The Scott Fetzer Company manages a diverse group of businesses that provide industrial enclosures, vacuum cleaners, medical devices, electrical fittings, floorcare products, oxygen regulators, financial services -- even Ginsu knives! And for thirty years, the corporate headquarters of this multifaceted holding company has conducted its multiple-company annual campaigns for United Way. But far from micromanaging the separate divisions' campaigns, Scott Fetzer has developed a surprisingly simple yet effective approach.

Jay Schmitt, Scott Fetzer's information technologies director and Northeast Ohio United Way campaign manager, explained that at the beginning of their 2006 company campaign, President and CEO Ken Semelsberger, several vice presidents and the United Way employee campaign managers from each of the seven Scott Fetzer companies in the Greater Cleveland area, plus the corporate office campaign manager, met to discuss the campaign goals. The local Scott Fetzer divisions include Adalet/Meriam, Cleveland Wood Products, Halex, The Kirby Company, ScottCare, United Consumer Financial Services, Western Enterprises and the corporate office.

The campaign's motivational theme focused on the urgency of recent media reports that ranked Cleveland as the poorest city in the nation. But Schmitt added that the overall tone for the campaign was "lighter than in the previous year -- we wanted employees to donate because giving makes you feel better about yourself."

Fund-raising benchmarks were set and the employee campaign managers were free to run their campaigns as they thought best. The results were excellent. Individual company campaign goals were all met or exceeded, and of the total 1,366 employees in all the Scott Fetzer divisions in Northeast Ohio, 1,220 of them donated -- a participation rate of nearly 90 percent. The average donation per employee jumped dramatically too -- from $161 in 2005 to $202 in 2006!

The individual Scott Fetzer company campaigns held various promotions, including dress-down days, raffles, a pancake breakfast run by senior management, sports team tie-ins, and two of the divisions even made arrangements with a vending machine company to have part of the money collected from their onsite soft drink machines donated to United Way.

Scott Fetzer's 2006 campaign also picked up 23 new Leadership Circle donors (those who contributed $1,000 to $9,999), with Leadership gifts alone raising $112,000 for the campaign. Between proceeds from the individual company campaigns and the corporate pledges, a total of $384,168 was raised -- an increase of more than 16 percent over last year!

In a thank you letter to his employees, Scott Fetzer's CEO Semelsberger said, "All these results should make everyone involved feel a real sense of community spirit as the traditional, festive year-end holidays approach. Hold your heads high: It's people like you that make this country what it is and these holidays what they are. Your generous caring for the welfare of others is what it's all about."

We couldn't have put it better ourselves. Thank you to all Scott Fetzer employees from United Way of Greater Cleveland!