Peggy Bair
Special to the Times
United Way of Leavenworth County has been busy distributing donations throughout the county this summer.
Myranda Agnew, the nonprofit’s newly appointed executive director, said that there is $70,000 distributed this year to 19 Leavenworth County charity organizations.
“We’re a connector between partner agencies and donors and businesses,” Agnew said. “The idea is really to connect people and businesses and nonprofits and volunteers connecting everybody together to strengthen the community.”
Among the recipients are Basehor Linwood Assistance Center, CASA, Leavenworth County Special Olympics, Richard Allen Cultural Center, Riverside Resources, Team Tongi and Salvation Army.
Agnew said the United Way campaign is held in the fall, assessed the next January, with distributions taking place in the summer. Donors can designate their dollars to go to the general fund or to specific agencies, but donations collected in Leavenworth County are awarded to local nonprofits.
“The money starts coming in in January for the whole year and then we give out these grants the following June, so it’s a long process,” Agnew said.
Formerly the executive director of the Leavenworth Interfaith Community of Hope for almost five years, Agnew brings firsthand insight to her new role at United Way.
“I loved my time being there,” Agnew said. “I still go by every other week because I miss just that population and working there. It’s just a great organization doing great things. But there’s so much more to trying to get to a proactive approach where people aren’t getting into homelessness and people aren’t getting into addiction or losing their kids.”
Agnew sees the new directorship as a chance to streamline some processes within the collection of help agencies.
“We’re going to be doing a lot more, so lots of excitement over the next year for sure,” Agnew said. “It’s not just homelessness, food insecurity, individuals with special needs. It all of these things. We have to make it very streamlined, letting people know what’s available. There are all these intricate pieces that if you’re the day to day, when I was at the Community of Hope, you don’t always get to pull back and look at some of these systems and how people move through the system in Leavenworth County.”
Agnew is working with the greater United Way agency to put together a set of assistance resources linked to a simple 211 phone call.
“The 211 is our resource for Leavenworth County,” Agnew said. “We’re going through and making sure that all the 211 resources are updated to that when someone is in need in our community, they can just all 211 instead of calling every individual agency.”
The system would also help gather data that would become useful measurements for what kinds of needs are trending so the agency can analyze where to be of help.
“We are a member of United Way just like the greater Kansas City,” Agnew said. “We’re much smaller, obviously, but the money donated here all stays in Leavenworth County nonprofits.”
https://www.leavenworthtimes.com/2026/07/07/news/united-way-distributes-funds-to-locals-in-need/