United Way Super Bowl ad -sneak peak

Just posted on You Tube is this weekend's United Way Super Bowl commerical...it's 15 seconds long...

Welcome to Live United Y'All

As a person born and raised in the south, when I saw the title of Louisville United Way's new blog Live United Y'All, I couldn't resist checking it out. I encourage you to do the same. It's well written and engaging.

Speaking of Louisville, the Derby City is also the feature on tonight's American Idol. I hope there is a Metro United Way connection on the show tonight.

Live United & social media

The firm behind United Way's Live United program have just posted some additional information on their blog at the following link: http://bit.ly/YUzy

I'm really excited to see the strategic direction that comes from this engagement. It will be interesting to see how local United Ways work together to leverage one another's influence in the larger online community. Imagine the overall impact if local United Ways would work together in a collaborative way.

Upic team gathers in Cincinnati

Earlier this week, Upic's customer service team gathered in Cincinnati to review our progress over 2008 and to initiate new service improvements for the upcoming year. Watch this blog for exciting new services over the next few weeks from ideas generated at this meeting.

Upic staff members pictured above (left to right):
Front: Dan Zix, Jim Mead, Pat Daugherty, Charlene Hoffman, Winston Faircloth.
Middle: Craig Irvin, Tim Witham, Jan Atterson, Patti Sperry, Debbie Jacob, Brian Miller.
Back: Kyle Sweeney, Andrew Woten, David Poe, Lisa Cotton, Nancy Abbott.

Upic assists winner of Truist promotion

Upic congratulates the United Way of Central Maryland (Baltimore) in winning the recent Truist promotion for the greatest increase in transactions for the 2008 calendar year among all United Way affiliates.

Upic is pleased to have played a small part in their victory. When UWCM faced a need for experienced Truist configuration resources, they turned to Upic to supplement their staff. Over a few short weeks, Upic executed 18 campaign accounts raising over $660,000 in employee donations.

We see this as a growing opportunity for United Ways who need to supplement their existing staff with experienced, certified Upic resources. If your United Way could use this help, or if you are an experienced Truist configuration resource, please contact Winston Faircloth.

My favorite time saver: Google Reader

With personal time at a premium, I no longer go to my favorite web pages to know what's going on, I let the web pages come to me with Google Reader. For me this has replaced traditional newspaper and magazine subscriptions and many of my internet "favorites" on my web browser. With Google Reader, when any of my sites change or update, it shows up on a single web page.

Here at Upic, I track news articles and social media mentions of both "United Way" and "Upic Solutions". Earlier this week, I was able to pass along a service compliant that was posted on Twitter to a United Way in South Carolina just by seeing it pop up in Google Reader.

Overall, this is a BIG time saver for me, allowing me to focus on the most relevant news and social media postings without having to visit multiple websites or publications. Below are two You Tube videos that describe the benefits of Google's reader technology.

Google Reader in Plain English


Getting Started with Google Reader