Ending
Homelessness

It shouldn’t happen, period. But when it does happen due to crisis, we’re there with housing and jobs so people get back on their feet quickly.

Helping Students Graduate

Kids are falling behind. We support parents, help pre-K kids prep for the first day, and help students get back on track after major struggles or dropping out.

Breaking the Cycle of Poverty

Poverty’s happening here. We reach out to families with emergency help so they can get on stable financial ground.

We know that housing is the solution to homelessness. We also know that you can’t move into housing—or maintain it—without an income. That’s why we invest in connecting people who are homeless and able to work with employers who can put them to work.

Streets to Home

We know that the sooner people move off the streets, the less likely they are to fall back into homelessness. Streets to Home is an individual approach; outreach workers assess each individual’s situation and have discretionary dollars to help people get back on their feet.

Parent-Child Home Program

Children from low-income communities of color routinely start school well behind their peers. They have as much potential as any child. Their families simply face bigger inequity. The Parent-Child Home Program closes this preparation gap by supporting parents during the crucial early years of their kids’ development. When parents become their children’s first and best teachers, kids start school on a path to success.

Reconnecting Youth

Young people drop out of high school for many reasons. Some don’t get the support they need to succeed academically. Some miss too many days because they don’t have a stable home. Some get jobs to help support their families. Whatever the reason, their chances for success plummet when their education stalls. Reconnecting Youth is a coordinated, community-wide approach to helping these young people complete their education and achieve viable career paths.

Free Tax

When tax time comes around, thousands of hard‐working people in King County face age, income, language, or disability barriers. Many are eligible for tax credits and refunds that could put them on a path to financial stability, but few can afford professional tax services to figure it all out. The Free Tax Prep Program is a direct solution to this problem.

Fuel Your Future

When families no longer have to choose between food on the table and a roof overhead, our entire community wins. Our Fuel Your Future work aims to connect kids to nutritious food—during the school year and beyond.

Improving College Completion

Education is one of the best tools to break the cycle of poverty. Many college ‭students struggle—9% are homeless and 36% don’t know where their next meal will come from. So we’re connecting them to services through Benefits Hubs to help ‭them stay in school and graduate.‬‬

Effectiveness

We’re talking serious results like children who participate in our Parent-Child Home Program with their parents are 30% more likely to graduate high school. The programs and organizations we invest in are putting up big numbers and having real impact.

Leverage

It’s everything from winning large grants like half a million dollars to put more hundreds of AmeriCorp and VISTAs to work in the community, to utilizing $10 million state dollars in the last two years to get high school dropouts back on track.

94%

of every dollar donated goes to meet community needs

Influence

We invest in solutions that go to the root of the issue and work toward sustainable changes. This looks like programs and nonprofits who are advocating in Olympia for policy change, or at the school district, city or county level. A recent win was extending the age that youth leave the foster care system from 18 to 21 in order to reduce the number of youth existing foster care and entering homelessness.

Scale

The work we’re doing and investing in has to have reach. Reach like providing 600,000 free summer meals at more than 250 sites throughout King County to ease the burden on families who receive free and reduced priced lunches during the school year. We have to be able to make the solutions work for hundreds, if not thousands. Why? Because Seattle is growing at unprecedented rates and becoming unlivable for many.