As the state association for Texas United Ways, UWT builds upon the power of statewide collaboration by equipping nearly 70 member organizations with resources to achieve their missions and meet their communities’ most pressing needs. Our work focuses on both building local United Way organizational capacity and enhancing the impact of local United Ways in their respective communities. As an additional strategy to help enhance United Way in the Texas community, UWT focuses on systems change through policy and advocacy. During the Legislative Session, we bring the United Way voice to the Texas Capitol through our public policy and advocacy efforts. Likewise, we actively work with our members during the interim to ensure their voices help inform lawmakers as well as the policy priorities of the next legislative session. UWT also develops and manages several state-level collaboratives which provide best practices and resources: Start Smart Texas (a learning community for early childhood collaboratives across the state), the Texas Nonprofit Initiative (focused on advancing the organizational capacity of and advocacy for the Texas nonprofit sector), and ALICE (a data project focused on raising awareness of the growing number of working Texans who struggle to make ends meet).