Monaco Coach is not only Elkhart County’s fifth largest employer; it is the ninth largest financial contributor to the Elkhart County chapter of the United Way.

“Between their corporate and employee gift, it was somewhere around $50-thousand that they gave last year,” said Jerome Quatman, United Way President.

The United Way annual report actually lists the figure at $58,500.

Dealing with the loss promises to be tough for a couple of reasons.

Not only does the charitable organization lose a major donor, it stands to gain clients as jobless Monaco workers potentially place extra demand on the types of community services that United Way helps provide.

Today at the Boys and Girls Club in Goshen, there were hundreds of children who had a positive place to go.

They were shooting pool, honing their artistic skills, and just hanging out with friends.

For them, the negative news at Monaco arguably couldn’t have come at a worse time.

“You know, Boys and Girls Club are in major throws of making an expansion into Elkhart where they have never been before,” said Quatman: “They’re going to do it in times that have been very very economically soft.”

The soft economy caused some genuine hard times last week, when Monaco Coach announced plans to close plants in Elkhart, Wakarusa, and Nappanee.

“Yeah we’re very concerned,” said Quatman. “Yeah we’re worried; yeah we’re not going to cancel the campaign.
We’re going to go out and do what we need to.”

After all, the Elkhart County United Way is still helping to fund some Salvation Army programs, despite losing a number one financial contributor in the not-so-distant past.

“Bayer, which was then Miles, actually was the largest employer in the county and they were great supporters for United Way. The single largest contributor that we had and over the years, to the point where this January, they ceased to have employees in Elkhart County,” said Quatman.

On the bright side, Keystone R.V. wasn’t even part of the United Way campaign six years ago.

Today, Keystone is the number one donor having contributed more than $300-thousand last year.

“We’re going to keep going we're going to do the best we can, we're going to have impact where we can have impact,” said Quatman.

Not all R.V. firms have been as generous as Monaco Coach.

While R.V. makers account for eight of Elkhart County’s top ten employers: of those eight, only two are on the top ten list of United Way donors.