reflect that belief. They are targeted, strategic, and rooted in the voices and realities of ALICE households.
Why Hope Matters
Hope is not something we offer lightly.
For the families we serve, hope must be practical. It must show up as access to childcare that allows a parent to keep their job. As job training that leads to wages that cover the cost of living. As financial tools that help a family build a small cushion instead of constantly bracing for the next crisis.
Part of our job at United Way is to hold that hope and turn it into action, even when the data is sobering.
When families can see a clear path forward, everything changes. Stress decreases. Children do better in school. Workers stay engaged. Communities grow stronger.
That is what this new year represents. Greater clarity. Sharper focus. A deeper commitment to doing what works.
United Is the Way Forward
We can’t do this alone. And we don’t pretend to.
This work requires nonprofits, businesses, government, and philanthropy pulling in the same direction. It requires listening to ALICE voices and centering solutions around their goals, not just systems.
United Way has always been about bringing people together around shared responsibility. That remains true today. What has grown stronger is our clarity about how we move forward together.
As we step into this new year, I am filled with hope. The challenges are real, and so is our resolve. Our strategy is clear. Our community is ready.
This is what United Way does.
Where there’s a need, there’s a United Way. And together, we are building a stronger pathway to prosperity for ALICE families and for all of us.
United is the Way.
-Michael
Michael Williamson
President & CEO