United Way of Central Iowa raised nearly $29 million last year. 

Des Moines lawyer Steven Zumbach believes one reason the agency is among the most successful nonprofits anywhere is because it “involves people from the entire community.” 

People of all stripes, from bank presidents, accountants and lawyers to schoolteachers, factory workers and construction workers join together for several weeks each year with efforts that consistently place Central Iowans among the highest per capita contributors in the nation.  

A deeper reason for United Way’s success, Zumbach added, is its long-standing ability to recruit leaders from the top echelons of the business community. 

“The CEOs of our largest companies and the highest leadership in those companies commit their time and their money,” said Zumbach, who spent an average of two hours a day on United Way business when he chaired the $24 million 2010-11 drive. 

As Des Moines’ United Way enters its 100th year, Zumbach said, it should be noted that the 2016-17 chairs — Nora Everett of Principal Financial Group and Suku Radia of Bankers Trust — are from the same businesses as two of the organization’s founders, Gerard S. Nollen and B.F. Kauffman. In 1917, Nollen was president of Bankers Life, now Principal Financial, and Kauffman was in the process of creating Bankers Trust. 

Years ago, the late Marvin Pomerantz told me a story about his involvement in United Way. 

When Pomerantz was building his first company, Great Plains Bag, his insurance man, Ray Murphy, took young Marvin to lunch one day and asked him to serve on a fundraising committee for United Way. 

Murphy’s request meant a lot, Pomerantz said, because a few years earlier Murphy had written a personal check to tide Great Plains Bag over while a fire insurance claim was settled. 

At Murphy’s urging, Pomerantz worked on several United Way committees and wound up chairing the 1973-74 campaign, which raised a then-record $3.1 million. 

Pomerantz went on to become a top political and fundraising adviser for Iowa Governors Robert Ray and Terry Branstad and to serve twice as chairman of the Iowa Board of Regents. 

When I interviewed Pomerantz years later, there was no doubt in his mind that his volunteer service at United Way had helped him succeed in business and in politics by introducing him to a wide spectrum of leaders that he might never have met without United Way. 

Stories like Pomerantz’s “happen all the time at all levels of the United Way campaign,” Zumbach said. 

Jim Aipperspach is another example. 

I first met Aipperspach in the late 1990s when he was the top guy at the Iowa Association of Business and Industry, the state’s largest trade association. I didn’t realize it then, but Aipperspach had also led United Way. 

Like Pomerantz, Aipperspach had begun with lower-level committee work after arriving in Des Moines as a telephone company executive in 1984. That work led to his chairing the agency’s $10.4 million fundraising effort in 1991-92. 

In early 1993, when the top staff job at United Way became vacant, Aipperspach stepped in, just as the floods of 1993 were beginning. 

Because of the floods, he said, fundraising was put on hold while everyone concentrated on the grim task of flood recovery. 

It was the only year during the past century when there was no United Way fundraising effort, although the agency roared back a year later, collecting more than than $11 million under the chairmanship of banker Lynn Horak.  

Aipperspach left his United Way job for the Iowa ABI position in 1996, but like many folks, he can’t seem to get the agency out of his system, and he still makes volunteer calls for United Way to small and medium-sized businesses.