New United Way of Cass-Clay CEO Sandi Piatz

Listen First

Piatz stepped into a role that’s uniquely exposed. You’re both the new person and the person in charge. People are showing you the ropes—while also asking you where the organization is going.

“My first approach coming in was just to listen,” she said “I was calling it a listening tour… meeting with people across the community—business leaders, nonprofit partners. The listening tour was to listen and learn where do we have opportunities and what does the community need from the United Way.”

That listening tour showed her that trust is high, but understanding is uneven.

“One of the things that I learned is… there’s some people that know the United Way really well,” she said—how decisions get made, how data guides strategy, how investments align with outcomes. “And then there’s a lot of people… they trust the United Way… but they don’t really know what we do underneath.”

During the listening tour, Piatz also asked, ‘what are the biggest challenges people see right now?’ The answers came back consistently as hunger and homelessness, child care affordability and access, affordable housing, and mental health.

Those themes align tightly with United Way’s stated priorities. They also validate what many employers already know, which is that a “workforce issue” and a “human services issue” are often the same issue, just described from different sides of the desk.

A Data-Driven United Way

Piatz credits the United Way team for groundwork already underway before she arrived:

Historically, many people picture the United Way as a broad annual fundraiser that disperses grants. Piatz explained today’s United Way has to be more precise than that—more like a portfolio manager focused on outcomes.

The organization’s updated approach, as she described it, creates a deliberate balance between urgent needs and longer-term solutions:

• One-year grant needs to help address immediate, short-term pressures
• Three-year, outcome-based granting to fund the deeper work of preventing the same crises from repeating

That structure is meant to prevent the organization from getting trapped in reaction mode while still acknowledging the reality that people need food, shelter, and support today.

t’s also built around a community-facing process that includes a Community Impact Review Panel made up of trained local volunteers who help evaluate nonprofit partners, their grant requests, and their financials.

“United for ALICE”: the working population too many systems overlook

One of the clearest examples of a data driven initiative working to meet a community mission is the United Way’s launching of United for ALICE.

ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed—a population that is above the federal poverty line but still cannot consistently afford the basics.

In Piatz’s words, United for ALICE is about “leveraging data to identify root-cause challenges or barriers… transportation… workforce… challenges… finding affordable and accessible child care child care for these families.”

United for ALICE is often the invisible middle. They’re employees who show up, work hard, and still live one setback away from free fall. They may not qualify for certain supports. They may not look like a “statistic.” But they are everywhere in the day-to-day fabric of the local economy.

United for ALICE is also an attempt to get more precise— solving upstream barriers through “public advocacy or even programming,” as Piatz put it, because “where you can solve those issues is where you can continue to drive upward economic mobility.”

Ending Homelessness

If ALICE represents a new lens, United to End Homelessness represents continuity—work United Way continues to deepen and prioritize.

In the interview, Piatz also acknowledged what people working closest to homelessness have long said, which is that you cannot solve housing instability without dealing honestly with the “wraparound” needs. If you have met one person who is unhoused you have met one unique person with their own unique needs.

Her Leadership Style

“I like to start by listening, being curious,” she said. “I like to begin by listening and staying curious. I’m very collaborative, and servant leadership is a core focus for me… how I can best support the team, help them grow… when we invest in the growth of our people, that’s when we truly grow as an organization.”

When asked what’s fueled her own success, she talked about mentors and advocates—“leaders that have just been great advocates for me”—and then hard work like asking questions, staying persistent, solving problems even when direction isn’t obvious.

And when the conversation turned to focus—how leaders avoid being pulled in a thousand directions—her answer landed right in the tension every mission-driven organization faces: priorities and discipline.

“Prioritizing based upon what our goals and objectives are… it gives us an opportunity to say yes or no,” she said. “Staying true to our mission… so that we don’t get mission creep.”

A Message to the Business Community

Piatz was direct when asked what businesses can do this year:

“Partner with us…from an investment standpoint, from a volunteer standpoint… and if you have ideas on where we can partner to solve challenges, please reach out to us.”

She also addressed a misconception she believes still floats around.

“One of the things that is maybe a misconception out there is that the United Way doesn’t need help,” she said. “Every year we fundraise in order to do the work that we do… and we need the community’s help… to understand and solve the problems.”

That message is especially poignant as United Way approaches a milestone. 2027 will mark its 100th year in the Fargo-Moorhead community.

United Way of Cass-Clay