It's crunch time for this year's United Way campaign, and leaders are reaching into their own pockets to help the campaign meet its $60.5 million goal.

The Farmer Family Foundation (that's Farmer as in Cintas Corp. chairman Dick Farmer), Rhonda and Larry Sheakley, and the Fisher family are matching any pledges from companies or employees new to the campaign up to $300,000. Michael and Suzette Fisher are co-chairs of the campaign.

It's one of the critical challenges for the campaign, finding new sources of gifts as employment in the big companies here stagnates.

United Way has averaged about 200 new employee campaigns the last several years and hopes to reach that level again, said Chris Martin, vice president of annual development. Overall, more than 1,800 companies conduct employee campaigns.

In another new matching program, Ross and Cheryl Love will match any new pledge of $2,500 or more, up to $200,000 from African-American donors, and any new gifts from local black-owned businesses.

With a full economic recovery still lagging, United Way leaders know it'll be a tough battle to reach the goal before the campaign ends next week. As of Tuesday morning, they'd collected pledges for almost $42.9 million.

Young to old

As a former radio play-by-play broadcaster for Ohio State University football, Chuck Underwood is familiar to local football fans. Now he wants to spread his name to local companies.

The vehicle is The Generational Imperative Inc., Underwood's new consulting company to spread the word about using different marketing for different generations. He's gotten an equity investment from local ad agency Loren/Allan/Odioso.

Underwood's main theory divides Americans into five generations, from the "GI generation," which is older than age 79, to the "Millennials," who are younger than 21.

"Once we get out of the classroom and out of the home, we're going to jump into the adult world and pretty much rely on the belief system we've molded," he said.

Taking a stand

Almost four of every 10 youths in Ohio recalled the "Stand" name when asked if they knew of any campaigns against smoking.

That's one of the results from a new survey measuring results of the "Stand" campaign, paid for by Ohio's proceeds from a global settlement with tobacco companies and developed by Cincinnati's Northlich ad agency.

The survey of 1,600 adults and 1,600 youths was conducted July-October.

According to the survey, done by the North Carolina-based Research Triangle Institute, more than two-thirds "agree they should get involved," and 42 percent "think they would talk about Stand in front of their friends."

E-mail cpeale@enquirer.com