United Way of Southern Kentucky recently kicked off its 2009 campaign.

In this week’s “View from the Hill”,  Amy Bingham looks at the huge impact Western Kentucky University has on this fundraising venture.

Non-profit agencies in five South Central Kentucky counties receive funding from United Way…and WKU has played a key role in the campaign since the beginning.

For Rachel Goodman, helping United Way comes easy.
 
“My family was personally affected by Hospice, that was huge for my family, my grandfather, when he passed away…as a United Way agency it was important to me.”

As Chair of WKU’S United Way committee, she’s training employee coordinators to fan out across the campus to raise money.
 
“Once we get them here they see how big this is and how much of a difference they can make.”

United Way Executive Director Doug Eberhart couldn’t agree more..pointing to last year’s WKU donation of 46-thousand dollars as an example.
 
“Then you look at 46,000 dollars and the number of people that can get help with food, help with shelter, help with foster care, the wee care child care center and many other programs out there.”
 
The theme of this year’s WKU campaign is Color me United.
 
“Crayons are always fun, it lightens the mood, it lightens that we are dealing with poverty and sad issues in the area and makes it more fun to give back, puts more color to it.”

And Rachel’s hopeful WKU will make an ever bigger impact this year.
 
“Last year it was really easy to say it’s hard in these tough economic times, but to me that’s why we should have been giving more because if we are blessed enough to have a job we should help our neighbor who lost their job.”

The WKU United Way campaign runs through mid-October with a fundraising goal of 60-thousand dollars.

With this week’s View from the Hill, I’m Amy Bingham.