FAQ

United Way of Tucson focuses on the following impact areas:

• The Education Impact Area focuses on improving educational and life outcomes for children, youth and young adults by advancing equity and excellence in education, ensuring that our community’s children are prepared to enter school ready to learn and succeed; and are in safe places after-school with caring adults.
• The Financial Wellness Impact Area focuses on improving the equity of employment and financial wellness outcomes of adults and families for life-long well being by creating stable and successful families, providing assistance to connect our community’s families to the resources they need to remain self-sufficient and to ensure that their members are safe and free from violence.
• The Healthy Communities Impact Area focuses on providing equitable access through education and resources to improve the quality of living and dying for older people and their families.

You can make the greatest impact on important issues facing our community by investing in United Way’s Community Impact Fund. This fund creates long-lasting impact for those who need it most right here in our local community – children, families and seniors.

Community impact occurs when organizations from different sectors agree to solve a social problem using a common agenda and a structured form of collaboration. In contrast, isolated impact occurs when organizations primarily work alone to solve social problems. Organizations have been implementing community impact for a long time. Successful collective impact collaborations include 5 conditions to ensure success:

1. Common Agenda
   All participants share a vision for change that includes a common understanding of the problem and a joint approach to solving the problem through agreed-upon actions.
2. Shared Measurement
   All participating organizations agree on the ways success will be measured and reported, with a short list of common indicators identified and used for learning and improvement.
3. Mutually Reinforcing Activities
   A diverse set of stakeholders, typically across sectors, coordinate a set of differentiated activities through a mutually reinforcing plan of action.
4. Continuous Communication
   All players engage in frequent and structured open communication to build trust, assure mutual objectives and create common motivation.
5. Backbone Support
   An independent, funded staff dedicated to the initiative provides ongoing support by guiding the initiative’s vision and strategy, supporting aligned activities, establishing shared measurement practices, building public will, advancing policy and mobilizing resources.

United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona’s mission is, “Building a thriving community by uniting people, ideas and resources.”

United Way of Tucson is a backbone organization, possessing the infrastructure necessary to achieve large-scale social change by being a problem solver, focusing on eliminating the root causes of poverty in our region that lead to hunger, crime, homelessness, drug abuse, unemployment and missing school. These things affect us all in one way or another and we all know people – friends, neighbors, family members, coworkers – who have been significantly impacted by some of these challenges. We invest in the areas that will achieve the greatest impact in our community.

We all win when a child succeeds in school, a neighborhood turns around, families have good health, and workers have solid jobs. And we believe education is the key to developing and sustaining healthy, financially stable, self-sufficient communities.

Yes, the new universal tax break for charitable donations was included in the final $2 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package signed into law in March and will go into effect starting with the 2020 tax year. The measure grants taxpayers an above-the-line deduction for up to $300 in charitable donations given in 2020. So for folks who take the standard deduction, if you give $300 to charity, you’d get the $300 tax break in addition to the standard deduction. Those who file for itemized deduction can take a tax deduction of up to 100% of your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) for charitable donations to qualifying charities starting in 2020. Corporate donors can take a tax deduction of up to 25% of their Adjustable Tax Income for charitable donations to qualifying charities starting in 2020. Your gift matters more than ever during this time of need and we hope that you are able to take advantage of this charitable opportunity.

Arizona Charitable Tax Credit – Helping The Working Poor:

United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona is a qualifying organization for the Arizona Charitable Tax Credit, which provides a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $400/individual or $800/couples. This fund supports job-skills training, affordable childcare, educational opportunities, emergency services and more, to the Working Poor in our community. The code needed to claim the Qualifying Charitable Organization tax credit for an umbrella organization is 20726.

For your Arizona State Income Taxes, no, you do not have to itemize deductions to claim a credit for contributions to the Helping The Working Poor Fund, a qualifying charitable organization (use AZ 301 & AZ 321 forms). Taxpayers filing as “single” and “head of household” status may claim a maximum credit of up to $400. Taxpayers that file as “married filing joint” may claim a maximum credit of $800. Taxpayers filing as “married filing separate” may claim 1/2 of the credit allowed on a joint return. There are certain limitations, so, please consult your tax advisor.

For your Federal Income Taxes, the new universal tax break for charitable donations was included in the final $2 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package signed into law in March and will go into effect starting with the 2020 tax year. The measure grants taxpayers an above-the-line deduction for up to $300 in charitable donations given in 2020. So for folks who take the standard deduction, if you give $300 to charity, you’d get the $300 tax break in addition to the standard deduction. Those who file for itemized deduction can take a tax deduction of up to 100% of your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) for charitable donations to qualifying charities starting in 2020. Corporate donors can take a tax deduction of up to 25% of their Adjustable Tax Income for charitable donations to qualifying charities starting in 2020.