Inside the making of a Sioux Empire United Way campaign

This paid piece is sponsored by Sioux Empire United Way.

Sioux Empire United Way is in the heart of its 2025 campaign – but behind the scenes, work already is underway for 2026.

Creating the annual campaign to support community needs is a huge effort shared by hundreds of volunteers alongside the full-time team.

“We focus primarily on children, vulnerable adults and people in crisis, so all funding falls within one of those categories,” said Lisa Romkema, who joined Sioux Empire United Way as its CEO earlier this year.

“So it’s a wide reach that spans organizations of all sizes, but what many people don’t realize is how much work leads up to the public campaign like you see underway now.”

For instance, the 2025 campaign goal is to raise $9,203,748 to support 74 programs through 38 nonprofits.

Honing in on that specific dollar amount begins months before the campaign launches when nonprofits are invited to apply for program funding.

“We see our role in the community as helping to identify unmet needs and opportunities we discover that can make a difference. It could be something in another community that we think could make an impact locally,” said Christina Riss, chief operating officer.

“And because we go through this process on an annual basis, it allows us to adapt and adjust to change.”

Applications for funding in 2026 open Dec. 13 and are due by 5 p.m. Jan. 22, 2025.

From there, 60 volunteers are divided into six impact areas and begin a deep dive into them, dedicating more than 1,000 hours to the process each year.

“It’s extremely thorough,” said Adrienne McKeown, who has volunteered to help with the application process for almost 20 years and now chairs the community impact division.

“The application itself is very in-depth and covers everything from providing research showing that the program is necessary in the community to how many individuals will be served by the program. We ask about outcomes, how impact is measured and, of course, we have an entire section on financials.”

Volunteers, who represent a range of skills and industries within the community, “go through the applications from top to bottom,” McKeown continued. “We make our own notes, we do our own scoring and note our impressions of the application, and then we meet with the nonprofits.”

Volunteers meet with both staff from nonprofits applying as well as board members, “and sometimes we’ll even have a client come and provide a testimonial. We do this with every program,” McKeown said.

“We don’t want to be funding programs that might be duplicative. And if there are efficiencies that could be achieved in our community, we may be in a position to identify them because we meet with so many nonprofits.”

From there, each team forms a funding recommendation for its impact area. Two chairs represent each team, and then the chairs come together to further determine a recommendation.

“When the chairs meet, we take it a level higher and look at the community overall,” McKeown said. “We balance the needs among the impact areas and look at the recommendations holistically.”

The final recommendation goes to the Sioux Empire United Way board of directors for consideration.

“It is an extremely difficult decision,” McKeown said. “These meetings aren’t easy and involve a lot of conversation and weighing community priorities and needs. Luckily, we live in a very generous community where we’ve been able to meet the goal and provide the programming.”

The range of nonprofits funded is broad – everything from Project Car, which partners with health care organizations to transport patients to appointments, to the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, which allows children to receive free books from birth through age 5.

Many programs funded serve the entire Sioux Falls metro area and reach into neighboring Minnesota and Iowa.

“We recognize that we are the Sioux Empire United Way, so we really take those regional initiatives into consideration,” Riss said.

“We include many communities outside of Sioux Falls; whether through a Head Start program or school-based mental health program, we’re really looking at how we can make the most impact while ensuring we’re supporting programs that are run efficiently.”

This campaign season, “we’re seeing great momentum,” Romkema said. “We’ve had new businesses step forward to run campaigns and teams excited about contributing, so it’s been great to see people curious about what we’re doing and then motivated to support it.”

“There’s a place for your donation, whether it’s $5 or $50,000,” Riss added.

“Our role is to bring the community together,” she said. “Whatever you’re able to contribute, what matters is that you’re becoming part of a common cause that makes a difference for so many people.”

McKeown has even experienced the impact in her own family. After losing her mother to COVID 19 in 2020, she and her children connected with the nonprofit Sad Isn’t Bad for help managing their grief.

“I had no idea where in the community to turn when my daughter told me she needed help with grief until I remembered I’d learned about Sad Isn’t Bad through Sioux Empire United Way,” she said.

“It had incredible impact on our family, and I can’t even imagine all the good it’s doing in the community. I think it’s important to remember what a huge spectrum of people United Way programs serve in our community. This likely affects your employees, neighbors or friends. And because these programs are so thoroughly vetted before funding, donors can feel very comfortable knowing their donations are being put to good use.”

Nonprofits interested in learning more about applying for funding can contact Christina Riss at 605-336-2095.

To learn more about how to give to this year’s Sioux Empire United Way campaign, click here.