Coronavirus makes last months of Pat Hanrahan’s United Way career the most essential

United Way of the Plains president and CEO Pat Hanrahan, 70, is something of a walking embodiment of the saying, “Be careful what you wish for.”

In early March, Hanrahan announced he would retire in June after 35 years in his role.

“I remember saying to my wife, ‘Gosh, you know, the last couple months, you can’t start anything. I don’t want to sit there and be increasingly bored every day.’ “

He’s been anything but because the COVID-19 pandemic hit and, along with shutting down most of Wichita, made the United Way’s services perhaps more essential than ever.

Even though he’s been through two tropical storms, a hurricane and several major tornadoes, Hanrahan said, “This is the most challenging event in my career.”

He hasn’t had time to clean out his desk yet, and Hanrahan said he doubts he’ll be able to until his final day on the job.

“It’s been that busy.”

It’s a fitting end for a life of service to the three communities in which he’s led United Ways.

Hanrahan said organizing help during the pandemic has been his last gift to the community “and a last gift to me to be able to see it all come to fruition.”

Wichitan Jill Docking said she knew Hanrahan through the eyes of her late husband, Tom, who served on the United Way board for decades.

She said if the question is, “Who do you want running the show when it gets really ugly?” then the answer is Hanrahan.

Docking said her husband and Hanrahan, who gave one of the eulogies at Tom Docking’s 2017 funeral, were both calm under fire, did their homework and made measured decisions.

She said the two were especially well suited to each other because they “cared to the deepest part of their soul about the community.”

A change in direction

A part-time job at a radio station led Hanrahan, a native of Burlington, Iowa, to a full-time job and what turned out to be his entire career’s work.

Hanrahan was studying political science and business at the University of Iowa and considering a career in hospital administration or city management when a radio station job changed his direction.

Part of his job was to regularly interview an employment office to report what jobs were open and how people could apply. That segment was followed by interviews with a local volunteer center about what volunteer opportunities were available. The center was run by the United Way.

“So I kind of got to know what they were doing,” Hanrahan said.

He was about to get to know it much better. Hanrahan became executive director of the Iowa City United Way at the age of 23. He had one other employee when he started, and that grew to five before he left two years later for the same job in Brazoria County, Texas.

There, he started with one employee and eventually had 11.

Every United Way has an annual campaign that is the backbone of the organization and raises money through the community’s financial contributions. In Texas, Hanrahan grew the campaign from $600,000 to $3.3 million over the decade he spent there.

At those smaller United Ways, Hanrahan said he learned “a much better skill set for later because you had to do everything.”

That included raising and allocating money and doing public relations.

In the larger Wichita United Way, where Hanrahan arrived in 1985 at the age of 35, he said he’s been able to “understand each of the department’s issues . . . and how they all need to mesh together” thanks to that earlier work.

The United Way provides money, volunteers, information and in-kind products through its GIV warehouse. At his first two jobs, Hanrahan implemented a referral system to help people know what was offered.

“It doesn’t do any good to have all these great programs if nobody knows how to access them.”

In Wichita, that grew into the 2-1-1 system.

The United Way in Atlanta created the community helpline, and Hanrahan said Wichita’s United Way was an early pioneer with it by being one of the first to take the system statewide.

Hanrahan said he remembers telling his staff 15 years ago how important the 2-1-1 system would be.

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, the line has been critical at directing calls away from 9-1-1 and also helping the Sedgwick County Health Department screen potential coronavirus cases.

“People are finally realizing 2-1-1 is there, and that’s going to help long term in the community,” Hanrahan said.

The line offers referrals to 3,000 agencies statewide, such as ones that provide counseling and financial assistance among other things, and Hanrahan said operators have been able to offer moral support.

A 10-year-old called because she was worried about her mother’s health. An elderly gentleman called, and the operator told Hanrahan, “You could tell he just wanted to talk.”

Hanrahan said, “That’s, to me, a real value.”

A life-changing question

Hanrahan remembers the moment when he realized he found a vocation instead of a career.

He’d just moved to Texas and was visiting a day care the United Way supported.

“This little 4-year-old ran up to me and grabbed me around the knees and looked up at me. He just said, ‘Daddy?’ “

The boy’s father had abandoned him.

That less than one-minute interaction “changed my life,” Hanrahan said.

He said he knew he couldn’t be a counselor, “But I knew how to raise money.”

Hanrahan thinks part of that ability came from his own father, who ran a sporting goods store.

“I can just remember watching him talk to customers and how he presented merchandise,” Hanrahan said.

Once, a man brought a deflated basketball to the store to get air in it. Hanrahan asked his father why he would help the man, who might not have even bought the ball there.

“When everybody in town is selling basketballs, service is what makes the difference,” his father told him.

Hanrahan said his father probably didn’t realize how much he was teaching him, and Hanrahan said he didn’t realize how what he was learning would apply to his own career.

When Hanrahan arrived in Wichita, the United Way’s annual campaign was at $6 million. He grew that to a high of $16.3 million. Now, it’s dropped to just over $12 million.

September 11, 2001, was a huge hit to the aviation-focused Wichita.

“We were just starting to rebound from that when the great recession hit,” Hanrahan said.

Foundations and grants have helped keep the United Way’s budget at around $15 million.

Hanrahan said he remains impressed with Wichita’s giving. He said he’s seen studies that “by far the Midwest is always the most generous.”

“We just care about each other more here in the Midwest.”

He said if the Midwest is the belt of generosity, “Then Wichita is the gold belt buckle.”

Wichitans who have worked and volunteered with Hanrahan say he is the generous one.

When Wichita lawyer Alan Rupe met Hanrahan in the mid-1980s, he said he thought, “Here is somebody who is absolutely serious about helping people.”

Rupe said he has many times said, “Pat is the kind of person that leaves the wood pile higher than when he found it, which is the good Midwestern value that a lot of folks seem to have, and Pat seems to have a patent on it.”

Wichita used to be the halfway point between Hanrahan’s job in Texas and return trips to Burlington.

“I remember saying, ‘Gee, if we lived here, we’d be home.’ “

It became so much his family’s home that 16 years ago Hanrahan had to rescind his acceptance of a job offer to lead the San Diego United Way.

“I’ve had a lot of people say, ‘You did what?’ “

He said he knew the cost of living and the commute would be hurdles, but Hanrahan said the prospect of leaving made him realize something else.

“I just realized I’m a Midwest kind of guy and proud of it.”

‘A very challenging year’

Whoever leads the United Way next — the search is on, and United Way vice president Beth Oaks will be interim president and CEO — will be taking over at a difficult time.

“It’s going to be a very interesting year and a very challenging year for us and for all nonprofits,” Hanrahan said.

Part of the challenge is 70% of the campaign’s funds come from employees in workplaces. Those are a lot of the same employees who now are struggling with layoffs and other issues.

“That presents some real challenges for this fall,” Hanrahan said.

Except it won’t be his challenge anymore.

“Part of me is glad the stress will be gone. Part of me will miss it.”

Hanrahan said he enjoys the challenge of managing a crisis. He said he’ll miss that and his staff of 40.

“This is like family.”

Part of the fun of his career has been the people he’s met. Hanrahan said that has meant going from bank boardrooms to union halls all in the same hour.

“There’s a variety there that you’re never bored.”

Chris Shank of USI Insurance Services, which handles the United Way’s insurance, said meeting with Hanrahan is never boring — even when discussing insurance — because of his sense of humor.

“I’ve always enjoyed those meetings.”

Shank called Hanrahan “a real visionary.”

“He was always out front of every crisis. He always seemed to have a way of figuring out how the United Way could be of assistance.”

In addition to counting the 2-1-1 program as one of his proudest achievements, Hanrahan said he’s been pleased to be instrumental in providing funding to help start the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Central Kansas, Harbor House, KANSEL and Project Access, for which he and Paul Uhlig shared the Mary M. Gates — mother to Bill Gates — volunteer and staff achievement award in 2000.

Hanrahan also helped start the first domestic violence center in Brazoria County after a United Way secretary came to work with a black eye.

“She always hid it until she couldn’t hide it.”

The rise in domestic violence, drug use and alcoholism due to the pandemic are things Hanrahan worries about now.

He said he likens the pandemic to some of the weather-related disasters he’s worked through.

First, people are relieved to survive and have shelter. Then, as they remain sheltered, cabin fever sets in followed by anger and growing stress levels.

“I’ve seen some of that here,” Hanrahan said.

The United Way continues to find ways to address the community’s needs.

As it has done in the past, the United Way is opening a new help center for laid-off workers in June, and it soon will offer budget counseling as well.

Russ Meyer, chairman emeritus of Cessna Aircraft, met Hanrahan as soon as he arrived at the United Way and was struck at how organized, prepared and responsive he was.

“He has had a very, very distinguished career in Wichita, and in a very quiet way he has made a real difference here. He has been a great part of our community.”

Hanrahan may be leaving, but he said the United Way will continue to find ways to help the community.

“I just know that there’s a lot of people out there, we’ve made their life better.”

This story was originally published May 24, 2020 at 4:51 AM.