“United Way is right on target when it opens itself to metric-based evaluation,” says Larry James, president and chief executive officer of Central Dallas Ministries. The problems our communities face “require all hands on deck. We need all the new ideas we can get.”

To facilitate this kind of high-impact innovation, James agreed to be part of the Income Collaborative Team, one of three panels of community experts that helped establish the ten-year United 2020 goals for our communities.

James first joined Central Dallas Ministries in 1994. The organization focuses on fighting poverty through hunger relief, health care, housing and hope.

Initially, James says, the Income Collaborative Team developed three or four goals related to areas such as a living wage and job training. But when he sat in the Blue Ribbon Commission session where community leaders refined the goals, it became clear that “all our work had been a preamble to something new: one singular objective, to lift 250,000 people up out of poverty.”

According to James, reaching the goal will require at least two major shifts in the way that nonprofit organizations, philanthropic funders, corporations and concerned individuals work to address our communities’ challenges.

First, James says, “We must shift our thinking about public policy. There is no way to achieve the goal without engaging government at the state, county and city levels.”

Second, collaboration must be increasingly emphasized when it comes to aligning resources to address Income challenges. “Organizations need to receive funding based on their capabilities to work together to achieve economies of scale. When money is dispensed on this basis, the change will happen. And when the community sees the impact of true collaboration, they won’t settle for business as usual. United Way and the foundation community can craft an environment that simply demands collaboration.”

James praises the goal-setting process facilitated by United Way. “It was inclusive and produced substantive conversation.” If the result is meaningful change, he says, “it could really make a huge difference in our community.”