With just a couple months remaining in its campaign, United Way of Loudon County representatives remain optimistic in aiming for the nonprofit organization’s largest goal ever of $487,500.

Judy Fenton, local United Way executive director, said as of Friday the campaign was at $305,220.10, or 62.6 percent, to the goal. This time last year the campaign was only 34.3 percent of the way to a goal of $475,000.

“Most major accounts that have reported have been slightly up,” Fenton said in an email correspondence. “Still pending (is) Kimberly-Clark and CNS (Y-12). (The) next few months will be a challenge as these are the smaller companies. People can still donate and help our county partners continue their great work in our county. With additional help we should be able to reach our goal.”


Higher contributions come despite having an overall lower dollar input from scheduled events, Fenton said.

“Right now on the events part of it we’re down a little bit, and most of that down — I’m not counting the cornhole, that was the first time, so there’s nothing to compare that to,” Fenton said. “The driving event, we were up just shy of $100 on that. The LoCoPalooza, done by the Loudon County Health Improvement Council, was up about $250. Our golf tournament was down and so that’s the main part. Right now we’re down about $2,800 on events and most of that stems from the golf tournament, which was down a little bit.”

Driving to Make a Difference brought in $10,418, which is up $68 from last year. LoCoPalooza contributed $750 this year.

The golf outing last year, which splits expenditures and profit with United Way of Monroe County, brought in about $20,000. Fenton said this year the golf outing brought in about $18,000.

“We still had a great turnout of teams and things, but it’s our sponsorships to cover some our costs we didn’t get,” Fenton said. “... Sponsorship dollars weren’t enough to cover our expenses as well as the previous year.”

People interested in donating to the United Way have until the end of March, Fenton said.

Village meets goal

The Tellico Village fundraising campaign met and surpassed its largest ever goal of $90,000, which officials say could make it the second-largest contributor to Loudon County this year.

Bob Mugge, Village campaign treasurer, said $92,920.98 was raised, which is a 102.3 percent completion rate. Mugge and Andy Ewing, past president of the county-wide United Way, have served as co-chairmen in Tellico Village since 1999.

“It’s a big step forward, particularly in lieu of the timing of this because we know a lot of Villagers contributed to the Sevierville issue, the fire issue, and just the fact that we were able to reach it and in fact actually exceed our goal is remarkable,” Ewing said.

United Way officials credit the street fair, which brought in about 500 people, along with a push on social media and an anonymous Village couple agreeing to match up to $1,000 as the reasons why the campaign was a success.

“Well that generated more than $1,000 in new contributions, plus their $1,000, so that put us over the top,” Ewing said. “That was an extraordinary welcome assistance. Now will that happen again next year? Who knows. We were certainly pleased.”

Participation in the Village dropped to about 13 percent, which is roughly 1 percent lower than last year. Mugge said the declining trend is “concerning.”

“We know the county needs help and we want to support them in any way that we can, but yeah, it’s a continuing battle to find people that are willing to support that effort,” Mugge said. “I don’t know, we haven’t figured out how to solve that yet.”

Despite the continuing challenge of participation, more newcomers did donate this year, Ewing said.

“We didn’t have an effective way in the past of getting to the newcomers,” Ewing said. “And again, we did get — the money we got this year we got from a lot of new people. We didn’t hear from some of our ex-contributors, but on the other hand we did begin to reach some new people.”

Fenton took the Village’s success as a good sign for the county campaign.

“It’s always positive, and right now most of the campaigns that have come in — Tate & Lyle was up some, ORNL was up some, not huge amounts but they each were up and that’s what you want,” Fenton said. “The two largest ones are Y-12 and (Kimberly-Clark) that I just don’t know about yet.”