UW CHAIRMAN FEARS GOAL UNREACHABLE

The campaign chairman of the Cape Girardeau Area Wide United Way is concerned about meeting its goal of $520,000.

"We want to make sure that we try everything to reach our goal," Ron Hopkins said recently.

Campaign collections have passed $425,000 but still lag behind last year's $488,000.

The $425,000 is almost 82 percent of this year's goal.

"This year's campaign goal was very aggressive," Hopkins said, adding that he hoped there was some more Christmas giving in people to help push the pledges over the goal.

"There are several sizable contributions remaining to be made," he said. "It's imperative that the remaining pledges are made in the next few weeks."

Last year's campaign collected $508,000, Hopkins said, but $20,000 of that was directly related to flood relief. The United Way was able to distribute $488,000 to the 26 agencies it serves.

Hopkins thought remaining contributions would push the total past the $488,000 collected last year.

Campaign volunteers and staff members are concentrating on the remaining groups that need to finalize their pledges.

"With the money that is still out there, we think we'll have an increase in the United Way campaign, but not to the magnitude we were hoping," Hopkins said.

Campaign leaders will wait until the last minute to end this year's effort, he said.

Getting in every last bit of money for the United Way is the hard part, he said.

The United Way board will meet Dec. 29 to determine how much money each agency will receive.

Hopkins said the board has requests for more than $530,000 from the agencies, so getting close to the goal is important.