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When Wendy De Leon started work at United Way of Southern Cameron County in August 2013 — on the first day of fundraising season so it happened — she had no choice but to hit the ground running.
“I should have known,” she said. “All the signs were there when they asked me to wear a T-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes. … It was a crazy week, but I survived it.”
Since becoming UWSCC president and executive director on March 1, De Leon, who succeeds longtime UWSCC chief Traci Wickett, may be feeling a bit of deja vu. De Leon assumed she’d have a couple of months to transition and plan. Then, about a month in, “things started happening,” she said.
One of them was the ballooning migrant presence on the southern border, and suddenly De Leon, UWSCC and the nonprofit organizations it distributes funding to found themselves with a lot more on their plates than they’d anticipated.
“Our funded partners have been boots-on-the-ground for all of that, and we’ve been there for support,” she said. “We’ve been able to get them supplies as they need. We’re not actually there at their locations, but we’re a phone call away. And they have been needing all the support they can get. That was new to me. That has never happened in my 10-year tenure. … I think that’s why it feels like we’ve been running a lot.”
At the same time, De Leon said she’s enjoying herself and the transition has been smooth all things considered, her six-member UWSCC team is very strong, as is support from the board of directors, and Traci Wickett, who stepped down as UWSCC’s long-time chief in February, is still available to answer questions for the time being.
“I don’t feel like I need to know everything, because my team has a wealth of knowledge,” De Leon said. “If I feel like I’m getting stuck I go talk to someone.”
She had originally planned to stay at UWSCC for a couple of years and then move on, but “fell in love with this place completely,” she said.
“I had Traci, who is an amazing mentor,” De Leon said. “I showed some interest, so she was fast to act on that.”
She was not always happy with Wickett’s habit of throwing her into sink-or-swim situations — all part of turning her into a leader even if De Leon didn’t appreciate it at the time.
“I was overwhelmed because (she was) making me make all these decisions,” she said. “And I told her, ‘I was mad at you.’ And she said, ‘I know. You were mad at me for a while.’”
A key lesson was that failure is inevitable and a leader has to be ready for it, De Leon said.
“She said you have to remember that sometimes you have to take risks, and sometimes you’re going to fail, and you’re going to have to get up,” De Leon said.
She noted that Wickett, who helmed UWSCC for 27 years, essentially rescued and rebuilt the organization into the powerhouse it is today.
“When she came, hot mess doesn’t begin to describe it,” De Leon said. “They were dealing with a lawsuit. They had no money.”
Although she agrees, as many people like to point out, that Wickett left big shoes to fill, De Leon said she’s confident about the future of UWSCC and her role within it.
“I’m very much up for the challenge,” she said. “I’m ready.”
She said you have to remember that sometimes you have to take risks, and sometimes you’re going to fail, and you’re going to have to get up.
Priority number one is fundraising, which was always hard but became nearly impossible during the pandemic, as UWSCC’s traditional workplace campaign pitches and annual fundraisers screeched to a halt.
“It was a 60% decrease in our donations,” De Leon said. “That’s insane.”
UWSCC managed to continue supporting its funded partners at the same level thanks to “an amazing gift” from author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in the amount of $5 million in December 2020.
“That was able to keep us afloat,” De Leon said.
The downside is that many people assumed UWSCC didn’t need donations from the community anymore, she said. The truth is that without local donors UWSCC would be out of business once the Scott money is dispersed, De Leon said. Another persistent issue is that UWSCC’s mission still seems to be a mystery to a lot of folks, she said.
“United Way fights for the health, education and economic mobility of every person in our community, and we do that by building a bridge and connecting people to resources,” De Leon said. “We don’t offer direct assistance all the time, although we have a few internal programs. But we do offer assistance through different programs that we fund at different agencies.”
Those agencies include the Moody Clinic, the Ozanam Center and the Good Neighbor Settlement House, to name just a few. UWSCC’s internal programs include the VITA free-tax-preparation program, which has brought millions of dollars in the form of tax credits back to local families, and United Against Hunger, which combats food insecurity.
“We do mass (food) distributions twice a month,” De Leon said. “We collaborate, we convene, we bring agencies together. We do a lot of the backstage type of work, where we bring people together to fight for a cause. A lot of times, there are so many organizations out there and they don’t necessarily speak to each other.”
The new fiscal year will see a major effort toward marketing and strategizing “to make sure that we send a message that’s relatable,” she said.
“Sometimes I feel like we get so stuck in the data and the analytics,” De Leon. “When we’re talking about United Way we start talking about numbers … instead of saying, you know, your neighbor might be in need (and) that’s why we’re doing this. … We do rely on donations greatly. But also we want to be out there to make that sure that people know there are resources, that if you are stuck, there is a place that will help you.”
In addition to donors, UWSCC is always on the lookout for volunteers and wouldn’t be able to function without them — from board members at the top helping guide the ship to the volunteers filling bags with food on distribution day, she said.
“That’s the backbone of this organization, along with our amazing donors, our corporate partners,” De Leon said. “If you own a business and you want to be part of something bigger, we love our donors and we make sure that they have volunteer opportunities for their team so we can do a little team building and they can be part of something good.”
