Saint Jo — Pacesetter teams for Cooke County United Way are busy this week as they continue to raise money during the largest fundraising campaign of the year.

The teams will congregate Friday at the 2011 Campaign Kickoff Luncheon starting at 11:30 a.m. at the Gainesville Civic Center to present their funds and pledges to CCUW.

When all of the money is gathered, it will go to help fund and support the 18 agencies that serve a number of demographic populations and purposes in the county community.

Abigail’s Arms Family Crisis Center is one of the agencies that will receive funds.

Abigail’s Arms provides services and shelter for victims of domestic violence. The agency started out with a hotline years ago and has progressed to the point of conducting a capital campaign to build a physical shelter for victims of domestic violence.

Funds received from the CCUW account for 12 percent of the operational funding of the agency and go toward the day to day expenses of the services to victims of domestic violence, Abigail’s Arms Project Manager Betty Kay Schlesinger said.

“We can’t make it without United Way support,” Schlesinger said. “It’s part of the picture.”

Abigail’s Arms can use the funds as they see fit for services for the needs of clients.

“We can put them toward whatever will best benefit our clients,” Schlesinger said. “(United Way) funds can be used to put a victim in a hotel, they can pay for transportation for the victim, forensics, the agency hotline or to keep the electricity on in the office.”

None of the CCUW funds are used to help pay for the construction of the shelter, she noted.

Abigail’s Arms Executive Director Aaron Davis said the United Way funds help Abigail’s Arms to fill in the gaps and to specifically help the client and to address the “whole person.”

“Client needs are often overlooked with the more restrictive government grants,” Davis said of the grants that usually come with a restriction to be used for only certain things.

Schlesinger said the CCUW agencies work together where they can and help each other out.

“It’s more than about the money too, it’s helping each other. It’s a system of agencies partnering together,” she added. “United Way funding also helps keep all the agencies here in town from having to scramble more for money.”

Being a United Way agency also brings a credibility and a level of status to the organization, Schlesinger said.

“We have them as a reference for grants and funding,” she continued. “That makes a difference because any agency that is connected to (United Way) has undergone some serious scrutiny and usually has their act together.”

Schlesinger gave an update on the progress the agency has made in the past two years.

“Sometimes people think that the only progress we make is towards the building, and everything we do is scalable to the building or advances the agency towards having shelter in some way,” Schlesinger said, “but we realized that we needed to fill other gaps in our services, and we looked at how we worked relating to other agencies or national groups related to domestic violence and sexual assault.

“What we really needed to do to was bring us up to par and make us competitive,” she continued. “We have to compete for grants, we have to compete for funding, so we had to look at the things that would make us competitive and comparable to other more well known agencies throughout the state of Texas and throughout the country.”

That means the agency has aligned itself to achieve a level of requirements and professionalism to be eligible to receive more of the available grants and funding — the lifeblood of many non-profit agencies, including Abigail’s Arms.

Schlesinger said that one of the things the agency has done to meet that need is to become more involved in and responsive to the Texas Council on Family Violence which included increasing their membership and participation in that agency so they are no longer considered an associate agency, but a full-service domestic violence agency.

CCUW has helped Abigail’s Arms get to the point they are at today — being a full-service domestic violence agency.

CCUW has been assisting agencies in the community for 55 years and the money raised for UW here stays in the county.

The 2011 Campaign Kickoff Luncheon is exactly that — the kickoff to include the community in reaching the goal of the 2011 Campaign which is $360,000.

For more information about the Cooke County United Way, contact the office at (940) 665-1793.

Editor’s Note: The Cooke County United Way serves 18 agencies and the Register will spotlight each of them between now and the end of the year. The United Way community campaign kicks off with a luncheon on Sept. 3.