How I became known as the ‘P drive lady’

Editor's note: United Way was fortunate enough to have Natalie Koriath join us for the past three months as a Loaned Executive. The following comments were taken from a post to her internal blog at Eli Lilly and Company.

During a 1:1 with my supervisor back in July, he mentioned that I had been selected to be a part of this year's "Loaned Executive" program to the United Way of Central Indiana. My response? "Ummm sounds neat, but what does it mean?" Through talking to a few people here at Lilly, I got a better feel for what it meant, but I'd like to share more about it with you all here...

From Aug. 24 - Nov. 13, I functioned as an employee of United Way of Central Indiana (UWCI). My office moved to the "LE bullpen" (a roughly 20'x40' room that 13 of us shared) at 3901 N. Meridian, and short of checking my BlackBerry a few times a day for new emails and seeing Lilly deposit my paycheck, I had little to nothing to do with Eli Lilly and Company for 12 weeks.

While I love this company, it was GREAT to be away. My new job specifically was to work with 24 companies with employees in Marion County to run their UWCI campaigns to raise funds for next year. Additionally, I had the pleasure of tracking down another 20 or so companies and attempt to solicit new business campaigns.

Anyway, there are a few main points I want to mention as my take-aways from this wonderful experience:

(1) I gained a much deeper knowledge of the UWCI mission, programs and agencies. Lilly runs an excellent campaign internally but regardless of how wonderfully our Ambassadors do, it's hard to really give everyone a complete picture of how the UWCI functions. The mission just makes total sense to me now: "Addressing today's needs and reducing tomorrow's."

I look at it this way:

- We aim to address today's needs by supporting more than 100 local agencies. I had NO idea there were so many, nor did I realize how many I actually know. I loved learning about so many of them and grew particularly fond of Second Helpings, MCCOY, Kids' Voice, Starfish, TherAplay and Lutheran Family Services. What's even neater (in my geeky math brain at least) is seeing exactly how much our gifts help each agency, by checking out the online agency directory.

- We address tomorrow's needs by running a multitude of programs aimed at getting kids into school "Ready to Learn" and leave school "Ready to Earn". Our city will only be as strong as our youth so I love that we're investing so heavily in order for Indianapolis to continue to thrive. The program I really loved with these initiatives is the Early Readers Club. For only $20 a year, 3 books are mailed each quarter straight to your home, and they are age-appropriate for your children. This program evolved from a study which showed children entering school from middle- to upper-income households were read to for 1000-1700 hours from birth until entering school, whereas kids from lower income families were read to for just 25 hours IN SIX YEARS. One of the root causes was a lack of books in the home, so this program aims to address that program, and does so very successfully!

(2) Lilly's view on corporate social responsibility is something we should all be proud of. I now realize how much I have taken for granted how committed we are as a company to our community, and that's truly a reflection of the employees as well! To give some comparison, Lilly's employees gave $6 million, which was matched by the Lilly Foundation for a record $12 million gift...and my 24 companies, representing roughly 1,200 employees had a goal of $164,096, including corporate matches, which are incredibly uncommon. Where Lilly really excels, though, is the year-round commitment to all the other programs, like ReadUP, Backpack Attack and Day of Service projects at UWCI agencies, to name a few.

(3) Clearly, I'm guilty of complaining about the technology at Lilly but in reality, our technical solutions are very good compared to the non-profit world. It's nice to know that UWCI really doesn't over-spend on things like this, since that would equate to less money to the community. And then, there was the "P drive". Anyone who knows me knows that I'm obsessed with utilizing collaboration sites and do not approve of attaching documents to email unless in extreme cases. However, UWCI doesn't have an intranet that's equipped for file sharing! Within the first few days, I knew this was going to drive me crazy so I discovered there was in fact an internal LAN with a drive that was loosely being used to share documents - the P drive. I very quickly grew to love the P drive, and shared my love for the ability to share files with my LE friends and the rest of the staff. I taught people how to create shortcuts to make life even easier, and feel like I helped future generations of LEs by providing a good resource library of documents. It's actually quite amazing how impressed and happy people get with a very simple IT solution like using the P drive!

(4) Lastly, my new LE friends... what an amazing group! I was only one of 17 LEs, with others being sponsored or loaned by other companies with a similar community commitment, like Herff Jones, FedEx, UPS, St. Vincent Health, Citizens Gas and Vectren (hopefully I'm not leaving anyone out!), as well as two other Lilly colleagues, Melissa Humbert and Janet Potts. It was an incredibly diverse group, some with much experience in this area, but most were like me, who didn't know anything about fundraising but brought our own strengths and personal experiences. I feel so fortunate to have met this wonderful group who I probably wouldn't have crossed paths with otherwise! And, going back to the bullpen reference -- you can imagine how much "knowledge sharing" happened in a room with 13 people.

I can't possibly capture all the memories about this experience in a blog, but the bottom line is that the experience was fantastic, and I am so grateful to have been nominated. If you are interested, certainly talk to your supervisor. I would also highly recommend considering utilizing UWCI resources for team-building events -- there is a great program to set up teams for agency tours and meeting space there, as well as volunteer opportunities for teams!