The line between promotion and coercion is a thin one, as United Way of America CEO Brian Gallagher can attest. He recognizes the downside for his organization when well-meaning but wrong-headed company officials strong-arm their employees into participating in corporate United Way campaigns.

"One hundred percent participation at any company is not our goal," Gallagher said last week during a trip to meet with officials at Dallas-area United Way chapters. "The $10 that we might get through coercion could be replaced by $1,000 given with joy if the individual decides willingly."

God loves a cheerful giver, as the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 9:7, but obviously he isn't the only one who does.

Since Gallagher took over the United Way's reins in 2001, he has worked to promote and not coerce a change in the thinking inside the United Way as well as how the organization is viewed externally. As head of the national umbrella organization for the local United Ways, he can only advise the leaders of the local chapters on how they should run their annual campaigns.

If they're smart, they'll listen well. "Show me the money" isn't a message that works in 2005.

When United Way leaders nationwide were polled in 2002 about what business they were in, 48 percent said fundraising; 48 percent said community results. Since that time, Gallagher has worked to move the mission away from "How much did we raise?" to "How much impact can we have in our communities?"

He must be doing something right. A recent poll of United Way officials indicates that 90 percent of them now think they are in the community impact business.

Success, in Gallagher's United Way, is no longer measured by how much money is tallied on those giant red thermometers that were once the hallmarks of the annual giving campaign.

"We spent decades training citizens to see those thermometers," Gallagher said. "And we spent decades training people to see the United Way as a funder of agencies rather than an agent of change."

More training is in order. Media spotlights generally only turn on the United Way during the annual campaign or when something goes wrong at an individual chapter. Think of the 2002 grand jury investigation into the spending practices of the top officials at the United Way of the National Capital Area in D.C. Or when a United Way director in Grand Rapids, Mich., pleaded guilty to embezzling $1.9 million in 2003. Of course, those discussions were about money — how much was siphoned away from providing the kind of human service support that United Way champions.

Gallagher views the annual fundraising campaign, still so necessary in providing the dollars needed to support the programs and initiatives that United Way chooses to tackle, as an opportunity to inform potential donors about the good works that the United Way performs all year round. The new model is to focus on outcomes, not dollars.

Sadly, some of the United Way's corporate champions still focus only on the dollars.

"Some employers run by the old model," Gallagher said.

The "old model" might include requiring all employees to fill out United Way pledge cards whether they give a dime or not. The "old model" might reward employees who give to United Way with cash bonuses and extra vacation days but doesn't provide similar opportunities to employees whose philanthropy takes a different route.

"You should not regulate donor choice," Gallagher said. "People should decide what they want to do; that's what gets them personally involved in the cause."

Gallagher admits that local United Way chapters need to train themselves and their corporate participants on how to create value for the donors, to help them understand how collective action can effectively address community problems.

"They've been trained to extract money through payrolls," he said. "That makes you lazy and needs to change. The approach needs to be communicating our value to donors. If we can't convince a donor that we're worth the investment, that's our problem."