By Kelsie Jennings
KU Statehouse Wire Service
TOPEKA –- United Way of Douglas County receives about 20 percent of its funding from donations made by state employees through payroll deductions, but the nonprofit is concerned its future funding could be hurt by a bill that would limit deductions.
Senate Substitute for House Bill 2096, a bill that would eliminate state employee’s option for payroll deduction, could hurt future donations, said Erika Dvorske, president and CEO of United Way of Douglas County.
United Way of Douglas County receives about $300,000 a year from Douglas County state employees, which is almost 20 percent of its $1.65 million projected campaign total, according to Colleen Gregoire, Douglas County vice president and campaign director for United Way.
“The social service sector continues to struggle in general. Dollars are scarce. It’s a pretty competitive fundraising world,” Dvorske said. “The more we make it difficult for people to give, the easier it is for people to say no.”
United Way of Douglas County, based in Lawrence, works with 29 agencies to collect funding to target education, health and self-sufficiency programs for Douglas County residents. This location is just one of 27 others throughout Kansas, but each location is governed separately.
Dvorske said employees could still donate to United Way directly by check and credit card, but she said charitable giving should be as easy as possible and there’s less hassle with having it come straight out of employees’ checks. She said United Way estimates 20 to 30 percent of state employees would still donate other ways if payroll deduction were eliminated.
Other than the convenience of having donations come directly out of a paycheck, Dvorske said it’s also cost effective because only a few checks that might include hundreds of employees are being processed instead of hundreds and thousands of individual check or credit card transactions.
“It costs everyone less, so then more dollars can go to address the services that are really needed,” Dvorske said.
But some legislators feel the cost of processing the deductions is unnecessary when people can easily pay by phone or online. Sen. Molly Baumgardner (R-Louisburg) said its costs six cents to process each deduction and that people are using multiple deductions to pay bills.
“What we’re really trying to do is bring payroll to the 21st century. You just get your pay and how you choose to spend it is totally up to you,” Baumgardner said. “Just do your own banking and let’s just have your payroll be your pay and get us out of the banking business.”
United Way is the only Kansas nonprofit that pays for the 6-cent processing fee for the state to process deductions for state employees, according to Baumgardner, but she said some senators are concerned that this could open the door for other nonprofits to want to do the same.
“Right now, United Way is the only not-for-profit that is allowed in to do that, and so there was some concern expressed by members of the Senate that “why is the state government selecting the non-for-profit of choice?’” she said.
Even though United Way pays the processing fee and the state is reimbursed, Baumgardner said it still takes employees to process the deductions.
Dvorske said United Way normally doesn’t get involved with legislation because it doesn’t have the capacity, but this bill caught its attention.
“There’s certainly a lot of issues that we could weigh in on, given our focus on education, health and self-sufficiency,” she said. “We’ve stayed pretty narrowly focused … this one obviously was a big deal for us. It would actually change our activities; that’s a big deal.”
HB 2096 was introduced by the House Commerce, Labor and Economic Development Committee and passed the House in February. It then made it to the Senate floor, but was referred back to the Senate Ways and Means Committee, one of the few committees that can still meet at this time in the legislative session.
The bill could still be changed in some way, but Baumgardner said they don’t know for certain what will happen.
If the bill were to pass, Dvorske said United Way would promote other ways for people to donate.
“There’s lots of options and we know that, but this is a really straightforward and easy one,” Dvorske said. “If the change were to happen, somehow we would adapt. It’s just one more challenge.”
Kelsie Jennings is a University of Kansas senior from Olathe majoring in journalism