“What I love about this job is the small wins. Specifically, hearing about something or someone I have touched in any way or a service that the United Way has supported in any way … that has changed a life. For example, somebody going through the Urban League’s training program and getting a job at American Family and knowing the impact and the security that this will have for that one family. That makes all of the very hard days and very late days all worth it,” says Keetra Burnette. “When I’m talking to potential candidates to work here at the United Way I always tell them that, ‘If you’re in this just for a paycheck, please stop wasting our time.’

“You really have to be passionate about this work because it’s the passion that drives you. Non-profit work is difficult,” she adds. “You feel beat up and tired at the end of the week … but it’s those small things at the end of the day that truly make it worth it.”

Since February, Burnette has been celebrating wins, both big and small, in her new role as senior director of stakeholder engagement for the United Way of Dane County. It’s a position change for Burnette that came as part of a structural change to bring the organization closer to its goal of connecting volunteers to the community’s needs. The community engagement and marketing departments are now operating as one, as the United Way recently stated in a press release, to “reflect a renewed emphasis on engaging with community members and streamlining the organization’s ability to deliver on our mission.”

Keetra Burnette
Keetra Burnette

“Yeah, this is a newly created position,” Burnette tells Madison365 in an interview at the United Way headquarters on Madison’s near east side. “My personal opinion is that the creation of this position and our new department – the Community Engagement and Marketing Department – really demonstrates [United Way CEO] Renee Moe’s commitment to strengthening the relationships we have with the community, identifying ways to more effectively tell the United Way story and the work that we do in partnership with lots of nonprofit organizations, businesses, and government, and also to bring the voice and perspectives of community members to the work that we do.”

Burnette joined United Way in 2013 as senior director of community impact where she oversaw six United Way community solutions teams responsible for the annual allocation of more than $11 million of United Way’s annual investments in the community’s “Agenda for Change.” The responsibilities of her new role are really related to managing and strengthening the United Way’s relationships with all of its different stakeholder groups.

United Way of Dane County’s mission is to fight for the education, financial stability, and health of everyone in Dane County. I ask Burnette about how all the moving parts work at United Way to make community change and she shows me a roundabout diagram shows exactly what United Way does.
The Intersection Image
“The heart of what we do at the United Way is we change lives … and we do that by listening, strategizing, investing, strengthening, and measuring ideas, initiatives, results and what have you,” Burnette says. “We do that in partnership with all six of these stakeholder groups. This intersection – where the community meets – is the first visual that accurately shows the work that we do.

Burnette focuses on strengthening the important relationships that the United Way has with the community.

“In our community – especially since the [Wisconsin Council on Children and Families’] Race to Equity report – there are so many conversations, so many listening sessions, so many community forums, so many different initiatives that are really focused on how organizations can collaborate and really solve some of the tough problems our community is facing,” Burnette says. “Now, that I’m able to really be out there and really champion results for the community in partnership with all of those organizations, I think it creates results that are achieved more efficiently and effectively and it also demonstrates our commitment to being the support for organizations in the community.”

Keetra Burnette out in the community at the Literacy Network Open House with (L-r) Mark Fraire, Shiva Bidar, Jeff Burkhart and Joe Parisi
Keetra Burnette out in the community at the Literacy Network Open House with (L-r) Mark Fraire, Shiva Bidar, Jeff Burkhart and Joe Parisi

Burnette says that there were two different responses to that Race Equity report in the community which laid out the tremendous disparities that exist in Madison.

“For people like me, it was validation of what we already knew and had experienced every day in our community,” she says. “For others, it was bringing awareness to issues that existed. It also came from a credible source that white Madison could listen to and feel that the results and research were valid because truth be told, those same results had been reported so many times before.

“But now we had this credible voice saying, ‘It’s true. These disparities exist in our community, they are extreme and we do need to do something about it,’” she adds.

Burnette says that now that the community has been talking about all of these racial disparity issues these last few years that she feels like people have become more aware of all of the work the United Way had been doing all of the time.

“When we talk about results in our community, the goal is to always provide supports and services that are needed to change the lives of people that are most in need of support. Data – like from the Race to Equity report – says that those are most often people of color,” she says. “This is the work that we have been doing for a long time.”

In the wake of Ferguson and other police-involved shootings and the civil unrest that followed, United Way of Dane County convened a collaboration of local law enforcement and leaders of color. Burnette was appointed to be the United Way staff liaison for that collaboration.

“The goal of that initially was to develop and strengthen relationships between communities of color and law enforcement,” she says. “At that table, we have leaders from the Dane County chiefs of police association and leaders representing communities of color like [Centro Hispano Executive Director] Karen Menendez Coller, [Urban League CEO] Ruben Anthony, and [Boys & Girls Club CEO] Michael Johnson.”

Keetra Burnette chats with her co-workers at United Way.
Keetra Burnette chats with her co-workers at United Way.

Since the death of Tony Robinson, they realized that it was important to have something strategic in place. “We found that there were three main things that created difficulties between the two groups – use of force, implicit bias, and the lack of diversity in the police departments,” Burnette says. “At that point we created a Use of Force taskforce where we had members of law enforcement and of communities of color walking through all of the trainings, policies, and practices and coming up with a list of recommendations where police departments can make changes that would hopefully lead to a reduction in the excessive use of force against people of color.”

It’s been a year since those recommendations have come out and Burnette says that 21 of the 24 police agencies represented by the Dane County Police Associations have responded with official reports of how they have implemented those recommendations. “We really do consider that a win,” she says. “Our next steps there is to continue to monitor and identify ways to measure real impact.”

A native of Chicago, Burnette herself grew up struggling economically and still has good friends to this day who are struggling. Her life experiences make it much easier for her to relate to the people that United Way are trying to help and in getting important stakeholder voices to be heard that are most often never heard in Madison.

“I think that one of the great things about my own past experiences is that I was once a representative of one of our non-profit partners,” says Burnette who was Chief Operating Officer at the Urban League of Greater Madison prior to coming to the United Way. “So I know the ins and outs of how the non-profit agencies work in Madison and I also have those genuine relationships that allow for candid conversations to happen.

“We need to find a formal way for when we have community members who are unemployed, underemployed, homeless or what have you, that they are also being compensated for their time and their perspective and their participation in these discussions that we have,” she adds. “It seems that the request for bringing that voice of a person who is living through poverty right now is always expected to be uncompensated, and those are the people who need the support the most.”

To help raise up many of those voices that have traditionally been unheard, Burnette co-founded Madison Black Women Rock, one of the community’s first efforts to celebrate and raise awareness of the accomplishments of black women and raise scholarship money for young people. Madison Black Women Rock is an effort to promote the positive contributions of African-American women in the Madison community and overcome the negative stereotypes of black women that we so often see in certain reality TV shows and national media outlets. Burnette took at 2-year hiatus from her Black Women Rock while she was doing her MBA program.

Black Women Rock
Black Women Rock

“Now, I’m in the process of reconvening my Black Women Rock team to plan Madison Women Rock for 2018,” Burnette says. “I’m really excited about that. We will be planning a big event for the spring of next year. We will once again be celebrating black women in Madison who are doing their thing.”

Burnette is candid and straightforward when she speaks about the issues. She’s a straight shooter, as they say, and that’s what people like so much about her.

“Let’s cut through the bullcrap. We’re all people at the end of the day and we all want to achieve the same results. We want to change lives,” she says. “We want Dane County to be a community where everybody is successful. So, stop with the politics. Stop with the hiding things and the telling of alternative truths. Just chill with that.

“This is who I am and I take that with me to every room I’m in,” she adds. “I’m not about wasting time. I’m about real conversations and real results. I can’t handle facades. There are lives at stake here.”

Burnette’s favorite part about working at United Way is working at a place where she really feels appreciated and welcome.

“I feel like I’m working with a really talented team of professionals who are all passionate about the work that we do,” Burnette says. “At one point in my life, I experienced pretty much all of those challenges that members of our community face. Knowing that I had even a small part in helping make people’s lives better in this community … that makes it all worth it.”