Many of you have heard me talk about “permanent supportive housing” in previous posts.  Washington state’s Housing Trust Fund is the essential tool for the creation and preservation of permanent supportive housing. In order to keep up with the community need, an additional $100 million in funding should be added to the Housing Trust Fund. More than 70 percent of people served by the Fund make less than $17,540 per year, making it a vital resource in the fight to end homelessness.

Funding the Housing Trust Fund now with $100 million would allow Washington…

There is a relatively new arrival in web-based software available to people who are managing scheduling and communications with volunteers (this is available to anyone- school teachers, non-profits, coaches, you name it)  It’s called VolunteerSpot.com.  It’s not a sophisticated volunteer management tool- there are no features for tracking interests, skills and availability for instance.  It won’t track hours and spit out pretty reports on volunteer involvement.  And it doesn’t really track contact information, except e-mail.  But it’s a great tool for getting people to sign…

The New Solutions Council met last month and had a very informative and interactive meeting.  Our council volunteers led portions of the meeting and had great ideas about how we can move forward and ways to measure that we as a group are achieving our goals and how we can best convene groups to discuss various topics out in the community!  We are about to start the process of checking in with some of our small grants funded projects to see how their programs are…

It’s week four of the 60-day legislative session in the Washington statehouse, which means policy crunch time in Olympia.

Lawmakers are facing deadlines this week to move bills out of policy committees and onto fiscal committees. February 16 is the last day to consider bills in their house of origin before they are sent to the opposite house for review.

Here is a brief summary of some of the bills that United Way of King County supports:

Summary: Creates a public account…

The Times profiles two families and their encounters with scarce food and limited budgets during United Way’s Hunger Action Week. The piece does a great job conveying what it’s like for a family for whom a food stamps-budget is a constant reality.

[Eric Rivera's Cooking Blog's Potato and Leek Chicken Stock Soup]

While today is the official last day of Hunger Action Week, we are going to go over how everyone’s Thursday went!

Hunger Fact:

Blogger Round-up:

[A number of people at the United Way offices are taking the Hunger Challenge this week. The Murray family (mom, dad, and two kids) will be guest-blogging about their experience here. Today, we hear Peter Murray's perspective.]

Day 4 of the Hunger Challenge is nearly in the books, and my thoughts today have turned mainly to my health. As an insulin-dependent diabetic (I inject five times per day), this week has presented a unique set of…well, challenges beyond just trying not to think about being hungry.…

As part of Hunger Action Week, United Way is raising money for a cool project that will save food that normally would go to waste, bring more food to the emergency food system, and leverage tons more money than the project actually costs.

The project is called Yes We Can!

Here’s the basic concept: a local cannery in South King County will donate the facilities two days a week for local emergency food providers. With this time, we will take excess foods that would normally be wasted and…