This fall marks a landmark moment for United Way of Metropolitan Dallas as it celebrates a century of impacting the community. The nonprofit launched a year of centennial celebrations last week with an Oct. 24 kick-off event at AT&T Discovery District.
Ongoing events will celebrate United Way’s three areas of focus: education, income, and health.
The nonprofit also announced its Data Capacity Building Initiative, which will extend its Aspire United Community Vulnerability Compass to more than 200 community partners over the next five years to allow for data-driven decision making. The CVC, a partnership with the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation, provides hyperlocal data that focuses on education, income, and health.
“United Way of Metropolitan Dallas has been the driving force behind creating access and opportunity for North Texans to thrive,” says Jennifer Sampson, McDermott-Templeton president and CEO of United Way. “Since 1924, we’ve brought together community leaders, corporations, and nonprofits with one goal—improving lives. We know that when we come together through United Way, we are the heartbeat of this community, and we have tremendous momentum. Our pulse is stronger than ever.”
D CEO spoke with Sampson about the organization’s storied past—and what its future holds:
D CEO: What are some highlights from this year-long celebration that we can look forward to?
JENNIFER SAMPSON: “Over the next 12 months, we’ll spotlight some exciting and impactful moments and ways that the North Texas community can engage with us and ‘live united.’ We’ve launched a special community-wide volunteer series presented by Texas Instruments, and it includes a reading day, summer meals distribution, and a STEM fest for middle schoolers at the Perot Museum. And all of these volunteer events—there are 10 of them—are championed by local corporations, nonprofits, and now the sports franchises and some celebrity athletes who’ve signed up to be a part of Team United Way over the next year.
“We’ll culminate the centennial anniversary—the crescendo moment will be a big event in Fair Park on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025. The event will be sponsored by PepsiCo. Steven Williams, CEO of PepsiCo Foods North America, is our centennial campaign chair. We’re in Fair Park because a lot of our work takes place in that geography, and we’re excited to be there.”
D CEO: What will the centennial celebration involve?
SAMPSON: “There will be three events on that day. We will be hosting a food festival in the Centennial building and bringing in restaurant owners from Southern Dallas and across the city with an impact focus on United Way’s work to address food insecurity, specifically in southern Dallas. So celebrity chefs and local chefs. PepsiCo has relationships with Food Network chefs who will be providing entertainment all day long, making recipes with a lot of products that you recognize from the Frito Lay portfolio. So that’ll be a fun event for families. We’re anticipating 7,000 to 8,000 people coming through the food festival.
“Then, early in the evening, there will be a dinner for our investors and our partners in the Automobile Building. We will culminate in the Cotton Bowl for a concert sponsored by PepsiCo. We partnered with PepsiCo when we turned 90 back in 2015, and they will bring headline entertainment—Super Bowl halftime show-level entertainment—for this concert, which will be the first non-athletic event in the newly renovated Cotton Bowl after Texas-OU weekend in 2025.
“So, a lot of planning has taken place to get ready. We still have a year. As we get closer to that event, we’ll be announcing unique moments connected to that event and people who are participating in it over the course of the next year. But the invitation for the community—really, for North Texas—is very simple. It’s: Join us, and let’s make our big dreams for Dallas come true.
“We encourage everyone to go to unitedwaydallas.org to sign up to volunteer, get your family, get your company, your colleagues, your neighbors, and your friends involved in the ‘live united’ movement. It’s a celebration of our past, for sure, but it’s equal only to the promise of our future, and it’s going to take everyone in this region united to write the next chapter of our story.”
D CEO: Tell us about the legacy that United Way has built over the last 100 years.
SAMPSON: “The legacy that we’ve built in the first century is tied to measurable community impact. The origin of United Way was more of a transaction model, and I like to describe that history as sprinkling goodness across the community to facilitate philanthropy, which is a very good thing, but the model has evolved over really the last 15 to 20 years into a model that is very specifically identifying the greatest vulnerabilities in our community, targeting where we need to invest philanthropic resources and driving measurable results against those investments.
“We have goals in place, Aspire United 2030 is our strategy. The goal in education over a 10-year period of time is to increase third grade reading by 50 percent. With regard to income, it’s to increase the number of young adults who are earning a living wage by 20 percent. And then it’s almost universal access to health insurance.
D CEO: Can you tell us more about United Way’s impact?
SAMPSON: The numbers tell our story, and that’s what differentiates United Way from many others. This year alone, we had an impact. Our efforts improved access to education and human health for more than 1.7 million North Texans. And that’s 20 percent of the population in a region that is one of the fastest-growing regions in our country. We have a proven track record of those measurable results that I mentioned.
“Our super power is that we’re hyper-local; we use data science to understand vulnerabilities in every Dallas neighborhood. We can drill down block by block, person by person, in very targeted geographies, and it helps us work smarter with our communities to deliver those measurable results. And that translates into and means more kids are reading at grade level. There are better-paying jobs for young adults and health care access for nearly every North Texan.
“So, the legacy of the last 100 years has been this transformation from facilitating philanthropy and sprinkling goodness across the community to evolving into a community impact organization that can measure the social return on philanthropic investments to drive real change in North Texas.”
D CEO: What is United Way looking forward to in the next century?
SAMPSON: “When I think about the future, I think about the people in North Texas. We work with people who have great talent and passion, and great things happen when you work with great people. Our story is about bringing together some of the most passionate and talented people to focus on issues, solutions, and funding that result in good lives for everyone who lives here. And I’m excited about big dreams for Dallas.
“We’re launching a centennial campaign, and it’s all about big dreams for Dallas and the real opportunity to make those dreams a reality for North Texans. We are amassing an all-star lineup of talent and brain power, person power, that is required to battle the inertia circumstances, and mobilizing individuals and institutions with the resources, the profile, and the imagination, and demonstrate a commitment to Dallas’ future to do the seemingly impossible.
“We’re building that team to revolutionize the way that American cities address some of their most intractable problems. And it will take all of us united to write the next chapter of our story.”
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