United Way Celebrates Year Of Accomplishments, Looks Forward To Next Chapter
KOSCIUSKO COUNTY — The United Way of Kosciusko County held its annual celebration last night, Feb. 22 at the VIC in Warsaw. The celebration was all about honoring the great accomplishments made in the past year while looking forward to the possibilities for greatness that exist moving forward.
Josh Gordon, 2016 board president welcomed everyone to the celebration and gave a brief update on 2016’s successes. In 2016, the campaign raised $1.5 million. The United Way was also awarded an Indiana Association of United Ways grant of $99,000. A portion of this grant will provide support for case workers in Fellowship Missions and Combined Community Services.
Each year the United Way gives awards of excellence to companies in the community who ran an exceptional employee campaign. The 2016 award recipients are Lake City Bank, 18 percent growth in employee giving; Tippy Valley School Corporation, 32 percent growth in employee giving; Paragon, increased participation by 30 percent and employee giving by 50 percent; and Tecomet, who had a new employee giving campaign and added $2,499 to the campaign total.
Tabitha Cooper, Paragon Medical, was named Key Leader of the Year. Cooper has been the key leader for her organization for the past several years. She was thanked for always coming in at all hours of the day to share United Way’s mission with employees on all different shifts. Through her hard work, she was able to increase employee participation by 30 percent and employee giving by 50 percent.
Nathan Conley was named Volunteer of the Year. Conley has been on the United Way board for three years and is known to always raise his hand to volunteer whenever it is needed. He recently accepted the position of Community Impact Chair for 2017.
Patricia Coy was honored at the celebration as she retired from executive director after 15 years with the United Way. During her time with the organization, she helped raise over $25 million for the community, initiated Day of Caring and was the first executive director in Kosciusko County to raise $2 million in a single campaign year.
The board then officially welcomed Darren Bickel as the new Executive Director. Bickel has had 23 years in the nonprofit sector and was most recently the vice president of community impact with United Way of Elkhart County. Darren spoke briefly to the crowd and summed up the future of the organization with one word, “possibility.”
Five board members completed their tenure in 2016 including Tony Garza, Kitty Cheatham, Josh Gordon, Bill Hartman and Brett Boggs. Nathan Conley and Adam Turner were both elected to serve a second term as board members. Matt Linville, Debbie Yingling and Blaine Conley were elected and welcomed onto the board for their first term. Josh Gordon retired as board president and welcomed Adam Turner on as the new board president.