A Denver society, a Cleveland chest and a new name.

United Way traces its roots to Denver, Colorado, in 1887. Wikipedia says Frances Wisebart Jacobs, with the Rev. Myron W. Reed, Msgr. William J. O’Ryan, Dean H. Martyn Hart and Rabbi William S. Friedman, began the Charity Organization Society that year to coordinate services between Jewish and Christian charities and to raise money for them jointly.

The model spread under other names. A Community Chest was set up in Cleveland in 1913, and Wikipedia says wartime “War Chests” during the First World War helped the idea travel. In 1949 Detroit launched a United Fund, under the motto “Give Once for All,” bringing several appeals into one workplace campaign. In 1956 the national association took the name United Community Funds and Councils of America.

The change in method shaped the brand. Wikipedia says that after the Second World War the United Funds concentrated almost entirely on workplace fundraising, where the Community Chests had relied on door-to-door collection, and that business and labour leaders had pushed for a single combined drive in place of many competing appeals. The member funds that joined these campaigns commonly used the word “United” in their names, which set up the national rename that followed.

The present name arrived in 1970. Wikipedia says the association announced on 13 July 1970 that it would become United Way of America, and quotes its president, Bayard Ewing, saying the organisation wanted “a simple name” that gave a clearer idea of what it did. The national office moved from New York City to Alexandria, Virginia, in 1971. United Way International followed in 1974, and today the network is overseen by United Way Worldwide, while each local United Way is separately incorporated.

The name then moved onto television and into offices. Wikipedia says United Way of America formed a partnership with the National Football League in 1973, adopted a policy of donor designation in 1982, letting donors choose which charities received their gift, and in 2000 announced a shift from being mainly a fundraiser towards what it called community impact. United Way of Atlanta set up a 2-1-1 information and referral line in 1997, a service later taken up by other local United Ways.

A hand, a person and a rainbow.

A new name needed a mark, and the association turned to Saul Bass, the Los Angeles designer already known for film titles and corporate identities. Wikipedia dates his United Way symbol to 1972, and says the national body’s leadership then travelled to cities across the country to persuade local affiliates to adopt both the name and the logo, which until then went by many different names.

Bass’s brief, as the United Way wording quoted by Speak Up put it, was to convey United Way as a contemporary organisation, sensitive to the changing needs of society.

The symbol has three parts. As described in a 2004 post on Speak Up, the UnderConsideration design blog, quoting United Way’s own explanations, the helping hand stands for the services and programmes United Way supports; a human figure is cradled by the hand; and a rainbow springs from the hand to stand for a blending of human diversity and a hope of a better life. The same post quotes Bass on the “sun-like rainbow growing out of the hand,” which he called a positive symbol for a new United Way; the post attributes those words to a United Way leaders’ conference in 1972.

The mark was later redrawn. The post, written by Armin Vit and published on 20 May 2004, tied the timing of the redesign to a change of direction: it said United Way was shifting its focus towards being a community impact leader, and argued that the time for an identity change had come. Speak Up reported that FutureBrand assisted United Way with the new identity, keeping the hand, figure and rainbow but making them bolder and more integrated. The rainbow was trimmed from four rings to three, the hand was given less angular forms than in the Bass drawing, the colours ran in a red-to-yellow gradient, and the whole symbol was set inside a rectangle so that it would not be used on its own; Speak Up noted that many other non-profits also used rainbows or hands in their identities. A new custom wordmark with chunky, semi-slab serifs replaced the older lettering.

On posters, mugs, workplace campaign kits and volunteer T-shirts, that rectangle of colour has become the shorthand for a local United Way appeal.

Design and documentation.

Charity identities live in public in a way few commercial marks do. An emblem has to read at the size of a lapel pin and at the size of a banner across a street, and it often has to survive being redrawn by volunteers with whatever paint, felt or tape is to hand. That is why so many charity marks rely on one strong shape and one strong colour: a simple silhouette holds up when it is stencilled onto a collection tin, printed on a sticker or stitched onto a cap.

Collection boxes and tins are small pieces of packaging design. They carry the mark, a short line of copy and a slot, and they are seen for a second or two as someone walks past. Volunteer uniforms do similar work at human scale: a coloured vest, a lanyard or a printed T-shirt tells a passer-by who to approach at an event or a shop counter.

Campaign posters are where charity identities stretch. Photography, hand lettering and bold headlines change from season to season, while the emblem, the name and the core colour stay fixed in a corner. Reading a charity brand well means noticing which elements move and which never do.

A national mark for local charities.

United Way’s identity solved a federation problem. Hundreds of local funds had grown up under their own names, and the 1970 rename and the 1972 symbol gave them one face without taking away their independence. Each local United Way still runs itself, but the shared name, the hand and the rainbow tell a donor at a workplace briefing or a passer-by at a volunteer day that the appeal belongs to the same family.

The later redraw shows how a strong mark can be modernised rather than replaced. The three ideas Bass set down, a hand, a person and a rainbow, survived the change, while the drawing, the colour treatment and the wordmark were updated and the symbol was locked into a rectangle to keep it consistent across many independent users.

For a design guide, United Way shows how a simple pictogram can bind a loose network together, and how a designer’s original meaning can outlast several redrawings. Compare the identities of Goodwill and Habitat for Humanity. For this guide we use way blue, rainbow red and sunrise yellow with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep United Way’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.