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Inside the United Way: Can new campaign rise to the challenge?:

United Way of Central Indiana hopes to raise $36.6 million this year to address a range of community needs-a difficult task given the charitable response to Hurricane Katrina and the loss of some onetime gifts. As the campaign kicks off, IBJ is taking a close look at the organization and its massive fundraising drive. Where does the money come from? How is it spent? And who’s leading the charge? Pages39A-41A Big names, big bucks The local United Way has received…

Pocket-protector crowd to preach quality: Group plans first conference to promote better practices in information technology

Because of them, people stocked basements with food, guns and ammo. Others fell prostrate on hilltops and sang Kumbaya. There was fear software developers would inadvertently destroy the world with the infamous Y2K computer glitch, in the opening hours of 2000. These days, however, it is the developers who are worried-about things like how a glitch can give hackers access to customer credit card and Social Security numbers. Or get companies in trouble when software doesn’t capture information required by…

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Many aren’t prepared for jobs of the future

To be illiterate in our society is more than an inconvenience, or an obstacle to making a living. It is also a badge of shame. That’s why we should all be concerned about the results of a January study that told us almost a million Indiana workers-one-third of the work force-failed to meet the minimum literacy standards for knowledge-based jobs. Many of us in the fields of research and policymaking have responded to this disturbing finding the same way we…

SPORTS: IU getting it right where tailgating is concerned

My alma mater, Indiana University, has taken its share of licks in recent times. In fact, I’ve used this space to throw some of the punches. But its recent decision-coinciding with the start of football season-to try to oust the party animals from the jungle just south of Memorial Stadium on game days was prudent, correct and too long in coming. This, folks, has been a human and legal calamity waiting to happen. The “jungle” is a park-like area across…

Don’t turn back on local needs: United Way deserves support as much as hurricane victims

How do you compete with Hurricane Katrina? For three weeks, we have been inundated by images of suffering and devastation on the Gulf Coast. In the midst of it all, United Way of Central Indiana has struggled to attract attention to the kickoff of its annual campaign. It’s a tough sell, just as it was four years ago when another horrific event-the 9/11 terrorist attacks-coincided with the campaign kickoff. “It took the fund-raising community about three years to recover from…

Katrina could complicate sale of Emmis TV station: Undaunted, New Orleans WVUE begins to rebuild

WVUE-TV Channel 8 in New Orleans has no transmitter, no offices, little functional equipment and a skeleton staff. The station owned by Indianapolis-based Emmis Communications Corp. also has no paying advertisers and a depleted audience, thanks to Hurricane Katrina. The devastation wrought by one of the nation’s worst natural disasters puts plans to sell the station on hold as WVUE officials survey the millions of dollars in damage to their facilities and equipment and fight to get back on the…

United Way campaign facing dual challenges this year: Onetime gifts, charitable response to Katrina devastation complicates already-complex fund drive

It’s never easy for United Way of Central Indiana-raising money seldom is. But this year, organizers went into the annual fund-raising drive with an additional challenge: replacing $1.5 million in one-time donations that helped get the 2004 campaign to its $36.6 million goal. Their task is complicated by the fact that this year’s effort started just as the philanthropic response to Hurricane Katrina kicked into high gear. Americans have given nearly $1 billion to disaster relief already, and the impact…

Campaign just part of local United Way: Agency aims to meet community needs

United Way of Central Indiana got its start in 1918 as Indianapolis’ War Chest. Many decades and several name changes later, the organization still is fighting to raise enough money to meet vital community needs. Leaders kicked off the 2005 campaign this month, trying to raise $36.6 million, mostly from workplace campaigns and corporate gifts. Together, the two sources represent about 97 percent of all pledges. UWCI’s campaign is the 22nd-largest in the country. On these two pages, IBJ details…

Building the ‘cheeseburger’ of file servers:

Afile server that longtime tech guru Kim Brand developed from open-source software offers a more affordable alternative to large competitors such as Microsoft Windows. As managing partner of Server Partners LLC, the 52-year-old Brand is the inventor of FileEngine, a Linux-based file server he markets as a simpler and more “worryfree” platform for sharing files. “Servers are expensive,” Brand said, “and when they break, they cost a lot to fix, and that’s wrong.” Brand founded Server Partners in 2001 but…

VIEWPOINT: We all pay the price of homelessness

“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.” -Hubert H. Humphrey The most recent sessions of the Indiana General Assembly and the U.S. Congress have focused significant efforts on addressing the needs of children through education and the elderly through prescription drug…

VOICES FROM THE INDUSTRY: Innovators shouldn’t forget the importance of protection

Technology-based companies depend on their intellectual property to protect innovations, but many fail to plan beyond the initial patent filing and leave key intellectual property unprotected. Some companies put off filing a patent application only to discover the delay prevents them from obtaining a patent for their invention. Here are a few tips that every technology-based company should follow to protect its intellectual property. File early Entrepreneurs and start-up companies are eager to present their innovations to investors and the…

Attorney: Heiress opposed big gifts: Deposition says Lilly upset when arts groups got $185M

Ruth Lilly garnered headlines around the globe in 2002 after an Indianapolis judge approved a new estate plan for the heiress that earmarked an estimated $185 million for two tiny arts organizations, the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation and Washington, D.C.-based Americans for the Arts. Now, in a newly public deposition, Lilly’s personal attorney, Tom Ewbank, charges his client was opposed to the large bequests and instead had wanted to funnel more of her billion-dollar estate into her own foundation, for the…

CHRIS KATTERJOHN Commentary: Beware the creep of urban sprawl

I’m happy for the city of Carmel that it wants to be a city in its own right, and not just a bedroom community of Indianapolis. I’m not so happy about some of its development practices. Up in my neck of the woods-western Clay Township-new subdivisions have sprung up like weeds, with little or no improvement to roads that support them. The resulting traffic delays have been maddening, to say the least. It’s not uncommon these days for me to…

INVESTING: Investors beware: More stocks looking bearish

I bet you’d like to know the day this bull market is going to end. You might find it extremely helpful if your crystal ball told you when the S&P 500 was going to reach its top. If you had this information, you would probably hold on to all the stocks you own until the final day, thinking that you will get out of everything right at the top. Unfortunately, market tops don’t work that way. Knowing when the S&P…

NOTIONS: Four years after 9/11, freedom still resounds

Dear Mr. bin Laden: On Sept. 11, 2005, I woke up late. I’d been to dinner and a movie the night before. Then I stayed up reading. So I slept in Sunday morning. I moseyed out of bed, put on gym shorts and a T-shirt, and retrieved the newspapers from the drive. You got beat on the front page by Hurricane Katrina. We like our crises fresh. Yours has grown stale. You made the cover of The New York Times…

BEHIND THE NEWS: Beneficiaries of Lilly largesse lose bid to spank bank

Round one goes to National City Bank of Indiana. An Indianapolis judge last week signaled he plans to dismiss litigation filed by two big beneficiaries of Ruth Lilly’s estate, Washington, D.C.-based Americans for the Arts and the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation. The groups charged the bank bungled management of her assets, costing them tens of millions of dollars. Judge Charles Deiter on Sept. 12 canceled a 10-day trial that was to start Sept. 26 and asked the bank to submit a…

City Market plans raising concerns: Coming renovations worry some tenants

Renovation plans for City Market intended to boost sales at the downtown landmark have some tenants concerned about what it will cost them. In early January, the market’s management expects to begin work on $350,000 worth of lighting and flooring improvements in the historic main hall. Tenants will be permanently moved, with preparedfood stands along the perimeter of the building and retail stands in the center. And stands will sport a uniform look. Individual tenants will bear most, if not…

Winona’s trustee seeking money, answers:

Winona Memorial Hospital hasn’t treated a patient in more than a year, but it continues to care for the leftover medical records of roughly 60,000 people. The fate of those records is one of many loose ends waiting to be tied up by lawyers and others shepherding the defunct hospital through liquidation. Indianapolis attorney Paul Gresk, the hospital’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee, also wants to find cash to give hospital employees their last paycheck. And he wants to learn more…

EndGenitor might hold key to repairing blood vessels: Biomedical startup researchers grow cells from umbilical cord fluid

En d G e n i t o r Technologies Inc. is a prime example of the type of company BioCrossroads, central Indiana’s life sciences initiative, covets. Founded on the scientific discoveries of two Indiana University School of Medicine researchers, the venture is on the cusp of producing stem cells that someday could repair the blood vessels of heart attack victims and diabetics. Drs. Mervin Yoder, 52, and David Ingram, 39, company cofounders and professors at the Herman B Wells…